We’ve let the update posts on the website fall by the wayside a little! We’ve had a busy year, so unfortunately we’ve let ourselves get a little behind on all of this!
Our instructors have been busy behind the scenes this year – we’ve reworked some of our syllabus, added a few refinements and extra elements, and one of our instructors is currently working on incorporating a new weapon int our teachings as an occasional element.
On the event side of things we’ve had a fairly packed year so far. In February a group of fencers from MCG headed over to Glasgow for the Glasgow HEMA Open for some longsword and messer. Right on the heels of that in March we hosted the Morrigan’s Melee, our FLINTA (Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, and Agender) event consisting of workshops aimed at beginners and existing practitioners, along with test cutting and fechtschule tournaments. The event also raised a total of £782 for GLOW NI.
Easter saw a group of MCG fencers over at The Art That Adorns You, a HEMA event hosted by York School of Defence. This is one of our absolute favourite HEMA events and always has an awesome mix of really fun and solidly technical workshops, along with joyous frivolity like bouncy castles and spacehopper jousting tournaments.
In May one of our fencers, Chris, travelled over to the London HEMA Open, a tournament which ended up as Europe’s highest rated longsword tournament of all time (beating out the 2019 Minsk European Games), and the first time the top three longsword fencers have been in the same event since 2016. Chris got some excellent experience fencing against a wide range of very talented fencers, and also ran into Jack and Mike, two excellent instructors from other HEMA Ireland clubs (Goat’s Head in Wexford and Historical Combat Academy in Dublin).
The start of June saw our own Bladeworks event, with 60 fencers gathering for a residential weekend of workshops, fechtschule tournaments, and socialising. Whilst not quite our biggest Bladeworks ever, it very much felt like our best, and we’re looking forward to next year!
Mid-July saw another group of MCG heading back to York, this time for Messer Fest! The messer is one of our two main weapons at MCG, and is quite niche in the grand scheme of things, so it’s always awesome to get along to an event entirely dedicated to the weapon! Everyone had an awesome time, and one of our messer instructors, Kelly, came away with the 1st place prize in the low-protection (mask and light gloves only) messer fechtschule.
The end of July had another MCG contingent heading to Fightcamp 2026, the biggest HEMA event in the UK, with over 300 attendees! Our instructor Ross taught a messer workshop, and all of MCG present generally had fun with workshops, camping, and being around other awesome HEMA folk!
And that’s us more or less up to date for this year so far! It’s been busy but we’ve a lot more to come!