Brendan Foreman:At a time when Irish sports administration is under increasing scrutiny and criticism, the name of Brendan Foreman, who died on May 17th aged 84, will seem to many a beacon of commonsense and good example.
A prominent athlete with the Donore Harriers Club in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s, Brendan Foreman went on to become a key figure in unifying the troubled world of Irish athletics. He combined a life-long commitment to sport with a distinguished and wholly separate career as an analytical chemist.
Brendan Foreman was born in Dublin on June 19th, 1918, to Thomas, a chauffeur, and Elizabeth (née Ryan) Foreman. He was educated at Sandyford National School and Synge Street CBS. He joined Guinness Brewery as a messenger boy when he was 16. Studying at night at Kevin St College of Technology, in Dublin, he took an external B.Sc in analytical chemistry from London University, which he later followed with an M.Sc in botany.
He became a member of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland (ICI), serving as honorary secretary (1957-'65). He was elected vice-president in 1966 and then president from 1968-'70. Appropriately for someone who was a chemist with Guinness, his presidential paper in 1969 was on the subject of barley and malt, a combination dear to his fellow Dubliners.
However, it was his spare-time activity which brought Brendan Foreman to the attention of a wider public. During his time with Donore Harriers, he had became involved in running the Amateur Athletic Union of Éire (AAUE), which was the only body recognised internationally as having the authority to represent Ireland abroad in the sport.
The AAUE operated only in the Republic, whereas its rival, the National Athletic and Cycling Association (NACA) had members in all 32 counties. With its overtones of Civil War politics, this was an often bitter division which plagued the early development of athletics in Ireland.
From the early 1960s Brendan Foreman and a number of athletes set out to create unity. Thus was born in 1967, with careful legal advice from the late Mr Justice Conroy, who chose the name, An Bord Luthchleas na hEireann, BLE, which rapidly came to represent most of those involved in the sport. However, some members of NACA broke away, and the unfortunate division, perhaps helped by the deteriorating situation in Northern Ireland, was to remain until the formation of the Athletics Association of Ireland, or Athletics Ireland, in 1999.
Again, on this occasion, Brendan Foreman's diplomatic skills were called on to help create a final unity, and he played a crucial role in creating the AAI from both BLE and the NACA.
After 1967, to ease the path to unity between the NACA and the AAUE, a joint secretaryship was created, with a representative from each organisation sharing the post of national secretary. This was merged in 1969, and three years later Brendan Foreman became secretary of the new body, BLE, a post he held until 1989.
It was a time of great change in athletics internationally, and Brendan Foreman oversaw the introduction of much of this in Ireland, including the arrival of electronic time-keeping. He became well-known across the country as a team manager and judge at BLE events. He was manager of the Irish cross-country team in 1978 at Glasgow when John Treacy became world champion, and managed the team again the following year at Limerick, when Treacy defended his crown successfully before a home crowd.
His talents as a negotiator and leader had long been recognised by the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI), which made him Irish team manager at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, honorary treasurer in 1976, and assistant chef de mission at Moscow in 1980. Brendan Foreman held the position of honorary treasurer until 1997, and when he retired finally from the council two years later, he was its longest serving member.
Outside athletics, Brendan Foreman used the skills he had acquired in his working environment, especially chemistry and botany, to good effect.He created at his home in Calderwood Road, Drumcondra, a beautiful small garden with many distinctive plants, in particular a series of Japanese bonsai trees and several different fruit trees. From the latter he made damson, apple and gooseberry wines which established quite a reputation for himself as a viniculturist. among family and friends. He had a great love of nature and of the outdoors. His interest in viniculture was inherited by one of his two sons, Declan, who is now involved in the Australian wine industry.
Brendan Foreman is survived by his wife Vera; his daughters, Deirdre, Maeve (Nagle) and Bairbre; and sons Brendan jnr. and Declan.
Brendan Foreman: born 1918, died, May 2002