A look back at Arklow RFC’s Towns Cup win in 2004
ARKLOW RFC 8 PORTLAOISE RFC 3
IN 2004, the complexion of the Arklow RFC seniors was in a state of flux. By the time they rocked up to Athy for the Provincial Towns Cup final on April 18 of that year, the players that made up that squad had been playing together for the better part of 10 years, and for many of them, this would be their last hoorah in those red and black jerseys. Of the 20 starters and substitutes that took to the field over the course of that historic clash against Portlaoise, exactly half would step away from playing for the club because of transfers, retirement, and other reasons.
‘We won the cup and it was great and we celebrated and all of that kind of stuff, and I don’t think anybody really realised that it was the end for a lot of players,’ said Marcus Prestage, who started at outside-centre against Portlaoise. ‘It was not until after they won a Towns Cup, and unfortunately, with players, it is the culmination of a career. All of the older players were thinking the same thing: ‘if we win this, we can go out on a high.’ We lost four or five or six players who just said: ‘this is fantastic, I have won a Towns Cup, it is not going to get better than this.’’
‘It allowed players to retire on the back of it. That’s what prompted it. Throughout the season, if you had asked any of the players about retirement, they probably wouldn’t have considered it but after we won the cup, it allowed them to retire. It was a massive change for the club on the back of it.’
Of the 10 players that stepped away, five retired: Colm O’Neill, Marcus himself, Albert Plunkett, Billy Byrne, and Mark Taawa. Elsewhere, Liam Plunkett and Darragh Kavanagh went to Carlow, Anthony O’Donnell was snapped up by Leinster for a few years, Bobby Baggot went back to his homeland of New Zealand, and Quenton O’Neal signed for New Ross. Although, on the flip side, three of the panel – Anthony O’Donnell, Richard Murphy, and Shane Nalty – were part of Arklow team that beat Skerries in their last game before the enforcement of Covid-19 restrictions this Spring.
Between many of the players entering the Autumn of their careers with Arklow, the motivation that came from the disappointment of a league campaign plagued by injuries and which ended with relegation, and the element of being the first team from the club to reach a Towns Cup final since the Class of 1985, the clash with Portlaoise proved to be the perfect way to say goodbye to this particular generation of players, as Arklow defied all of the odds to overcome the reigning champions for their first cup triumph in almost 20 years.
Marcus will be the first to say that not a lot was expected of the team in the cup that year, as a result of what was a pretty dire league campaign. While they won the South-East area trophy, their form in the league was tospy turvy and ultimately resulted int heir relegation. A contributory factor of this was the spate of injuries that, at one point, saw Arklow possess a squad of just 15 players.
‘At the start of the season, we started well but then the league started, we got plagued by injuries, guys fell away,’ Marcus reflected. ‘Every side will say that when confidence is low, nobody wants to play a game. You are coming out to a match that you didn’t want to play in.
‘Then the cup came around. We were playing Tullow with a chance for a place in the semi-finals. Overnight, we had lads coming back from players, lads coming back who couldn’t commit. We went from a squad of 15 players to 25 players, which brought real competition for places.
‘By the time we got to the final, we were feeling fairly confident that we would be able to compete.’
Due to the poor form that they endured over the course of the league, very little was expected of them when they kicked off their Towns Cup season against Athy, whom they beat 11-10. That tight natured way in which the result was earned typified the rest of their run. Up next was Boyne, whom they edged out 24-22 before ousting Tullow in the quarter-finals 14-11, Darragh Kavanagh kicking a last-minute penalty to win the day. The semi-finals represented their most comfortable encounter, a 10-3 win over Edenderry.
As their progress persisted throughout the Towns Cup, morale continued to climb, both inside the club and out. Their first-round game against Athy was sparsely attended by Arklow supporters, whereas more and more turned out to the galvanise the team when they met Tullow and Edenderry. In spite of this, the expectation remained low, while the pressure on Portlaoise, who had won the competition the year before, was far more substantial and destructive.
‘I can remember that we stopped in Kilkea Castle to have lunch beforehand. I remember looking around the room and it was very, very relaxed. We were about to play in a cup final and everyone was relaxed and laughing. Everyone was relaxed and chilled, and I realised that we had absolutely nothing to lose. We could lose the game 30-0 and nobody would be massively disappointed.
‘Going into it, the pressure was on Portlaoise. They were Towns Cup champions. They were going up and were expected to beat us. There was no pressure on us and I think we felt that, if we stuck with them and didn’t make mistakes - that was the key of it, the error count was minimal, everyone just played to the best of their ability.
‘It was a game of attrition; someone was going to make a mistake and it was Portlaoise who made the mistake. Liam Plunkett made a break, was bundled into touch, a reverse pass and Bobby Baggott ran over. From then, it was ten minutes of stress and defence to keep Portlaoise out.’
All of these little components came together beautifully on the day. After Baggot ran over for the first and only try of the game inside the final few minutes, the Arklow pack knuckled down and defended heroically to keep Portlaoise on the right side of the game-line. It may not have been pretty, but the result was what mattered the most. Arklow beat Portlaoise 8-3 and became the first Arklow team since the class of 1985 to lift the Provincial Towns Cup.
That ’85 panel proved to be a significant motivator in the leadup to the final. There was playful banter between both sets of players – ‘could I squeeze in there? I have a Towns Cup medal in my pocket’ – but the common goal of returning the club to that top pedestal remained in the minds of both.
‘There were one or two of them who rang us all the day before, and I think the previous week, we had a get together in the club on a Saturday night, and five or six of them came out and they had a video of their final. We watched the final and I can remember one or two of them said: ‘the first thing you do in the final is not to make a mistake. Make sure to do the first thing well.’
‘They were very influential. There was a guy named Barney Hynes, who is still involved in the club, who came out and helped us. Another guy, Declan Lott, he was there to assist as best he could. We had a lot of guidance
went back to the clubhouse in Arklow on the Sunday, from the ground in Kildare, to share in the glory with local supporters. This continued the next night and there was a subsequent celebration the following week. Other than that, it was quite low-key, according to Prestage. Most of the players were back in work on the Tuesday, while Marcus believes that, for one reason or another, that particular group of players did not possibly receive the credit and adulation that they deserved.
One of the primary reasons behind this is what came afterwards. As previously mentioned, 10 players of the 20 left the squad for a variety of reasons – be it retirement, transfers to other clubs, or as was the case for Bobby Baggot, returning to New Zealand.
This mass exodus of players would not have been as big a problem had the club been in a position to promote replacements from within the club. Unfortunately, according to Prestage, that was not a luxury at the club at the time, as they were often relying on bringing in imported players to fill gaps, as opposed to building from within for the long-term.
‘Unless you have a good youth structure, you don’t have a club,’ Marcus opined. ‘It was not until the following season that we realised what had happened and that there were no players coming through. There were a few false dawns when we would try to get older players back out and they did not want it, but it wasn’t until the year after that that we got some of the younger players to take up the mantle.
‘I think what had happened was, with the foreign players coming in, it prevented young, local players from getting a spot on the team. That resulted in players either leaving the club and giving up the sport, and pretty much the unfortunate thing was that, on the other end of that, we didn’t have a lot of young players coming through.
‘Arklow didn’t have a real youth structure at the time. It is better now, we have 200 youth members, but we are still playing catch-up at the moment.’
‘Having said that, the Kiwis that played for us were really good guys. They were committed and put their bodies on the line more than anybody else. They cared about the club. Ultimately, there was nothing long-term coming through. That was demonstrated by being relegated the next year. We are only recovering from that now. It would be remiss of me to talk about how great that team was and not focus on the period of change that came after.’
As he alluded to, the long-term prospects of the club are a lot brighter than what they were back in 2004. As of now, the club boasts members from the minis section, a talented group of under-15s and under-17s, all the way up to seniors. There is more of a structure there that possible wasn’t before, and it is for that reason that Marcus Prestage will remain optimistic that the club will, one day, be able to return to Provincial Towns glory.