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Belfast Telegraph
20 hours ago
- Sport
- Belfast Telegraph
Rory Knox states why captaining Coleraine to Senior Cup glory would taste even sweeter than title joy
Coleraine have been the surprise package of the 2025 North West season to date, with the Bannsiders sitting proudly at the summit of the Premiership and in the Semi-Final of the Senior Cup. It's quite a transformation from 2024 when they were involved in a relegation dogfight, and much of the credit must go to their new captain, all-rounder Rory Knox.
Irish Examiner
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Kevin O'Flaherty hopeful Nenagh can handle step up
The dust has just about settled on Nenagh Ormond's celebrations following their historic first promotion to the Energia All Ireland League's top flight but captain Kevin O'Flaherty is determined his club holds their own with the big boys in Division 1A next season. Much will depend on Nenagh's home form as they mix it with the established heavyweights led by newly-minted champions Clontarf and if the 2024-25 campaign was any guide, New Ormond Park will not be a venue away teams will relish visiting. Back-rower O'Flaherty, the Energia AIL Division 1B player of the year, has now led Nenagh to successive promotions and this season's Munster Senior Cup. Their elevation to 1A behind title winners Old Belvedere was secured with a dramatic play-off final win at home over Munster rivals UCC in front of more than 1000 spectators, and he believes the backing of the wider community in a traditional stronghold of Tipperary hurling will be just as crucial for the step up in class as the club becomes their county's first top-flight representatives. 'That's the thing, our crest is a castle and we speak about ourselves that we need to protect our castle,' O'Flaherty told the Irish Examiner. 'So that's what we think about when we play at home, you never want to lose there and we're starting to do that. We only lost one game at home this year and that was against Old Belvedere who were deserving champions. We took scalps off the likes of Cork Con, Highfield, Shannon, renowned teams. 'The community itself, we're in the heart of hurling country but if you look at the play-off final, all the hurling teams were out to support us, and they had games that evening at 6:30pm but there was three or four parishes of hurling teams out to watch the first half and I think a good few of them got the end in too. 'In a small community it's all about everyone helping out each other, from businesses supporting us to families in general coming out to support. Getting people through the gate is a big thing.' The sense of community behind Nenagh Ormond was underlined by O'Flaherty's visit this season to Youghalarra National School. 'An ex-player of ours is principal and he asked me to come in with the Senior Cup, and it was amazing to just go in and see the amount of people that are playing rugby in a school which would be mainly a hurling school. Our head coach (Derek Corcoran) did the same, went to his local school where he's a teacher (Nenagh CBS primary school) and the reception he got was exceptional and it's probably half the reason why he's still playing. He's 41 and he has coached us in every single promotion that we've achieved and I think he's played in every one of them as well. He's a credit to the club.' O'Flaherty credits back-to-back promotions for Nenagh to both the loyalty of local players and the work of the coaching team led by player/head coach Corcoran with assistants James Hickey, Dan Fogarty and S&C coach Colm Skehan. 'It was kind of down to a core group that stopped there for a lot of years. They've always been the ones to drive the standards but once the coaches came in they put more emphasis on the rest of the team to match that core. Everyone had to be working as hard as everyone else, it's the same as anything, like in defence, you're only as good as your weakest man. 'So we tried to make sure that our weakest man was one of our strongest and if you can guess a squad all playing off of that you're onto a winner, because you look other years, we probably had that main 15 and it probably let us down, like if you look at three years ago when we played in the Senior Cup against Young Munster. We were there or thereabouts with them for probably 60, 70 per cent of the game but once people got tired and once the bench came on it probably wasn't as effective as it has been this year. 'So we really put emphasis on getting as fit and as strong as we could. We knew if we could stay fit and keep going for the 80 minutes, you bring on subs and if they can do the same thing you're always in a good place.' That paid off in spades with their last-gasp play-off final victory over UCC, coming from 33-24 down with three minutes left on the clock to win 36-33. It capped a dream season for the club while O'Flaherty finished the week collecting the 1B player of the year award at the Energia AIL awards in Dublin. 'It's a nice accolade to get,' he said. 'It's a really nice way to top off the last few years and for me personally, I've been playing for 14 years so to get acknowledged is always nice. 'But if you look at the standard in 1B this year, it's been excellent. Like Calum Dowling (Old Belvedere), he was nominated and was very much deserving of it. Alex Molloy (Old Wesley), Conor O'Shaughnessey (Blackrock College), they'd be the same, but even going back to our team itself, you could pick any one of our players to be nominated for that, and they would have been deserving of it as well. So as much as it's a personal accolade, you're only as good as your team. 'As long as everyone can play to a high standard, anyone is capable of doing that and last year Willie (Coffey) who was in it for 2A, he was exceptional again this year, and there was no reason why he couldn't have got it. 'In terms of promotion, then, it's a pinch yourself moment, really. You're looking at going up to… and I was talking to (former Ireland international and Nenagh native) Trevor Hogan, he congratulated me after the win and he just said he never thought he'd see the day when Nenagh went up against Clontarf. 'I think for a lot of us, we celebrated the win but we're still in dreamland. Once those fixtures come out and we see ourselves playing against those big teams, all the Dublin teams coming down to Nenagh, that's when the fun really begins.'
Irish Independent
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Independent
‘We've done the double!' – Dublin water polo club win Irish cup double
The women's team played out a nail-biting final against Galway's Tribes at the university pool in Limerick on Saturday. After an intense battle, nothing could separate the two teams, with the All-Ireland decider ending in a 10-10 draw. Tribes led for most of the match, but St Vincent's stayed in the game, edging ahead 10-9 in the final two minutes. However, Tribes were awarded a penalty in the dying moments and levelled the score. Both teams used their timeouts, but neither could find the winner, and the match went to penalties. St Vincent's edged the shootout 3-2, with Zoe O'Brien saving the final penalty, sealing the Irish Senior Cup title for her team. It was a heart-breaking outcome for a Tribes side making their first senior cup final appearance. The result means St Vincent's complete their own double, having also defeated Tribes on penalties in last week's league final. Clíona Colvin captained the senior team and was named in the Ladies Team of the Tournament alongside Ciara Williams and Aoife Hennessy. Meanwhile, St Vincent's faced another Galway side, Corrib, in the men's Senior Cup final, leading from start to finish, closing out the match 14-9. This marks the third consecutive Irish Senior Cup win for St Vincent's. Announcing the wins on social media, the club gave a 'big thanks' to all the players, coaches, and team managers who worked 'so hard all season' and showed incredible dedication to the club. Both senior teams are now Division One League and Irish Senior Cup champions for the season.
Irish Examiner
30-04-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Dream days for homegrown Nenagh Ormond as they make history for Tipperary rugby
There have been good days at Nenagh Ormond RFC down through its 141-year history but none have come close to the celebrations that broke out at New Ormond Park on Saturday as the club became Tipperary's first to reach Energia All Ireland League Division 1A. Twenty years after graduating from the junior ranks to senior status, Nenagh have completed back-to-back promotions to reach the height of Irish club rugby's pyramid, capping a stellar season which also saw them lift the Munster Senior Challenge Cup for the first time and their seconds lift Tipperary's Mansergh Cup. Promotion to the top flight was achieved in dramatic fashion on home soil. Nenagh had finished second in the league table behind champions Old Belvedere and then beaten third-placed Blackrock College RFC in the play-off semi-finals. That set up an all-Munster promotion play-off final with UCC and College were three minutes from victory and return to 1A when the hosts turned the tables. Speaking 24 hours later, after receiving an IRFU Service To Rugby award as one of 100 club volunteers invited to Aviva Stadium on Energia AIL finals day, Nenagh Ormond committee member and two-time former president Fergal Healy described the history-making moments for his club as they came from 33-24 down to complete a famous 36-33 victory. 'Three minutes to go, Nenagh get a penalty try under the posts,' Healy said. 'So now we're back to it within four points and the rest is history. 'We take a clean kick-off, there was a break right up the middle, two committed tackles and we score under the posts. Amazing. It's a great feeling. 'I was president during covid, I gave two terms and on both occasions we should have been relegated from 2B. Lucky enough, a few of us got together and we just saw what we had and we went from there and here we are today, 1A. "I remember when we went from Junior up to Senior (in 1985). We've had good days, won the Senior Cup for the first time ever also this year and our seconds have won the Mansergh Cup. Beaten in Senior Cup (final) three years ago by Young Munster but won the semi against them this year and beat Crescent in the final. So an amazing season." There was added pride for Healy, given one of his sons, John, was openside flanker in the team that secured promotion at the weekend. A younger son is former Munster and now Edinburgh and Scotland fly-half Ben Healy. The former president paid tribute to John and others for staying true to their roots and continuing to represent Nenagh in their 2A days when they could have been playing 1A. 'I'm a farmer myself, I'm in the heart of GAA, I've hurling all around me and yet most of that Nenagh team started playing their rugby around Nenagh. 'I'll mention my own son, John, I'll mention (centre) Willie Coffey, the two O'Flahertys (club captain Kevin, a lock, and No.8 John) all those lads could have played senior 1A when we were back down in 2B, 2A, and they decided they were playing their rugby in Nenagh and that has paid off. So, for those lads, yesterday's achievement for me means most of all. 'You'd have to attribute a lot of (the club's success) to our coaching staff. The nucleus of players we have there, they're homegrown lads, all from Nenagh. Okay, we are picking up fellas from Newcastle West or wherever, but when I wanted to play senior rugby I had to go to Limerick. Now they're coming out to Nenagh and we're doing a very good job, a very good committee, very good underage structure. We could be in Nenagh on a Sunday morning and have 130 kids. It's a dream, an absolute dream.'
Irish Times
25-04-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Leinster's James Culhane hoping for a change of fortune to consistently deliver on his talent
James Culhane may at one point have watched a black cat walk across his path from right to left – left to right is lucky apparently – spotted a single magpie, spilt salt, broken a mirror, and perhaps inadvertently witnessed many more harbingers of bad luck. It might explain his ridiculously unfortunate injury profile that dates to his teenage years. There are invariably two conversation topics when chatting to the talented 22-year-old Leinster backrow, his prowess on the pitch and his resilience in the face of periodic setbacks that might have broken players of lesser character. He's got a lovely sense of gallows humour that's evident in his assertion that 'this will last a long time', when asked to discuss his injuries. Culhane explained: 'The worst one was in fourth year [in Blackrock College]. I started getting really bad lower back pain, got a scan and [it revealed] a stress fracture in my L5. They weren't really sure if it was genetic from when I was born or if it had developed over time. 'I was in a back brace for six months to let it heal. Then they re-scanned me, and the same defect was there, so it was pretty much genetic from when I was born. That had me out for about 11 or 12 months, pretty much all of fourth year. READ MORE 'I came back in fifth year and I was healthy but, unfortunately, we got knocked out in the first round of the Senior Cup by Gonzaga, so I didn't play a huge amount of rugby. Sixth year was okay. 'In first year in the [Leinster] academy I injured my ankle and had ankle surgery. Then the year after I obviously had that bad injury in Galway' (a reference to a torn hamstring and fractured shoulder suffered in the same match). 'I've probably had about three surgeries in two years.' The fact that Leinster gave him a professional contract on a, relatively speaking, slim body of rugby – 16 appearances since making his debut against Cardiff in 2023 – speaks volumes for the esteem in which the 22-year-old is held by the coaches. It's not as if they're taking a punt. When Ireland won an under-20 Grand Slam in 2022, Culhane was voted the Six Nations player of the tournament on the back of several brilliant performances. Even then, he couldn't shrug off a medical jinx as he spent a month in hospital with a severe kidney infection. He was nominated for RTÉ's Young Player of the Year. Emerging Ireland vs the Cheetahs, October 2024: Skipper James Culhane makes ground. Photograph: Steve Haag Sports/Darren Stewart What's immediately obvious in watching him is his athletic prowess honed by a cross pollination of sports growing up from mini rugby in DLSP, through school, Gaelic football with Kilmacud Crokes and playing left back for Enniskerry, Wayside Celtic and Cabinteely soccer clubs. He was selected for the Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa last year and captained the team in their final game against the Cheetahs. His return to the country recently with Leinster didn't quite meet the same success, as he was concussed five minutes in that first game against the Bulls. Breaking into Leinster's backrow requires not only a set of disparate qualities but also the capacity to play right across the unit. 'Yeah definitely you can't really be one dimensional, you can't just be able to play number eight, you have to play seven and six, especially when you're trying to break into a team,' said Culhane. 'It's important. If you're breaking into a team, you're probably starting on the bench, and you have to cover many positions, so it is so important to be versatile. I've been working on how I'm viewed as a player by the coaches, so they don't see me as one type of player you know.' Part of that process includes picking the brains of his team-mates. Culhane continued: 'I think Caelan [Doris] especially and Josh [van der Flier] they're just very easy to talk to, they've so much knowledge and they're willing to give it to you as well. 'I have been asking them a lot of questions about how they approach the game, especially around the contact area and ball carry and just that element which is especially important for my position. 'It is taking that opportunity when you get it, especially when you're involved with the team of internationals. On the weekend I was delighted to be playing with just so much talent around me, and the way they play elevates your game as well. When you get an opportunity to get your way into that team, you take it.' Culhane certainly honoured that goal in the victory over Ulster, 25 tackles, one turnover and leading the team in successful carries. It's more than the metrics though; his effectiveness is just as easy to spot with the naked eye. Top of his wish list: consistent game time.
