Rugby making friends, and progress, in Waterford

These are good times to be a rugby follower in Waterford. For so long a devoted minority in the hurling-obsessed Déise, proponents of the oval ball are steadily making an impact, not just on the sport beyond its borders but also on the young athletes within.

As much as Jack O’Donoghue’s call into Ireland’s Six Nations squad a fortnight ago brought cheer to beleaguered Munster supporters province-wide, there were none quite so overjoyed as the faithful in his home county.

Participation numbers in minis and youths sections across Waterford are on the rise, at a thriving Waterford City, Dungarvan RFC, O’Donoghue’s home club Waterpark RFC, and Tramore RFC, a club founded for children in the seaside town in December 2013. Munster Rugby are also making inroads at the county’s primary and secondary schools, many of them still hurling strongholds.

It was not so long ago that O’Donoghue was celebrating a breakthrough with Waterpark RFC in Munster, captaining the Under-17s in 2010/11 as the club won a provincial double at U17 and U19.

Now 22, Munster back rower O’Donoghue is on course to become Waterford’s first Ireland cap since Ben Cronin in the late 1990s. That he has done it bypassing the traditional rugby schools and staying home, educated at the hurling bastion of De La Salle College, makes the feat all the more remarkable.

There are plenty more where he came from. Waterpark were at it again on St Patrick’s Day, lifting the Bank of Ireland Munster U18 and U16 Clubs Cups at Thomond Park. The U16s made it three in a row when they retained their title with an 18-15 win over Bandon while O’Donoghue’s younger brother Nick was on the 18s side which defeated Bruff 35-28, having edged Dungarvan in the semis.

Munster development officer John O’Neill has worked in Waterford for 10 years and seen participation for boys and girls grow considerably, in part thanks to an emerging schools rugby programme that reached out to De La Salle, Waterpark, and Newtown schools in the city as well as Ard na Mara, Tramore, and Dungarvan’s Chathail Naofa and CBS.

“They all want to play rugby,” O’Neill said. “The World Cup was a big boost, because we really reached out during that tournament. Underage-wise, the clubs are up to 90, but a lot of the kids we work with in the schools don’t play for clubs because there’s no more room. Waterpark have two teams each at U18s and 16s, Waterford City have maybe an average of 35 players at each grade at the moment, the same at Dungarvan, so there’s an awful lot of kids playing rugby.”

Waterpark RFC’s youth officer David Dawson is the U18s manager alongside coaches Billy Leslie, Nigel Daly, and Derek Healy and has seen a generation develop from the minis to provincial glory.

Time was when Waterpark’s claim to fame was having Ireland wing Tommy Bowe’s father and grandfather as former players but now a different Tommy Bowe, the Ulster star’s second cousin, is a coach of the successful U16s alongside John Molloy, Joss Jones, and Ray O’Mahony.

This season’s “pretty sweet” double was a testament to hard work from players and coaches alike, said Dawson.

“I suppose the secret of our success is probably the fact that we’ve worked with these guys from under six years of age and stuck with it the whole way up to under 18.

“We’re training twice a week and I’m sure sometimes the young lads think this is getting repetitive but we put huge emphasis on ball handling, being able to pass off their left and right, and I think it’s certainly bearing fruit.”

Dawson said rugby at their Ballinakill grounds has thrived in tandem with neighbours at Ballygunner GAA and Gaultier GAA club. Gaelic games may still be king but thanks to sensible co-operation, rugby participation has not grown at the price of a “them or us” mentality.

“We work closely with the coaches in both the Gaelic and hurling and map out the nights we’re training around when they train and work our matches around each other. You don’t want to get into a situation where lads of 16 and 17 have a gun to their heads, told ‘right, pick one or the other’.

“It’s very important for them to be involved in any form of sport, we don’t want to put them in a situation where they have to choose one over the other.”

If there are problems for Waterford rugby, it has been in transferring underage success to adult level. Waterpark lost its senior club status in 2008 and both Dawson and Munster’s O’Neill pointed to the draw of universities elsewhere for the county’s rising stars.

“Of an Under 18s side, you could say only six will stay and the rest will go to college rather than (Waterford) IT,” O’Neill said. “Some of the ones that go away will have been offered scholarships from the ULs and UCCs because of their rugby prowess.

“So for me, there can be a little void between 18s and the senior team. We help the clubs in every way, I do workshops with all the clubs, it’s up to the clubs then to develop their own plan to get those players into the senior teams. There should be succession plans.

“It’s very encouraging, the area’s very encouraging, we just need to get those seniors teams going. That takes a bit of sitting down and getting a plan in place.”

Dawson agrees but said: “You can’t blame the kids. They’re training and playing with their respective clubs elsewhere and once they go, it’s very hard to pull them back. So the challenge for us as a club, collectively, is to try and harness the success and bring it up to the next step — try and hold on to some of the players.

“If you look at the players who have come up through the ranks of 14s, 16s, and 18s in the last four or five years, very very few are on the senior team at the moment.”

The bigger picture, though, is that regardless of their pathway, more Waterford players are making their mark in the game. Dungarvan wing Steven McMahon (21), a graduate of Rockwell College and now with Garryowen, has followed O’Donoghue into the Munster academy while O’Neill name-checked Waterpark’s U18 half-backs Alex Molloy and Nick O’Donoghue.

Dawson said: “We have five players on the Munster U18s, our tight head prop, Danny O’Keeffe scored two tries (in the Munster U18s Clubs final), and was called up to the Ireland U19s.

“It’s great to see them progressing. Jack O’Donoghue’s been an inspiration to a huge amount of kids in Waterpark with his success with Munster and then the call-up to the Irish training camp the week before last. Number one, we’d like to see the kids progress, no matter where they go, and the big step is for them to try and make it with Munster.

“It’s great for Jack as an individual and I hope others go the same route but at the same time our club is suffering in that we’re not bringing through the players for ourselves. We’re probably victims of our own success that way.”