Rugby finds fertile ground in heart of GAA country

Perhaps the odd Aberavon player looked up last Saturday from the on-field combat in O’Dowd Park and thought he was back in Wales.

Occasional patches of sunlight drifted across the mountains out beyond Tralee the way they do in the valleys of Wales, and we might have been pitchside in Maesteg or somewhere comparable, rather than watching Munster-Aberavon in the British and Irish Cup.

Tralee RFC have their home ground a little outside the town but there was a simple way to find the game: you just had to follow the flags as soon as you hit the first roundabout on the outskirts of the Kerry county town.