‘A VICTORY NOT JUST FOR CLUB, BUT FOR THE TOWN’
IAN KEHOE ON A MOMENTOUS FEW YEARS FOR ENNISCORTHY RUGBY CLUB
ON Sunday evening, as the mist and haze began to slowly encircle the Navan sky, it was impossible not to smile.
It was impossible not to dwell upon the achievements of the players, and what it meant to them, their coaches and their families. And it was impossible not to think about what it meant for the Enniscorthy Rugby Club, and those who have supported it over the generations.
Sunday’s match against Wicklow was Enniscorthy’s last game as a junior side. Fittingly, perhaps predictably, it ended with silverware.
Enniscorthy won their fourth Provincial Towns Cup in the space of seven years, wins that are complimented by a number of provincial leagues and all-Ireland Junior Cups.
The team has simply become too good for its rivals. Next season, they will assume senior status and play in the All-Ireland League.
But, as the players celebrated their latest victory, it was almost impossible not to think about what it means for the town of Enniscorthy itself.
Like too many provincial towns across the country, Enniscorthy has not benefitted from the much-vaunted economic recovery that politicians speak so freely about. Unemployment remains high. Industrial output remains low.
Despite its rich rural hinterland, the urban heart of the town is ranked 30th out of the 79 designated unemployment black spots in Ireland with a rate of 32.1 per cent.
To put that into context, two of the bleakest areas of Ballymun in north Dublin have better rates of employment. And this number has remained stubbornly high, and depressingly consistent.
The population has grown modestly over the last two decades, but the rate of growth is well behind the national average. With an aging population, this poses long term structural problems for the future of the town.
And yet, each week, the rugby club competes against rivals with bigger populations and larger resources. and, for much of the past decade, Enniscorthy has happily made a mockery of those facts, effectively dominating junior rugby in Leinster.
In doing so, over such a sustained period, the club has provided a template for what towns like Enniscorthy can achieve, and for how they can fight back.
On Saturday, 24 hours before the Provincial Towns Cup final kicked off, I spoke to my father Peadar on the telephone. Born and raised in Enniscorthy, he has been involved with the club in some capacity – player, selector, supporter – for more than half a century. Most mornings, he catches up with his friends from the club for a coffee. Enniscorthy RFC courses through his veins.
Normally, before big matches, my father is a mix of nerves, excitement and agitation. This time, however, he was surprisingly calm. ‘I think we will win,’ he told me, ‘and I think we will win well.’
In all his years, he believed the current generation to be the best he had seen. All year long, he had been telling me how the team had been playing with a style and panache that you rarely seen at junior level. In one match, against the champions of Connacht on the Atlantic coast in Galway, the referee called the match off 20 minutes early because the wind was too bad and Enniscorthy were too good. No one complained.
This is what has struck me about the success in recent years. It has become expected. It would be easy to dismiss as a lucky run or as a result of a few star players. But that would be entirely wrong.
This is not a one season wonder. Nor is it a stirring tale of an underdog downing the favourite through pluck and grit. For the past seven or eight years, Enniscorthy has been the favourite to win in practically every match they have played.
Every time they have walked onto a pitch, there has been a reasonable expectation that they will win. And, there is also an expectation that they will win in some style.
And, for the main, they have. That is what makes it all the more exceptional.
It has been achieved by structures, coaching and long term planning, as well as a reservoir of playing talent. It has also been about investing in the future – both in infrastructure and in people.
Most of the club’s 60 male players across its three teams have come through its underage system. Already, another generation is being identified. Each week, 150 underage teenage boys, plus 60 teenage girls, train with the club. At mini-rugby level, the playing number is in the region of 200. These numbers have only grown in recent years.
My father’s pre-match prediction was half right and half wrong. They won. But they did not win well. Instead, they managed to carve out a hard-fought win that, at various stages in the match, seemed unlikely. But it is a victory that no one,
ORGANISATIONS LIKE ENNISCORTHY RUGBY CLUB ARE THE GLUE THAT BINDS A COMMUNITY TOGETHER
perhaps even Wicklow, will begrudge them.
In September 1999, I left Enniscorthy to study in Dublin. Like so many others, I never fully made the return journey. College leads to a job and a job leads to a career. Along the way, you get married and start a family. Almost accidently, without ever making a conscious decision, you have created a life in a new place. You will always be from Enniscorthy. But your address says something different.
This pattern of urban migration is mirrored all over the country, and has been one of the defining changes in the construction of Irish society over the last 40 years. Dublin has swelled beyond capacity, with a creaking infrastructure and a chronic housing problem.
Large swathes of provincial Ireland, meanwhile, remain under populated, and consequently, under resourced. All over Ireland, once vibrant market towns are shadows of their proud histories. The old industrial factories have pulled the shutters, and have not been replaced.
Retail outlets have struggled with changing consumer patterns, and main thoroughfares are being gradually eroded by out of town outlets and internet shopping.
This is not a phenomenon unique to Enniscorthy, but it certainly has been felt by the town.
That is why the success of Enniscorthy Rugby Club matters. It matters, of course, to the players, the coaches and everyone involved directly within the club.
But it matters to the fabric of the town itself. Organisations like Enniscorthy Rugby Club are the glue that binds a community together. When they succeed, the town does also. This was a victory for a club, and a town.