| **Click the Image To View The Whole Gallery**
Frank Brennan was born in the City of Liverpool on the 6th of May,
1960. He was always sport-oriented, and he took up Gymnastics
while at school. At the age of 12 he tried to join the Red
Triangle Karate club, but he was told to go and join the Judo
club for a year, as he was too young. This was particularly
galling, as his brother was accepted for the club, but it made
him all the more determined to gain membership. In 1973, he was
successful and started to train at the club under the tuition of
Andy Sherry.
His introduction to Karate competition was in 1974, when he
competed in the KUGB Northern Regional Championships. He entered
the Junior Kata event, which he won. He was a 4th Kyu at the
time, and it was indicative of things to come that he won the
first competition he ever entered. His introduction to Kumite
Shiai was even more dramatic. In 1975, while fighting for the
Red Triangle team, Bob Poynton broke his leg in one of the
matches. The team has no reserves, so the young brown belt, who
had only entered the Kata event, was suddenly in the final of
the Team Kumite event against Leeds. He fought one of Leeds'
most experienced fighters, Andy Harris, and decisively beet him
with a fast Mawashi Geri combination to held Red Triangle win
yet again.
His first international appearance was with the KUGB Squad in
the European Championships in Sweden in 1978, where he came 2nd
in the Senior Kata event. The next year, in Belgium, he won the
Grand Championship of Europe, taking both Kumite and Kata
events, a feat that he has achieved no less that four times.
As a fighter, he is rather unique, in that he has no particular
speciality - he is equally at home using hands or feet, and
quite often surprises his opponents with very dynamic
combinations of some of the more unusual hand or foot
techniques. As a senior member of the KUGB International Squad,
the most recent highlight of his career was leading his team to
victory in the 1990 World Shotokan Championships in Sunderland.
He is held in great respect internationally - in an interview at
the World Championships, the Japanese team coach, Ex-World
Champion Masahiko Tanaka said that the one man that the whole
Japanese Team were specifically trained to beat was Frank
Brennan.
He is a staunch and loyal supporter of the KUGB, and works very
hard to further the aims of the Association. Asked recently what
he thought were the main strengths of the KUGB, he replied:
"The KUGB is fantastic. It has shown itself to be one of the
great associations of the World, and I'm not just speaking about
success in competition. I refer more to the attitude and
dedication displayed by its members - people who are in the KUGB
do Karate for the benefit of Karate, rather than for personal
gain, and that's what I really like about it. Nothing is
perfect, and there may be some glitches on the route, but it is
a bit like life, like evolution - things change and get better,
and I can see the KUGB getting better all the time."
Back |
