Paul Neville: Garryowen building for the future

Having bounced back to Division 1A of the Ulster Bank League, Garryowen aim to strengthen their squad for next season.

Forwards coach Paul Neville admitted it was a huge relief to see the famed Limerick side back in the top level of Irish club rugby after a season in the second tier.

Maintaining their top flight status though is going to be a challenge.

“We need to broaden our squad in terms of numbers, happily there are a few guys coming to town that we know of already and and we need to interest them.”

So what’s going to be different next year? “Players moving out of Limerick to Dublin is an ongoing worry, already our hooker Eddie Rossiter who had a fantastic year this year is moving to Dublin for work, and it is a huge worry within the club that we need to be recruiting.”

Garryowen came through a play-off with Dublin club St Mary’s College to secure their status back at the top and Neville was delighted at the way his young side approached the game.

“We’re absolutely thrilled, a lot of hard work paid off and to get back in the one year was a great achievement for the players.

“It was difficult, we had some slip-ups. Trinity (Dublin University) beat us in Dooradoyle and we got a run of wins after that. However, Galwegians were pulling away and we knew then that we were chasing this promotion match, although in essence we had an opportunity to beat them (Galwegians) and win the league outright.

“We didn’t do that, didn’t play well enough, didn’t play the elements correctly but we did at the weekend, we played very clever rugby, we played cup final rugby on Saturday. We were very dogged in defence, they had a number of opportunities to score but we held them up over the line a couple of times.”