There are many reasons why West Cork has enjoyed a glorious few weeks of success in Munster schools’ rugby competitions, as KIERAN McCARTHY explains
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‘IF you ask most lads around our school what they want to be when they grow up, they’ll say a professional rugby player,’ says Philip Murphy, coach of the Bandon Grammar School team that won the Munster Schools Junior Cup for the first time last month.
‘I can’t promise them that will happen but the belief is there, because tangible people are doing tangible things,’ he adds, a nod to a former student who has developed into one of the most talked-about players in the country.
Jack Crowley is the ultimate Bandon Grammar success story – he’s the local lad from ten kilometres out the road in Innishannon who walked the corridors at the Bandon school on his way to becoming one of the top players in Irish rugby. He’s the Munster outhalf battling to be the number one Irish No. 10. A headline-grabber who is big news. He’s also a Bandon Grammar boy.
So, the school’s current class of up-and-coming rugby players, including the trailblazing junior team, don’t need to search far for a hero who can join the dots from the Bandon school to, let’s say, the Rugby World Cup. Jack Crowley has walked those exact steps.
‘We have loads of coaches here who coached Jack so they are telling the lads that Jack did the same training as them, went to the same gym as them, has the same structure as them, had the same after-school study, all of those things,’ Murphy explains, highlighting the you-can-see-it, you-can-be-it impact of Crowley’s rise.
‘When you see someone like Jack do what he is doing, it becomes real, it’s tangible, it shows guys there is just no secret. It’s not a pipedream for young fellas now when they see Jack playing in a World Cup and kicking a drop goal against La Rochelle in the Champions Cup.’
Jack Crowley in action for Bandon Grammar School.
Jack Crowley is one example. Skibbereen man Gavin Coombes, another former Bandon Grammar student, is another. Before them there was the pioneering Darren Sweetnam, the Dunmanway native who became the first West Cork man to play for the Ireland senior rugby team in 2017. For Jamie Hicks, a key player on the history-making Bandon junior cup-winning team, he only needs to look at home – his older brother Dylan is in the Munster Rugby Academy and also played for Ireland in the recent U20 Six Nations.
Let’s spread the net wider. Out west in Bantry, two of Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí’s most famous past students are the Wycherley brothers, Fineen and Josh, who played locally with Bantry RFC on their way to Munster, and in Fineen’s case, Ireland. Skibbereen Community School can boast about Irish international Enya Breen as a past pupil. Skibbereen Rugby Club can point to first cousins Gavin and Liam Coombes as two of their greatest success stories. Over the road in Rosscarbery, Munster tour de force John Hodnett attended Mount Saint Michael Secondary School, and played with Clonakilty Rugby Club. Another Munster man, Cian Hurley from Clon went to Clonakilty Community College. Add in the success of Clonakilty teen Lani O’Donovan, the Sacred Heart Secondary School Clonakilty student who played for Ireland at the recent Six Nations U18 Festival.
There is no shortage of role models in West Cork rugby at the moment and this increased visibility of local men and women playing at the highest levels has shown what’s possible. They live among us. Real people making the extraordinary seem possible.
Michael Peter O’Regan, a teacher and rugby coach at Clonakilty Community College agrees. Rugby is setting down roots in his school, and they recently won the Mungret Shield (Munster boys’ schools U16B title) to follow success in the King’s Cup (C level) last season. While this is just the third year of rugby in the Clonakilty school, the signs are encouraging.
‘We have a couple of guys in the school doing their junior cert and they say they want to be professional rugby players. That would never have been said 20 years ago. No-one would even think about it,’ O’Regan points out.
‘Role-modelling is a huge part of it. Cian Hurley is a past student of Clonakilty Community College – he was offered a scholarship to go play with CBC (Christian Brothers College). Cian came to the school last year to present our medals after we won the King’s Cup.’
Sacred Heart Clonakilty captain Amie Millin lifts the trophy after their Munster Schools Girls Junior Cup final victory in March.(Photo: Laszlo Geczo/INPHO)
It’s the little things that make a big difference. And the accessibility to role models is one piece of a much larger jigsaw that has pushed West Cork into the spotlight as a rugby hotspot right now.
Look at the trophies – all notable moments in the growth of rugby locally – that have flowed into this region’s schools in the last few weeks alone:
- Sacred Heart Secondary School Clonakilty won the Munster Schools Girls senior and junior cup double for the second year in a row. In the junior cup final they beat Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí in an all West Cork decider. (Just on the Bantry school, in recent years they made headlines with a first-ever victory in the Munster Schools Boys Senior Cup)
- Bandon Grammar School won the Munster Schools Boys Junior Cup for the first time, stunning 19-time winners Christian Brothers College in the final. An historic breakthrough.
- Three of the four Munster Schools boys’ and girls’ senior and junior cup titles were won by West Cork schools. Incredible.
- Hamilton High School won the Munster Schools Boys’ U19 Mungret Cup title, while the Bandon school also competed in the knockout stages of the Munster Schools Boys Senior Cup for the first time.
- Clonakilty Community College captured the Munster Schools Boys’ U16 Mungret Shield for the first time, following on from qualifying for the knockout stages of the Munster Schools Boys Junior Cup, also for the first time.
Rugby is on the rise in West Cork – and the local clubs are the driving force behind this surge. Look at Sacred Heart’s sensational success in girls’ rugby and the leading role Clonakilty Rugby Club has played.
‘The most important part for us is the club – Clonakilty Rugby Club has driven things on to a level that I haven't seen before,’ says Sacred Heart teacher and rugby coach Jack Phelan.
‘I come from Clonmel which would be three or four times the size of Clonakilty, and Clonmel has a fantastic rugby club at the minute but the size of the underage section in Clonakilty is incredible – it’s amazing the amount of kids locally who want to play rugby.
‘The underage set-up in the club is fantastic, and it’s a testament to all the people who volunteer and put so much of their time into the club, and developing and nurturing the talent. Crucially, they are keeping players playing and interested, especially girls, and it’s great to see.’
‘When I was young Clonakilty was known for blackpudding, sausages and the GAA, and not so much about rugby, but that is changing now,’ Phelan quips.
Sacred Heart's Ella O'Sullivan scores a try in the Clon school's Pinergy Munster Schools Girls Senior Cup final triumph.
Clonakilty Rugby Club has almost 700 underage members alone, between pre-minis, minis and youths levels. Staggering numbers. It has grown into one of the biggest clubs in Munster. Its success is feeding directly into Sacred Heart girls’ rugby. In recent weeks, three Clonakilty RFC teams (U18, U16 and U14) competed in Munster Clubs Girls Cup finals, and the U18s won to complete an unbeaten season and add to their league title – this group backbones Sacred Heart’s all-conquering senior team. A rising tide lifts all boats. Clonakilty Community College also benefits from the local rugby club’s philosophy, as Michael Peter O’Regan explains.
‘I was involved in club rugby training a few years ago and I saw the huge work ongoing, the great volunteerism, the great facilities and the approach centred on skills and game-time,’ he explains.
‘The club’s approach is to develop skills and that all will play equal minutes up to U16, and only at U18 will it become competitive. The fruits of that is that you have more and more players staying involved with the sport. While they are staying involved, their skills are developing and they are getting game-time.’
The local schools in Clon are reaping the rewards of Clonakilty Rugby Club’s structure and approach, though O’Regan feels the schools are also helping the club.
‘What is missing when you have minutes for everyone is that competitive edge, so schools’ rugby compliments that club structure – we can take the talented players the club is producing and put them into a competitive schools’ environment against high-level competition,’ the Clonakilty Community College teacher says.
‘While we are benefiting a lot from the club, I think it works both ways – we are also giving these players cup rugby experience, knock-out rugby experience, so these guys come out of U16 really well developed, and now going into U18s with their skills at a high level but also know what cup rugby is all about.’
O’Regan adds: ‘We can compete with the bigger schools because all of our players are training twice a week with Clonakilty Rugby Club, they are getting strength and conditioning, we have the use of physio facilities, and the club is providing us with game-day physios and treatment for our injured players. The club is providing an incredible amount of support that we wouldn’t have had.’
Clonakilty Community College captain Fionn O'Donovan with the Mungret Shield.
Bandon schools, similar to Clonakilty, are benefitting from the success of their local club, Bandon RFC. In recent weeks the club won the Munster Clubs Boys U18.5 Cup final. More success for the town, and for local players who now have the belief that they can win big prizes – and Philip Murphy of Bandon Grammar feels this is a game-changer, using his school’s Munster junior cup win as an example.
‘Sometimes when you haven’t achieved what you want, you are afraid that there is some secret sauce that you don’t have access to, and it makes it very hard to believe in something. But when you win like we did, it shows you there is no secret sauce,’ he says, and look at the ripple effect of Bandon Grammar’s junior cup victory. That team has players from all over West Cork. Kinsale. Bandon. Clonakilty. Dunmanway. Skibbereen. Bantry. Those young men return to their clubs with the belief and knowledge they are good enough to win big prizes. Again, all small pieces in a much bigger jigsaw that is making people sit up and take notice of the conveyor belt of rugby talent in this region.
The tradition of rugby in West Cork is well established, Philip Murphy adds. Look at Skibbereen Rugby Club. Go back to Finbarr Kearney, described as ‘the barrel-chested bruiser from Skibbereen’ who played with Munster in the 1980s and was unlucky not to win an Ireland senior cap. Gavin and Liam Coombes’ fathers, Eric and John, were rugby mad, too, and passed on their love for the game. Rugby has its place in the West Cork sporting world, but there is no disputing its popularity, reach and playing numbers are at an all-time high. It links back to the local men and women showing what was previously thought to be impossible is possible. Urhan woman Laura Sheehan played for Ireland. So too has Durrus woman Andrea Stock. Neither Urhan or Durrus is a rugby stronghold.
‘Rugby is getting more mainstream,’ Philip Murphy notes.
‘There have always been good athletes in West Cork, but with rugby getting into the mainstream you have more lads playing it. All those good footballers, hurlers, rowers, are getting the opportunity to play rugby and be exposed to the sport.
‘If you go to any rugby club in West Cork on a Saturday morning, the number of kids and coaches there is insane, and it grows from that. Rugby has always been in West Cork, it’s just getting an opportunity now to develop.’
Bandon Grammar's Louis Dukelow celebrates their Munster Junior Cup win.
Anthony Hutchinson is the man driving rugby in Hamilton High School – he actually taught Philip Murphy who is ex-Hammies – and it’s passionate rugby men like him that are key figures in this story. Even though he is retiring from teaching at the Bandon school at the end of the term, he has asked to come back and coach rugby in the next school year.
‘It will take the pressure off the school as well because they won’t have to take an extra teacher off the timetable,’ Hutchinson explains.
Philip Murphy adds: ‘You need to get lucky with the people you have involved. We (Bandon Grammar) train a lot with all the different clubs and you get an insight into how they all work, whether it’s Clon or Dunmanway or Bandon or whoever, and I think there are really good people in all these clubs. It’s raising coaching standards, too.’
Success stories like Bandon Grammar winning the junior cup for the first time is also raising standards. Now they have achieved this, they want to take the next step, and keep pushing forward. This is an exciting project to be working on.
‘Our situation is very different to Hammies and Clon,’ Philip Murphy explains, ‘we are a little but further down the road in that we have a programme here, a structured layout of where we want to start and where we want to go. We started on this journey before them.
‘We have our hardest step to take next. Over the last five, six, seven years, it has been very much trying to get it off the ground, you are trying to catch up with schools who have been in senior cups and junior cups for a long time.
‘Number one, we are proud as punch to win the junior cup: this is a tangible thing that gives everyone belief. Our next step is how can we go another couple of percent, how can we upgrade our facilities, how can we give the best product that we can. We are always looking for those percentages.
‘The main thing is this will give us that belief that we can climb the mountain, it shows that Bandon Grammar can go up to Musgrave Park and do the business. It makes coming into the gym at six in the morning that much easier and training in the dark that much easier.’
Jack Crowley followed the same programme at Bandon Grammar, too, and look at him now. Ditto for Gavin Coombes, already Munster’s joint third top try scorer. Little wonder so many youngsters want to emulate their stories, which now feel more real and more achievable than ever before.
