Both men sat down in a buzzing room in Greentech HQ Enniscorthy last week to be asked burning questions from the audience about Wexford’s future in sport.
One audience member asked the panel: “There is a lot of press lately on social media about extra facilities in Ireland since the Olympics, that all we need is facilities, to spend money. I think we have fabulous facilities in Enniscorthy, athletics club, refurbished Bellefield, a senior rugby club, and boxing academies; but it is volunteers or facilities we need to drive on sport in rural Ireland?”
Thomas Byrne, Minister for Sport, said that spending to support high-performing athletes and teams could reach over €120 million over four years in the lead up to the next Olympics in LA , with a further €400 million being allotted in funding for new stadiums and world-standard facilities
Having spent many years as a volunteer himself, USA Olympic boxing coach Billy Walsh said skilled volunteers are paramount to encourage the rural youth with sporting aspirations.
“There’s no point having facilities, if you don’t have coaches. At the end of the day, most coaches are volunteers. The majority of my life I was a volunteer coach as well. You need volunteers. People with skills, able to deliver those services to the youth,” he said.
Tadhg Furlong, prolific rugby player with the Ireland, Leinster, and Lions, says volunteerism is the backbone of sports clubs, with Enniscorthy rugby club, in particular, leading by example.
“I would be the same way, but obviously you need a certain level of facilities, you can’t train on a dog pitch with bumps everywhere. However, it’s the coaching, for me, at underage that its important and I think Enniscorthy Rugby club, with Declan O’Brien among others that have put a lot of work in. The last 10, 12, probably 15 years they have been slogging at that now, and the senior team is flying, the underage team is flying. We are trying to do something similar in New Ross now,” he said.
“The mammies and daddies are the heartbeat of the club and the volunteerism, but it’s trying to get an ex-player in that’s done all this coaching with Leinster to lead a team of mammies and daddies, that is where it is going,” he added.
Furlong was then asked if he believed the IRFU was biased towards boarding schools like St Michael’s with state of the art facilities and if rural areas like Wexford would ever be able to compete with them for a place on a professional team.
“I don’t think the IRFU have bias towards those schools because the schools fundraise themselves. It is incredible what they have done and their facilities up there. They have training five or six days a week – New Ross, Enniscorthy, Gorey, Wexford we’re never going to compete with that. That being said, the pathway from the underage into Leinster, there is definitely room for improvement,” he said.
He even believes, that with the evident rising high standard of talent nurtured by schools in recent years, that he might not have been picked up for his teams in the present time.
“If I was coming through nowadays I’m not sure I would get picked up by the current standard of schools. How do you do it? You need more training, more coaches, better talent identification at a younger level to get these lads through and to give them a chance. Because by the time they leave school they might have more raw talent than the lads that come from the private schools, but you just need the coaching and the trust in them to give them a crack,” he said.
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