Irish claim on Dellacqua would not be overly tribal

ON TENNIS:There is after all some Irish - and particularly Galway - interest in the main draw at Wimbledon

CASEY DELLACQUA may not sound terribly Irish but the highest-ranked Australian woman, 43rd in the world, may have a greater claim than many who have donned the green shirt. Take a bow, Tony Cascarino.

Dellacqua, it transpires, is related to the once well-known Kirwan family from Galway. Cregg Castle, the last fortified pile built west of the Shannon, was built in 1648 by Clement Kirwan and was the Kirwan family seat.

The Kirwans were among the 12 tribes of Galway, wealthy merchant princes who owned substantial properties. The castle had its own burial ground, where family members and locals who worked on an estate extending to thousands of acres were interred.

The castle fell into the hands of the Blake family in the 18th century and local legend tells us it was lost in a game of cards.

The Blake lineage died out and Cregg Castle was sold to an English couple in the 1940s.

But the Kirwans were nothing if not self-sufficient and enlightened. John Waters Kirwan, who was the second son of Nicolas Kirwan (born 1869), left Ireland to travel to Australia and in 1895 arrived in the Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie, where gold had been discovered. There John worked as a journalist for the local papers, notably the Kalgoorlie Miner, which he eventually took over.

He was elected mayor of Kalgoorlie and later a member of parliament for Western Australia, and was ultimately knighted.

John was a cousin of Archibald Laurence Patrick Kirwan, also of Cregg. According to Laurence's grand-daughter Eleanor Preston, a respected tennis journalist living in London, the family home was gambled away. Indeed the punting gene ran through both sides of the family.

Eleanor's uncle was Viscount Gormanston, who owned Gormanston House, now a school. Her father, Anthony, often said the family lost that house on "fast women and slow horses".

But her grandfather Laurence also became famous in his own right. Laurence left Galway at a young age to go to school in England and by the time of his death in April 1999, aged 91, he had become a world-famous archaeologist, a former director of the British Royal Geographical Society and, like his cousin John, a knight of the realm.

He was noted for excavating royal tombs in the Sudanese desert dating from the fourth and fifth centuries AD, promoting the exploration of Antarctica, and helping to plan and finance the first successful ascent of Mount Everest.

That latter deed was the most widely known of his enterprises, the Everest expedition of 1953 ending in triumph when Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, became the first men to stand at the summit.

Born in 1907, Laurence was educated at Wimbledon School and Merton College, Oxford. During the second World War, he served at the British ministry of defence and in 1943 was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

For the three decades after the war, he was director and secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, a privately supported institution that many Britons look upon as a remnant of lost empire. In that role, he was involved in the planning and financing of three great expeditions.

Known as a gentle but painstaking professor when he taught at Edinburgh, London and Cairo universities, Laurence cut a formidable figure standing all of 6ft 6ins.

His contribution to polar exploration is acknowledged in such placenames as the Kirwan Escarpment, Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, and the Kirwan Inlet on Alexander Island off the Antarctic Peninsula.

Casey Dellacqua, who has reached the second round at Wimbledon after a fine win over the Swiss 12th seed Patty Schnyder, was born in Perth, Australia, to a father with an Italian name, Dellacqua, and a mother with an Irish name, Ward Kirwan.

It transpires that a certain mining town in Western Australia called Kalgoorlie is where Casey's grandparents were born and some of her cousins still live. The connection was made by Eleanor's mother, Jennifer, during the Australian Open this year.

"I guess loads ofAussies have Irish connections," says Casey. "It's fun. I always knew about my Italian roots but now I want to find out more about the Irish side."

While the details are being ironed out, the connection is a strong one. Cregg Castle and Kalgoorlie are joined at the hip and Casey Dellacqua is more Irish than Tony Cascarino.