Experienced Longford duo begin defence of hard earned rally titles

Drumlish superstar Pakie Duffy and his Laois based Monaghan Co-driver Evin Hughes are getting set to defend their 2024/25 Squealing Pig Monaghan Border Navigation Championship title when the 2025/26 championship begins on Saturday, October 25 in Co. Donegal.

The long-standing partnership and multiple national champions took the 2024/25 border championship with a total of 54 points after the best 4 out of the 5 rounds count back.

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Last season’s championship began in November with the Co Monaghan Drumlin Navigation Trial. In this mammoth event, Evin and Pakie finished in 3rd place overall, a position that secured them 13 points.

Midland Motor Club hosted the 2nd round, based out of Ballymore GAA. At this Co Longford event, Pakie got a chance to put his local knowledge to the test. The local knowledge worked out well as he and Evin took first place and put a maximum 15 points in the bag toward the championship.

Co Cavan Motor Club hosted round 3, and for the second event in a row, Pakie and Evin took the outright victory by a slender two marks over the 2nd placed crew.

It was now back to Co Monaghan for the penultimate event. On this Ballinode village based event, Pakie and Evin finished 9th overall, a result which dented their title hopes as they now required a good result in the final round.

The final round was held in Co Donegal and Pakie and Evin finished in 5th place and secured enough points to keep the poor Monaghan result as their dropped score. So, at the end of the five-event championship, Pakie and Evin took a 5 point victory (54) over the Monaghan pairing of Aaron McElroy/Declan Tynan (49).

In the National Navigation Championship, it was another Monaghan/Longford pairing as Ryan Treanor and Shane Dalton were victors in the 2024/25 championship.

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In the eight round championship, Ryan and Shane took victory in the opening round in Co Cork. They had a bit of misfortune in round 2 in Co. Monaghan where they finished 10th overall. Shane and Ryan were the organisers of round 3 for Midland Motor Club, so were awarded top points towards the championship on that occasion.

It was back to Co Cork for round 3 in the championship. Skibbereen & DCC were the hosts of this event and it was back to winning ways here as Ryan and Shane left Cork for the second time in a row as victors, after taking a tiebreak win due to having the smaller engine cc.

It was a return to Co Cork for round 4, in the new year for the 1000 Shakes Navigation. In this event Ryan and Shane finished in 3rd place securing 15 championship points.

Next up was the Skibbereen & DCC 100 Isles navigation and a 4th placed finish here was enough to gather 14 points and hold a lead of 6 points with just two events remaining.

Cavan Motor Club hosted the penultimate round and Ryan and Shane finished in 3rd place overall, taking another 15 championship points. This points tally effectively made them championship winners, but they still competed in the final round in Monaghan to confirm it.

In the final event they finished in 11th place, taking home 7 championship points. In the championship, competitors count their best six results out of the eight events, plus the 5 bonus points for starting six rounds.

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Ryan and Shane were able to exclude their Monaghan Drumlin and March results from their points tally, so finished on a total of 102 points, 6 points superior than Evin Hughes and Pakie Duffy who finished in 2nd place.

We would like to wish the two Co Longford teams all the best as they begin their respective championship defence in the coming weeks.