Club Notes: Waterford City RFC Celebrate Opening Of New Minis Pitch

Waterford City RFC are celebrating the opening of a new Minis pitch at the club’s grounds.

The new pitch will be a welcome addition to the already existing two full-sized floodlit grass pitches which are currently in place.

Ruairi Hughes, who is the club’s Minis co-ordinator, told Munster Rugby that the idea for the Minis pitch came from a trip to watch Munster play Zebre in Parma last year.

“A few of the coaches went off to an away Munster game, Munster v Zebre last year,” Hughes said.

“We were basically walking into the stadium and at the back they had a lovely little section sectioned off. It was just a miniature rugby pitch but they had the proper posts up, lovely pads, all sectioned out. It was very pleasing on the eye.”

Minis pitch in Parma. Photo Credit: Waterford City RFC

The new Minis pitch will now free up space for the other club’s teams while Hughes hopes that a dedicated area for Minis players will be a positive development for the club in terms of increasing participation in the future.

“I kind of realised with the kids coming through, they’re the lifeblood of the club and trying to get that right in the long-term and getting some foundation there, some investment in that will pay off over the next 10, 20 years. So we can chip away and improve that and make it kind of a feature piece for the club in time.”

Hughes added:

“It’s a starting point. The posts are there and we can certainly play games on it but I see it as a future. We got a bit of sponsorship in from a local tradesperson. We’ve got a couple of people keen on sponsoring it to start putting fencing around it and build it up a bit. We would see it as a totem pole to market our PR around it.”

With the addition of this new pitch and the installation of LED floodlights recently, it has been a very positive few weeks for the club as Hughes explains:

“We have two full pitches and they’re both floodlit. We just put up new lights as well. It was a couple of years trying to get the money for that. It’s €35,000 gone in on the LED lights. So they just went live last week. So it has been a good week or two for the club, getting those lights up and running. And then the Minis pitch, getting that kicked off. But yeah, we now have two adult pitches and one Minis pitch.”