2010
The following article was published recently by The Dublin People Newspaper, and on behalf of Guinness Rugby Club, I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their ongoing support.
Rugby club tackles soccer dominance
Thursday, 18 March 2010
A LONG established rugby club on the Southside is recruiting young members to its ranks who can avail of top quality facilities and coaching programmes.
The Guinness Rugby Club, located in the Iveagh Grounds in Crumlin, currently has about 200 members.
Thanks to the club’s talented and dedicated coaches and committees they have become the foremost Leinster club in developing junior and underage rugby.
The lifeblood of the club is their youth and they have won competitions at all levels including many Leinster caps.
The club’s under 19s team have just won the schools/ youths league and their under 17s team has also competed in the top flight Leinster League this season.
But at the moment they are trying to attract younger members between 10 and 15 years of age.
The club’s spokesman, Bob Mooney explained that children in this age group who join the club would be eased into the game gradually and that matches do not involve heavy physical contact.
“It is not full on contact at this level,” he said. “There is no lifting in the line out so it is a sterile environment for them to get into rugby before they get into the full on scrums and line outs. There is tackling involved but there is no pushing in the scrums.”
According to Mr Mooney, the rigorous training sessions at the club are an ideal way for youngsters to build up their fitness while learning the skills of the game.
“The standard training session would involve a warm up which would consist of tip rugby to get people used to the ball handling.
“Then they would move onto tackling practice and from there they would do a bit of running and sprinting and passing off their left or right hands. We would also do a bit of kicking before finishing up with a bit of tip rugby again.”
Membership for anyone under the age of 16 is free and young members who join up also have access to other facilities at the Iveagh Sports Grounds including the soccer club, the GAA club, bowls, snooker and pitch and putt.
Mr Mooney pointed out that many of the younger members come from areas such as Crumlin, Tallaght and Ballyfermot – not areas traditionally associated with rugby.
He admitted that it can be difficult to attract kids from these areas away from playing more popular sports such as football but he said rugby development officials from the IRFU were helping the club to recruit new members.
“We will have a couple of guys from the Leinster branch in development at underage level helping us out,” he revealed. “We coordinate with them. They go into the schools in places that are often not traditional rugby areas and introduce them to the game and try to point them in our direction.
“Over Easter we have a rugby festival that we run every year where we bring in four of five local clubs. Another five or six UK clubs come over for the two days for under 15 and under 16 matches.”
Anyone who wants to join the club can contact Bob Mooney on 087 6176809 or by emailing him at rmooney@ windsor.ie or by phoning youth co-ordinator Fiona McSweeney on 0872996350.