THE RIGHT MAN FOR A TOUGH JOB

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 262, 4 November 1944, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE RIGHT MAN FOR A TOUGH JOB

\l THEN Michael Joseph Walsh was a broth of a boy he saw his W countrymen twice defeated by the All Blacks of 1905, .Two years later he shook the dust of County Clare from his shoes to join an uncle in the country whence came me All Blacks. And ten years later he was "crossing the oceans again, this time in a troopship, a member of the 13th Reinforcement or rne N.Z.E.F. Michael came back to his adopted country without a leg,. Mit with a dynamic personality unimpaired. There's nothing half-hearted about Michael. .... When he sets out to do a job it is as good as done. His driving force has been behind the Provincial Council of the Victualling trade as secretary through more than one campaign. For relaxation he took up bowls with the Waitemata Club, and ere long was in the presidential chair for the two seasons 1933-34 and 1934-45. Two years later he was a member of the Auckland Centre executive, and this year became president. It is a big year in the Auckland Bowling Association's history, with the biggest-ever New Zealand championships meeting to be held here in the New Year, and it's typical of the president's enthusiasm for anything he undertakes that he is the party responsible for finding accommodation for the visitors. To date he has booked in 400 intending competitors from outside the province, and he will probably have a hundred or to say °NO to Michael Walsh when he looks you square in the eye from beneath forbidding eyebrows. But there's a twinkle in his eye bedad. We saw it when he was recalling to some acquaintances his bad luck in missing drawing a horse in the Melbourne Cup by one number onlj, and remarked: That's another injustice to Old Ireland." ... His heart is still in County Clare. —