Welcome to BADMINTON MUSEUM OF IRELAND.

The purpose of the Badminton Museum of Ireland is to preserve the great heritage of Irish Badminton and to make the general badminton public aware of it.

The Gallery section in this issue displays an image from the All-England Championships of 100 years ago. There is a huge contrast with a similar scene on 2011. The clothing would suggest that movement would be minimal but other action photographs of the era would suggest that the ladies game was played very energetically and with considerable skill.

The item in the historical section is a very interesting article by Judy Hashman on preparing for the big occasion. This question of peaking at the right time is always an important matter for players who seek to identify their personal "big occasion" and want to prepare properly for it. It is interesting to note that the players identified the events that would be most beneficial in giving them the level of competition needed to be at their best at the time of the All-England. Nowadays a lot of the planning would be done by the player's coach/manager but it is clear that the competitive players with lower levels of performance can consider proper preparation to enable them to be more effective in reaching their own particular target.

The worry of a curator trying to establish a meaningful archive of relevant material is that, unwittingly, very valuable items from a historic point of view will lay hidden or worst of all will be thrown away. I would love to hear from anybody who has old badminton memorabilia so that some cataloguing could be done even before display space is available. Please contact me through the website if you would like to help.

Dick O’Rafferty
Curator