Professor Kevin Nugent: A welcome visitor to Springfield ...

We had a wonderful morning of nostalgia and reminiscence in Springfield this (Tuesday) morning when Kevin Nugent accompanied by his son David visited the Mullingar Shamrocks grounds and clubhouse and were welcomed and given the grand tour by several Mullingar Shamrocks people.

Kevin played for Mullingar Shamrocks in the late 1950s and early 1960s and won Westmeath minor championship medals in 1960 and 1961 when he captained the Mullingar Shamrocks team to victory. Kevin then went on to play senior football for the club but missed out on the 1964 county senior title as he was serving a suspension at the time for playing soccer. Anyone under fifty years of age would find it difficult to understand this but at the time the GAA had a rule that suspended players who played in one of the foreign games of soccer, rugby, cricket or hockey. Then rule was removed in 1971. Kevin brought a team from St Columban's College that included Eoin Hand, future Irish international player and team manager, to play Mullingar Town at the Greyhound Stadium. The result was a ban from the GAA for six months. It was Kevin's first visit to the Springfield complex and Tommy Lyng rambled in to reconnect with his Mullingar Shamrocks heritage. Kevin amazed all with his memory of people and places and his ability to make family connections despite being over fifty years absent from the town. For Kevin, the visit reinforced the central importance of the GAA's contribution to community building and the extraordinary ethos of volunteerism that forms the core of the association.

Professor Kevin Nugent is Founder and Director of the Brazelton Institute in the Division of Developmental Medicine at the Children’s Hospital, Boston. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Lecturer in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Kevin received his doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Boston College. He has worked at Boston Children’s Hospital since 1978, teaching and conducting research on newborn behaviour and early parent-infant relations. He has been a Lecturer in Psychology at Harvard Medical School since 1981. Professor Nugent addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children at Leinster House, Dublin, on Thursday 12th November, 2015. The title of the presentation was “The first three years are a time of massive brain development, with lifelong implications for the child and for society”.

For a full account of Kevin's extraordinary academic career check into www.drkevinnugent.com