New Women And Girls Rugby Programme At Dolphin RFC

Cork City-based Dolphin RFC have recently launched a women and girls rugby programme ahead of the 2021/2022 season.

The club have created a Women’s Committee which is led by Chairperson Jane O’Leary and they are currently recruiting players at all levels ahead of the new season.

Wendy Keenan, Chairperson of the Munster Rugby Women’s Committee, describes the initiative as exciting for women’s and girls rugby in Cork City.

“We’re delighted to support this new venture into the female game by Dolphin,” Keenan said.

“This is an initiative driven by Dolphin themselves and we have met with club representatives, Jane O’Leary and Turlough Fitzpatrick, providing advice on how to create a sustainable female structure within the club. Dolphin have already established their coaching structures and will now embark on the recruitment phase and we look forward to supporting the club on this journey.

“With a lot of rugby activity shut down during the pandemic it is exciting to see a club focusing their attention on an exciting new development such as girl’s and women’s rugby.”

The Rugby Development Department have been assisting Dolphin in creating the required structures in order to ensure sustainability going forward as Women’s Development Officer Ken Imbusch explains:

“It gives us the opportunity, especially with Dolphin and this is how we’re looking at it, to build it from a ground-up approach. We’ve seen that’s the best way to do it. Ennis are now in a situation where they started over six years ago with very little. And now they’re going to a situation, where through their own development and building it properly through the right structures from the ground-up, they’re now fielding at all underage age-grades as well as adult.” 

Dolphin Women’s Committee chairperson O’Leary hopes that when government restrictions allow, they will be able to run different programmes in the summer to get girls and women interested in the sport.

“That’s where we feel having tag/touch, Give It A Try during the summer and working on our own little plans to get it started basically.”

O’Leary added:

“We now have this in the pipeline and we’re all guns blazing now. We want to make a complete and utter 100% success of it. “

Keenan believes this could be an important stepping stone for any girl aspiring to play at the highest level.

“Girls want to play rugby, this is directly reflected in our growing numbers. Girls who play rugby are every bit as ambitious as boys and share dreams of playing for Munster and Ireland. Imagine several years from now the pride and the satisfaction club members would have at representative jerseys hanging on the walls through their work establishing and nurturing girls and women’s rugby in their club.”

For anyone interested in playing rugby with Dolphin RFC, please visit https://dolphinrfc.com/dolphin-womens-and-girls-rugby/ or email WomensRugby@dolphinrfc.com