Pupils at a primary school in Co Sligo have opted for a training session with soccer star Roy Keane rather than a cheque for £2,000 for library books after winning a competition run by Walker Crisps.
St George's Church of Ireland school in Tubbercurry has just seven pupils and all seven are due to travel to Dublin today to meet the soccer player as he trains with the Irish squad.
Principal the Rev Doris Clements said six of the seven pupils were boys. "Most of them are fans of Manchester United, so they chose to meet him rather than the £2,000. We already have an excellent library anyway," she said.
She explained they managed to win the competition because people from all around the country had sent tokens to the school after it was featured in a report in the Sun newspaper as the smallest school to have registered. The same competition is running again this year and once again the school has received thousands of tokens. "They're here now sorting out tokens into bundles of 10 when they should be doing RE (religious education) class," Ms Clements said.
The pupils at St George's have also excelled themselves at fundraising, having collected the largest sum of any school for the charity Bothar to send goats to families in the developing world.