Bruff have shown other clubs the way forward

WHEN the topic of professionalism in the GAA is debated, very often the club rugby scene in Ireland is quoted as an example of how it can all go horribly wrong.

Ever since pay-for-play was introduced to rugby, goes the argument, the clubs have suffered, rugby at grassroots level has suffered. Well, I’ve never bought into that argument and last weekend I met someone who is as close as can be to those grassroots, someone who is totally familiar with the development side of rugby.

Mickey Cahill has been with Bruff RFC almost since its foundation 38 years ago; since that time he has seen this rural Co. Limerick club rise and rise. At under age they won All-Ireland titles at U16 and U20, at adult level they won three Munster Junior League titles in four years before finally making the breakthrough to senior ranks in 2004, having gone unbeaten through the All-Ireland play-offs.

Their first senior crown came shortly afterwards, at the end of the 2006/07 season, when they won the Division 3 title, beating the two teams who had finished above them in the regular season. That win wasn’t enough to win them promotion to Division 2, decided strictly on final league standings, but this year they are solidly on track, undefeated with just two rounds to go.

Through all those campaigns, Cahill has been there and last Saturday, before the game against promotion rivals Queens at their impressive grounds, Kilballyowen Park, he was manning the entrance, directing traffic, trying to get as many cars as possible into the car-parks and off the road. Done with utmost efficiency of course, though this wouldn’t be his regular job with the club.

“I suppose I’d be youth co-ordinator,” he says, and so he has been in some guise or another for decades. “I have no doubt about it, the Munster phenomenon has brought on rugby in the province in leaps and bounds. The AIL, even it had kept going as it was in the early 90’s, wouldn’t have had the same effect. It’s the glamour, the international dimension — Munster winning the European Cup, competing in Europe every year, and it’s the television coverage that goes with that.’’

What of all this talk then about clubs being under pressure? “I wouldn’t agree,’’ he replies. ‘‘Take Shannon — they needn’t have an underage structure at all but they do, and very successful they are. Yet every good youngster around Limerick, where is he going to go? To Shannon, to Garryowen, just as they’ll go to Cork Con in Cork. And yet Shannon and Garryowen also play their part in developing players, they still form the backbone of those teams. We’re playing Crescent in an U16 game on Sunday and you’ll find it hard to even get parking there, it will be chaotic, because the place is full of kids.”

Certainly there are clubs under pressure, senior clubs, long-established clubs, but some of those were the authors of their own downfall. Poor housekeeping in the first place but poor policy also, many of their own home-grown players losing out to mercenaries. Bruff has thrived because they have eschewed such a policy, because they have relied almost entirely on their own.

Cahill adds: “If you have the kind of underage structure we have here players must feel they have every chance of making the top team. I had an U-12 team four or five years ago, they were terrible, not good at all; I stayed with them ‘til they were U-16’s and you should see them now – at least five or six of those will be pushing for places in the senior team in a few years. And that’s why I’m convinced we should stay with our own, to have that bit of a carrot for those players, to keep them playing.”

Club PRO David O’Keeffe is of the same opinion, even if such a policy were to prevent Bruff from reaching the top division. “We’ve never sat down and said we want to be Division 1; I don’t know how you could sustain that as a voluntary club, with all your players amateur and local. But, when the game went open we took a decision, enshrined in our constitution, that we would never pay players, and we don’t. Maybe we’re over-achieving, maybe we’re just a junior club in a senior competition, but we’ve gotten this far.”

Coach Eugene Murnane adds: “Rural rugby in Ireland intrigues me — it’s the parish scenario, like the GAA. It’s a marvellous achievement for them, and hopefully now we’ll get promoted to division 2. If it happens, I think we’d do alright there.”

And strengthening the side? “Perhaps, but it has to be the right kind of person as well, you’ve got to keep the local ethos of the club.” Others, take note.

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