Club Focus: Mallow RFC

Founded in 1883, Mallow RFC recorded their first competitive game against Tralee RFC.

The club’s home ground at the time was in the Town Park, a municipal area, where they still have a pitch today.

In 1982, brothers Pat and Des Owens who were synonymous with Mallow rugby over the years, acquired land on St. Joseph’s Road in Parkadillane and purchased four acres on behalf of the club which has been their headquarters to date.

It wasn’t until the early 1970’s that the underage section took off at Mallow and since then, they’ve gone from strength to strength.

“Mervyn Shorten, a banker from Bandon took an interest in underage rugby and started a Mallow U12 and U18 side in the season of 1972”, said Tommy Nyhan, Munster Youths selector, Mallow PRO and former Club Captain.

“From there on he built up four youths teams – 12’s, 14,’s 16’s and 18’s and single-handedly managed underage rugby in Mallow for probably a good 20 years”.

Today the club caters for over 200 youths on the training field every Saturday, who compete in over nine age-grade competitions from Under 8’s right up to Under 18’s.

“We’re doing very well in all the age grades, which is hugely important to us. We are aware we have to have a youth structure from U-10’s on where we can concentrate on bringing on our own players right through to adult level”, added Nyhan.

“The U17’s won the South Munster U17 Cup last season and our Under 15 side are also very strong this year. Numbers are also quite big at 14’s to such an extent that we field two sides at that age grade which is very positive.”

“On February, 21st we are running a Pan Munster Festival with over 16 teams competing at the under 12 age grade. Teams like Carrigaline, Midleton, Killorglin, Clanwilliam, Abbeyfeale, Castleisland, Fermoy and ourselves will playoff in two separate leagues over the whole day and we are very excited about hosting the event”.

Fielding two adult teams Mallow RFC compete in the Junior 1 League, Division 1 and are currently lying at the bottom of the table.

“Obviously we would like to be at the top of the division, but this season is all about preparing for our future. We’ve decided to go with home-grown coaches – Noel Lucey,who is also involved with CBC, and past players Michéal Lynch and Kevin Twomey.

They’re struggling at the moment because of the depth of the squad and the difficulty right now is retaining players. We were promoted to Division 1 last season for the first time in many years and there are about seven or eight players from that squad now playing with senior clubs”.

“On a positive note, it’s great for the club to see our guys going off to play AIL rugby – it’s a double edged sword really.”

Acknowledging the club’s achievements Nyhan said “We were in division 3 up until three seasons ago, so our progression had been very steady. Through our underage we really built up a good structure around our youths programmes and most of our players on our first team are home grown.”

As a long term objective, Nyhan said, with the right structures in place Mallow are confident they could achieve senior status and compete in the AIL. “We really do want to be playing in Division 1 on a regular basis with a long term view of doing what Midleton, Cashel and Nenagh have done – there is no reason why we can’t go up a notch and become a senior club,” he stressed. “Our plan is to continue developing our own coaches at all levels and to give our players every opportunity to progress”.

Speaking on the challenges in reaching their goals, Nyhan said the club are well aware of what is required. “We’re going to struggle this season to stay up”, he admitted. Certainly next season we will have to go and look at restructuring and making a plan to get our players back – in reality that’s the only way we can sustain quality rugby in our division”.

In 2007 Mervyn Shorten added to Mallow’s youth development initiative and set up girl’s rugby, which today blossomed into enormous success. “When Mervyn was going into the local schools to develop boy’s rugby he also started recruiting for the girls to play the game”, said Nyhan. “As a result we had girls going to our sessions on a Saturday morning who actually had to fall in with the boys to train”.

“We then had the likes of Brian O’Connor, Freddie Frankling and Rob Dempsey, who took on the role of coaching the girls about four seasons ago and it started building from there”.

Fielding three teams at U-13, U-15 and U-18, the club takes girls’ rugby very seriously and Nyhan pays tribute to their many successes to date.

“The three lads do great work with the girls and through their coaching, have brought a very high standard of rugby to their game”.

“They won the Under 15 and U18 South Munster Leagues last season, which was a huge achievement”.

“This year we’ve had nine girls on the Munster U18 representative side and two of those played with the Irish combined U19 sevens provinces, so success with the girls has been great.”

“There is a huge interest at U-13 and U-15 level as well so the numbers are really increasing all the time. From the club’s point of view, we’d love to see one of our players compete in Rio and represent Ireland in the sevens”.

“We also have high hopes that the Mallow girls will succeed even further at 15s rugby – to see one of our players get on the women’s national side would be fantastic and I don’t think it’s too far off!”

Mallow RFC Officers

President: John Barry
Hon. Secretary: Kerry Thornton
Chairman: Ray Glynn
PRO: Tommy Nyhan
Youth Officer: John O’Mahony