Tributes have been paid to a Cavan man with a smile that “could light up a room” after he drowned near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old’s body was recovered from the water at Whitehaven Beach, Queensland on New Year’s Eve at around 11am.<\/p>\n
Sean Keaney was from Ballinagh and had been living in London in recent years.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Tara GFC in London said Mr Keaney “was the life of every celebration, a man always found on the dance floor, with a smile that could light up a room and a laugh that warmed every heart”.<\/p>\n
The club said their “dearest friend” left a “lasting impact on every one he left”.<\/p>\n
“His absence leaves an unimaginable void, and he will be deeply missed by every one in the Tara family,” it added.<\/p>\n
London GAA said Mr Keaney had won the intermediate championship with his club this year.<\/p>\n
“Sincere condolences to Sean\u2019s family and friends at this difficult time,” it added.<\/p>\n
“Ar dheis D\u00e9 go raibh a anam.”<\/p>\n
Mr Keaney had played underage football with his home club Crosserlough GFC.<\/p>\n
Chairperson Mark Rehill said there is a sense of “disbelief” and “numbness” in the community.<\/p>\n
He said Mr Keaney was “quiet, unassuming, very hardworking and committed”.<\/p>\n
The “very popular” footballer will be remembered for his “big smile”, Mr Rehill added. <\/p>\n
“Whatever you needed him to do, he would have done,” he said.<\/p>\n
A fundraiser set up to help bring Mr Keaney\u2019s body home has raised over \u20ac60,000.<\/p>\n
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it is aware of the incident and is providing consular assistance.<\/p>\n
Mr Keaney is among a number of people who have died in separate incidents off the Australian coast in recent days, according to local media reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tributes have been paid to a Cavan man with a smile that “could light up a room” after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-224190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}