Three Melbourne-based Kerrymen and four of their friends in New York, Asia and Canada were flown home for St Patrick's Day by 7Up.
TIM McCARTHY from Killorglin, Co Kerry has been living in Melbourne for the last five months. But he and six friends were flown home to Ireland to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, courtesy of a 7Up competition.
The prize was to fly a group of seven Irish friends home for St Patrick’s Day from wherever they were in the world. Tim’s team, 7uptonogood, beat off all comers to claim the prize, which is worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“The only criteria to enter it was you had to be seven friends from Ireland who were separated around the world and wanted to get home for St Patrick’s Day,” said Tim.
“There’s three of us in Melbourne, two in New York, one in Vancouver and one in Asia.
“There were hundreds of entries and we made it to the last seven. When you made it that far you were given tasks to do and it was done on public voting.
“My mom has a shop in Killarney and she was giving free treats to anyone who offered to vote for us. It worked; there was massive support in Kerry for us,” he told the Irish Echo.
This support extended to being featured in the Kerry’s Eye and Kerryman newspapers and on Radio Kerry.
“The Munster rugby forum put us in their online magazine too and it got over 1500 hits, so there were plenty of people looking for us,” said Tim.
So what about the tasks finalists had to do?
“The first was a challenge to get photos of the team members with a 7Up poster/product next to a national landmark from the country we were in e.g. Sydney Opera House/Statue of Liberty. I took a photo with Jack Holden (Paul O’Brien) from Home and Away.
“The second task was to make a video to promote our team’s campaign. We made one which was basically the video from ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ with each of the team members’ heads superimposed on the bodies of the cast from the show,” he said.
“The final task involved a challenge whereby our friends and family had to take photos showing how much they missed us.”
Tim was shocked to win. “I genuinely thought we had been pipped at the post by the team from Limerick who put in a missive effort to claim first spot.
“7Up took down the leaderboard with about 24 hours of voting left to go. At that time we were coming second after having been in first place for most of the competition. During that final 24 hours all of our friends and family obviously put in a huge attempt to reclaim first spot for us and thankfully they succeeded,” he said.
“When the results came in each of us in Melbourne had a tearful phone call from home. Gary, Trevor and I each spoke to our mothers who were absolutely thrilled that we had won and would be coming home for a visit.
“If it wasn’t for our family and friends putting in so much time and effort we wouldn’t be coming home so any credit for this achievement goes directly to them.
“It’s a dream come true and we couldn’t be happier,” he said.
“There’s a big party in our honour in Dublin as part of the prize. Ash and The Republic Of Loose are playing at it.”
Tim will continue to work in telesales selling solar panels when he gets back to Melbourne after the trip home.
“We’re on a one year visa at the moment but we’re hoping to stay for a second year. We’re going up the east coast in June and we’re going to start working in July doing three months fruit picking so we can stay for the second year,” he said.
by Pádraig Collins
