MY CLUB: Terenure College RFC
By DAIRE WALSH
FIRST established back in 1940, Terenure College Rugby Football Club in south Dublin are currently flying high at the top of the Ulster Bank League Division 1B with a perfect nine wins from nine before Christmas.
With their Under 20 outfit also thriving at the moment (and a total of 18 teams fielding from Under-6s up to and including seniors), it is clear that ‘Nure are presently in a healthy state, and club chairman Patrick Heslin puts a lot of this down to the hard work being done behind the scenes by the club’s ‘Vision 2020’ group.
“It’s a fruition of a whole load of work being done by a whole load of people. It takes a village to run a rugby club,” said Heslin.
“We have a group in the club, a very important group that call themselves the ‘Vision 2020’. It’s round-table, there’s no committee, there’s no Chairman or President or anything.
“Everybody just throws their ideas up, and that was the start of this thing kicking off again. When we started off, I think there was 20 projects going from finance to player recruitment, to medical to securing the tenure on the pitches, which we’ve done now. We own the pitches.
“We’ve got planning permission and application in for floodlights on the first and second pitches, and to develop the clubhouse. The 2020 is very important.”
Before assuming his current role at Lakelands Park, Heslin had a long association with the club in a variety of roles. But, as he explains, it wasn’t until his own son started to play mini rugby that he became involved outside of the field of play.
“I went to school in the college. I left there in 1987, and I went straight down to play in the club then. I played Under 19s, and then played junior rugby for a good number of years. I took a break, I suppose, when I was about 30.
“Then I got back involved when my son started playing mini rugby about seven or eight years ago. I started coaching again, then I started to do a bit of management stuff.
“I’m an accountant, so they got me involved on the finance committee, then they got me involved in another committee, and all of a sudden I ended up being chairman.”
As with any club across the country, Terenure are looking to establish a foothold in many different sections of rugby.
Women’s rugby, Special Needs rugby and Sevens rugby are starting to become more prominent, and Heslin sees a clear desire for all variations of the game within the club.
“We’ve a great Women’s team down there now. They started about two years ago, and in the past week we’ve set up a Special Needs team.
“A whole load of different guys in the club love Sevens… everything from Tag rugby to Sevens. Any variation of the game, there is somebody who wants to play,” Heslin added.