A Premier club in all senses
They were underdogs but with men like the powerful Eddie Ryan, Cashel travelled with great ambition. Unfortunately, it all ended in disappointment.
“Playing a Limerick team, in Limerick, with a Limerick referee — we had no chance!” Ryan laughs at the recollection of the day. “There was surely 5,000 people in Thomond Park that day, and we were only beaten in the last ten minutes, 6-3, a pushover try.
“We had collapsed a couple of scrums on our line when one of their wing-forwards got up and gave the referee a flog in the jaw! He wasn’t sent off, and didn’t the referee give another scrum. They were farther away from the line than they had ever been, when the referee awarded a pushover try. Whether he was afraid of your man or not, I don’t know. I was second-row, and I was the heaviest man on the Cashel team that went to Limerick that day – I was 12 stone four pounds!
“The next heaviest man was ‘Big’ Dinny Ryan — he kicked 147 points for us that year, but that day against Shannon he hit the post and the crossbar. It just wasn’t our day.”
That year Shannon were finally ‘invited’ into senior ranks and we all know what they’ve achieved since. Had Cashel won, though, would they have done the same, gone on to senior glory at every level? “God, we couldn’t,” said Ryan. “There wasn’t a shilling in the club!”
Fast forward to this weekend and another Cashel junior rugby team on another tilt against the odds with senior status again beckoning. It is the final game in the All-Ireland round-robin series with the junior champions of Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht vying for promotion to the third division of the AIL and this afternoon Cashel face City of Derry in Cashel in a do-or-die game.
They’ve come a long way since the days of Eddie Ryan. “Back then we were lucky to get 15 any day. In the 1940s, a man called Jim Phelan owned these fields here and he was in the cricket club — five or six of the lads played cricket just so they could get the field for rugby!”
These days, Cashel RFC is a thriving community-based club, a beacon to others on how to progress.
In the early 70s, with Eddie as president, a courageous and far-seeing committee took the decision to purchase the land on which they had always played.
“The man who owned the place died, left it to his brother, a priest in Offaly, and he rented it to us for another four or five years — we decided we should buy it lest someone come in under us.
“They were looking for over £15,000 — sure we hadn’t 15,000 pence! There was a man here, Mickey Buckley, he has a supermarket down town, who was ahead of his time in buying up property for investment. Mickey was friendly with the auctioneer, and he got it for us for £11,000. Now, where that money was going to come from, we had no idea — we hadn’t a penny!”
But get it they did, the IRFU as benefactors. Maurice Thompson, a member of that committee, recalled: “The IRFU gave us a loan at a guaranteed rate, 5%, at a time when the rate was around 10 percent — the next year it was 15, then it went to over 20, so that saved us a lot of money! Then we had fundraisers of all descriptions — draws, dances, you name it. Everyone did their bit.”
Everyone is still doing their bit. Over the last few years, the club have done some major improvements, added magnificent new floodlights, a fine clubhouse that now has eight dressing-rooms to cater for the 200 plus kids who train and play at the weekends, the 70 plus adults who make up the two junior sides and the U-20s.
There’s also a well-fitted gym upstairs, plus a huge function-room, with panoramic views of the three full-size pitches. It’s still pretty raw, concrete floors and stairs awaiting covering with tiles, with timber, but it’s there.
“I’d hate to be starting off again now in this economic climate,” says current team captain Philly Ryan, a farmer from out the road in Knockavilla. “A lot of the work was voluntary, but we had no problem getting people to muck in. When you see the club president, Peter Silke, painting the walls, dragging his wife in, when you have men like Seán Ryan and Michael O’Brien — white-collar fellas you wouldn’t exactly associate with getting their hands dirty — it makes it easy for the rest of us to fall in and do our bit.”
It’s the way forward for rugby. A glance through the top division of the AIL would suggest that the old order has never changed, that Limerick, Cork, greater Dublin, Ulster, is still the bedrock of Irish rugby.
Look deeper, however, notice the rise of teams like Bruff, Carlow, Ballynahinch, Midleton, Nenagh, Connemara, inching their way upwards.
Look at the Munster junior league, see the inroads being made in Tipperary — yes, Tipperary, site of Semple Stadium, home of hurling, of Hayes Hotel and all that glorious history. Look at the likes of Cashel, league champions for the second successive year, pushed all the way by neighbours Kilfeacle, with Clonmel and Thurles also in the top echelon.
Look at the current hugely successful Munster outfit, at Denis Leamy and Denis Fogarty (both ex-Cashel), at the consistently outstanding Alan Quinlan (ex-Clanwilliam), at Donnacha Ryan (Nenagh), look at John Fogarty (brother of Denis) and Trevor Hogan, both with Leinster.
Indeed, look at three of the four Munster Academy starlets interviewed by the Irish Examiner this week. All are Tipperary, to the marrow, all produced by local, community-based clubs, all still proudly associated with those clubs.
What is the secret? Good old-fashioned GAA-style pride in the parish, a pride based around family, around traditional families around blow-ins, all equally welcomed, embraced, quickly assimilated. It’s the past and the present combining seamlessly to ensure a future, and that is Cashel RFC. If they do the business this weekend, win senior status, it’s because they’re ready; if they don’t, it’s because they’re not.
Either way, with wins already this season, at adult, sevens, junior A and U16 level they’re headed in the right direction. For Irish rugby, this is the future.
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