BY SEÁN HOLLAND
SKIBBEREEN Rugby Club are preparing for the new Munster Junior League Division 1 season with a real sense of optimism.
Reflecting on the previous campaign, backs coach Fergus Burke saw clear signs of progress and believes the team is building on solid foundations. Burke is now preparing for his third season with the side along with forwards coach Damien Quinn. PJ Dinan takes over as team manager this year.
In his assessment of the 2023/24 campaign, Burke highlighted how the squad came close to breaking into the top four, despite a challenging run toward the end.
‘Last season was a pretty good season for us. We just missed out on the top four. It came down to the second last game against Newcastle West, and it was a case of we just ran out of numbers, through injuries,’ he explained.
‘We finished seventh in the league and got to the quarter-finals of the Munster Junior Cup with a pretty significant win against Young Munster up in Limerick. Overall, it was encouraging and it was an improvement again on the year before.’
One of the main challenges Skibbereen faces each season is the availability of players, many of whom are college students or work outside of the area.
‘The team is predominantly made up of college students who are either going to college in UCC, MTU, or UL,’ Burke explained.
‘You then have other guys working there in Cork city or further afield. But most of those guys try and get back for Friday night training. We train Wednesdays and Fridays, but we could be pretty thin on the ground on Wednesdays, depending on who's there and who's available.’
Another hurdle for the club comes from players’ involvement in GAA.
‘This time of the year is normally a big challenge for us too. We still have a lot of guys playing football. We’ve players involved with O'Donovan Rossa, Goleen, Ilen Rovers, and Tadhg MacCarthaigh so we normally don't get a lot of players back until around the end of September, start of October,’ he said.
While it impacts their squad depth, Burke found a silver lining,
‘It's obviously a big issue for us because we wouldn't have the biggest squad in the world. But the positive there is when the guys do come back to us, they're flying fit because they've been training all through the summer,’ he said.
As they look ahead to the new season and their Division 1 opener at home to Kanturk on Saturday night (7pm), Skibbereen have bolstered their squad with an exciting new addition from overseas.
‘We’ve brought in a new fly-half, Xavier McEldowney, from the Gold Coast in Australia. He’s actually hoping to do some community work here with Munster Rugby as a community officer, teaching rugby in the schools,’ Burke said, adding the appeal of playing in Ireland was a big selling point for McEldowney.
‘For him, he's just trying to experience a different type of environment. That was part of the attractiveness. He had contacted us and said he'd be interested in coming over. He asked if there would be any opportunities for him to play here. We're more than happy to try and accommodate that. It was an easy sell for him to come.’
Skibb is also excited about the return of some key players, as well as younger talent stepping up to the senior squad.
‘Lorcan Carey had been out with an injury, but he's back there. Then you obviously have Kevin Coombes, Kieran Shannon, David Shannon, David Duggan, they’re all big players for us,’ Burke said.
‘We have a couple of players coming up from U18s there who are likely to feature as well. Oisín Dinan and Conan Farrell, both of them played 18s last year, and I think both of them will feature this year.’
For the new season, the focus for Skibbereen is on continuous progression, both on and off the field.
‘Every year we're probably looking to make sure that we have progression in the things that we do,’ he said.
‘Last year was a really good year in terms of where we finished up. The key thing for us is that, first of all, that the players are enjoying what they're doing, that they're learning, and that we as a club are trying to grow and improve. That's primarily what we're looking for this year again, progression in whatever we did last year.’
Also in Division 1 on Sunday, Bandon host Newcastlewest, while Clonakilty travel to Crosshaven, both games at 2.30pm.
