Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí out to show they belong at rugby's top table

BOYS IN BLUE: Coláiste Pobail Bheanntrai supporters when the side made their Junior Cup bow in 2020. On Friday, the school play their first ever Senior Schools Cup match in Limerick. Picture: Larry Cummins

West Cork’s rugby revolution continues apace on Friday with another significant step in the journey for the region as Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí make their debut in the Pinergy Munster Senior Schools Cup when they take on Castletroy College (Thomond Park back pitch, 1.30pm).

Having made their bow in the Junior Cup in 2020, the players who were the backbone of the Bantry team on that historic day will look to take this occasion in their stride.

Making the grade just over a decade after opening its doors is an achievement in itself for the school which came about with the amalgamation of St Goban’s Bantry and Ardscoil Phobail Bheanntraí.

“There’s a lot of excitement building now, even in the local community,” team coach Peter Cawley said on the eve of the historic day.

“Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí is a community school which was only established in 2011, there was no rugby in the two schools previous so we are relative newcomers to it,” he reveals.

However, despite being a young school, the West Cork side have flown through the grades to earn their seat at the top table.

“We would have come through the likes of the emerging schools initiatives, played in the West Cork development blitzes and won our way up to become a ‘B’ school. Now this is our first venture into mixing it with the ‘A’ schools,” Cawley adds.

While those ‘A’ schools played a pre-Christmas round robin to determine the seedings for this phase of the tournament, the Bantry school were involved in the cutthroat qualifiers — wins over Villiers School and High School CBS Clonmel earning them the coveted 10th Senior Cup spot.

“There’s nothing like cup rugby,” says Cawley of the pre-Christmas wins.

“Our form and our results have been good this year, we have won everything so far.”

The step up in standard won’t be alien to all the Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí players however.

Joining the top schools in that round robin was a Munster Club Select Player (CSP) outfit, a development team for players from schools and clubs not involved at ‘A’ level.

Dylan Hicks, Jack Ward, Michael O’Donovan, and Daire Kingston were all part of that provincial selection and Bantry will lean on that experience in this knock-out fixture.

Bantry are the second West Cork team in the competition, alongside Bandon Grammar who were agonisingly close to reaching a first-ever final in 2019 — the last year the Senior Schools Cup was finished.

Despite looking to get back to those heights, the camaraderie in the area means a sharing of resources between the two schools ahead of the Senior Cup kick-off.

“What we have done is we have trained with Bandon Grammar over the Christmas,” Cawley explains. “As the local ‘A’ school, we have aligned ourselves with them with joint training sessions.”

As well as getting in skills sessions, the training sessions have been beneficial as the pandemic has made friendly matches difficult to come by.

It’s a community effort in West Cork with the schools also working closely with local clubs.

“Being a rural West Cork school our affiliation with the local club is a huge thing — a small school will not stand alone in a competition like this,” Cawley says.

“We align ourselves with the club team so our trainings would be similar.

“The collaboration between ourselves and Bantry Rugby Club was very important in getting us to where we are today.”

While the rise to top level has been rapid, for all at Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí, the hope that it isn’t a fleeting visit with the stated aim of the school to eventually join Bandon Grammar and big hitters such as CBC, PBC, and first round opponents Castletroy as an ‘A’ school.

Friday is their first chance to prove they belong at this level.