Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Claremorris RFC introduction part 3

Roots & All will be back for the new season, this time with 4 clubs, one from each province.  Between now and September we will be gradually introducing them to you here on HoR2 and first up to tell us a bit about their history are Connacht's representatives. Click here to read Part 1, and here for Part 2.



As the season entered the home straight we were about to have out biggest moment as a club to date. Firstly our girls were chosen as the Connacht representative to attend the Aviva mini rugby festival in Ashbourne, Co. Meath. In a truly magical day our girls were fantastic in the way they conducted themselves on and off the pitch. Then in early April our secretary got a letter to say we were one of three nominations for Connacht rugby club of the year for the 2011/12 season.

To say we were shocked was an understatement, however although we were nominated we really didn’t think we would win as other nominees Connemara RFC & Loughrea RFC were more established than us and surely in our view in with a better chance of winning.

Club award with Eric Elwood
A wedding on the same night meant I was unable to attend the black tie affair in the Connemara Coast Hotel however when the phone rang at approx 11pm I knew from the crackling voice on the other end we had done it. Connacht rugby club of the year in our third season WOW!

On the playing side of things our season drew to a close in the surrounds on Terenure College as our U13 team played in the inaugural European rugby U13 tournament hosted by Terenure RFC. As one of only two Connacht representatives along with fellow Mayomen Westport RFC our boys played against teams Ireland, England, Scotland and France. They played some tough physical rugby and were a credit to all concerned with the rugby club. This trip was our first overnighter as a rugby club which represented an historic moment our brief history.

As the season winds down things have been even busier for us in the committee room. Recently we acquired 5 acres of land in town and currently putting a plan together on how to fund the development of the grounds. What we have planned so far is:

George Hook has agreed to broadcast his Newstalk show the Right Hook live from the McWilliam Park hotel Claremorris on Friday the 13th of July, we will then hold the launch of our pitch development fundraiser that night in the McWilliam. On the 14th we’re planning a scrum clinic for local coaches.

Aviva Mini Rugby Blitz
On the Friday the radio show will be followed by a reception where George and a number of rugby pundits will formally launch the fundraiser to an invited audience of rugby supporters, parents, local people and representatives from neighbouring rugby clubs. The major fund raising event will be a draw where the site we recently acquired will be divided into 2,000 equal sized rectangular areas each of which will be ‘auctioned’ with a €50 price tag. Each person(s)/organisation purchasing an area will also be entered into a draw for various prizes which will range from flights and accommodation to a sunshine destination to tickets for rugby matches.


The Saturday clinic will be marketed as ‘Scrum Clinic’. This will be a scrum clinic given by rugby pundits George Hook, Alan Quinlan, Roly Meates, Jim Glennon and Peter Bracken will for all coaches who coach at youth rugby level. It will free of charge to all coaches so it’s an ideal way to spend a Saturday afternoon. The day will also be marketed as family day where everyone if free to attend watch the clinic and meet the rugby personalities afterwards. There will be activities to keep the children occupied while the clinic is happening so spread the word and hit for Claremorris on July 13 and 14th.

Click here for more info on the Scrum Clinic/Fun Day


Click here for the club's website.


Claremorris RFC will be back with regular posts throughout the 2012/13 season.

© JL Pagano 2012
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Location: Claremorris, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Monday, July 02, 2012

Top 10 HoR posts 2011/12

The main reason Harpin On Rugby exists is so I can chuck in my two cents on Leinster & Ireland's performances every Monday morning.

Now the season is over and there's no more cents to chuck (and I can't even blame the Ulster Bank for that!) it's time to look back over the campaign and see which writeups generated the most hits.

Yes, I know this is a personal indulgence and don't worry, I'm not expecting you to follow all the links and read all the articles again...I guess this post is mostly for my own benefit so down the line I can look back and have a sense of not only how I saw the 2011/12 campaign, but how the readers reacted to it.

So starting at 9am I'll be counting down from 10 and sharing with you the posts that you thought were most worth the time skiving off work to read...
The last “warm-up” before the squad for the World Cup was announced and Ireland's first appearance at the Aviva Stadium for the season. We started brightly and let the French back in to it, something that's becoming a habit when we play them it seems. It was also the day we lost Felix Jones to injury plus Declan Kidney finally got the message that Tomás O'Leary was not Ireland's best scrum-half.
Even after the memorable win over the Wallabies, this was still a do-or-die encounter for us in Pool C the way the numbers added up. So being Irish of course our pre-match build up was frought with doom and gloom. But luckily all the Italians could muster was a spot of treachery in the forwards and we were able to comfortably dispatch them. This post reminds me of the week that came after it where Declan Kidney & the entire Ireland setup seemed to take their eye off the ball.
Hard to believe the season began this early but it did! And what an anti-climax of a kickoff it was. With just three minutes left the score was just 6-3 in our favour. Not sure if the crowd was even awake to see the game's only try! At least on the following Monday morning HoR readers were interested enough to make the writeup the 8thmost popular of the season! Oh, and here's a fact that may interest you...Paddy Wallace both began AND ended the season as Ireland's starting 12.
Certainly not a day Irish fans will want to remember, though it's worth noting that it was also the day of the Fabrice Muamba incident so the word “perspective” was there to be much bandied about afterwards. While everyone else was banging on about the collapse of the scrum, I was more concerned about how we came out for the second half in a contest we very well could have won. This was the day I began to lose the will to defend Declan Kidney.
You may think this would be further up the list, but it seems the more popular writeups rely on non-Leinster fans checking them out and I doubt any of them had any intention of going near this one! Though the All-Ireland nature of the final made for an excellent build-up, in the end the match as a spectacle was very similar to last night's Euro2012 soccer final in Kiev.
  1. Sunday, April 29, 2012 Clermont-15 Leinster-19 : “NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED”
Simply thinking about this match gives me palpitations. Even though this was arguably Leinster's best display on French soil since “that” win in Toulouse we still came within a Wesley Fofana fumble of crashing out thanks to a combination of a crazy drop-goal attempt from Eoin Reddan and being completely out-foxed in the lineouts.
The 2ndmost recent writeup made it as high as fourth on the list. The way things stand now I can't see how we'll ever have a better chance to beat the All Blacks and although in many ways we can say “we wuz robbed”, I wanted to be clear in this article that this display far from redeemed the coaching staff in my eyes.

Not a match that would make many Leinster fans' top three from the season, but in terms of hits it must take its rightful place. I reckon it's just about worth it as it represents the incredible mid-season unbeaten streak Leinster enjoyed from September 17 to March 23 and each week I had to avoid making my writeups a “gush-fest”. And although we positively annihilated Cardiff on their two visits to Dublin, this match, like many throughout the course of the streak, was not without its good luck for Joe Schmidt's men.

After waking at 6am to wearily watch our World Cup wishes get wiped out by Warren's Welsh whirlwind in Wellington, we had a shot at instant redemption in our very next Test encounter to kickoff the 2012 Six Nations. There was a bit of concern during the buildup that Declan Kidney didn't appear too willing to chuck out the RWC gameplan and try something different but as long as the right result was achieved on the day, those concerns would have gone away quickly. Sadly though the penalty that gave Leigh Halfpenny was pretty much universally acknowledged by neutrals not to have been warranted, the fact that the Welsh got to within kicking range so easily was one of many facets in the performance that raised question marks over the squads preparation. I used this writeup to highlight the fact that with the one exception of Cardiff 2009, Declan Kidney's reign as Irish supremo has been haunted by Gatland at every turn.

If I told you my writeup that generated the highest amount of hits was a one-point win by the Ospreys at the RDS, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was the RaboPro12 final. But actually it was the other one, which ended the long winning streak and some would say gave Leinster the dose of reality it needed to prepare for the bigger battles around the corner. I think the reason the final didn't even make the top ten was that Leinster fans were so stunned they largely stayed away from the ruggersphere afterwards! The main reason this particular post tops the lot is that someone posted a link to it on a Welsh rugby forum. Many of the commentators from across the Irish Sea clearly went looking for spiteful comments from yours truly but one did say the piece was “rather magnanimous given the circumstances”.

So that's it. No doubt this format had you in great suspense all day wondering which writeup was first, right? What's that? Hey, no need to be so harsh! ;-)

I just thought I'd do something a bit different on a Monday...from tomorrow, I'll be going back to introducing you to the excellent team of writers I'm putting together for this HoR2 blog over the coming weeks...there's three more Roots & All clubs to reveal, contributors on all sorts of rugby-related topics like betting, refereeing and even the Lions 2013, plus loads more.

So stay tuned to Twitter & Facebook for the links as they are posted! Thanks for following this countdown today. JLP


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Sunday, July 01, 2012

Last week's HoR2 highlights




© JL Pagano 2012
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Taken by JLP from RDS press box on Nov 16, 2019