Nenagh Ormond’s historic season added to by unbeaten Under 13’s

While Nenagh Ormond senior team have been scaling the heights of domestic rugby, winning a place in the second tier of Club rugby, putting themselves in the top 20 clubs in the country, there has underneath the surface been remarkable work done with the underage and mini sections.

With numbers expanding by the year, especially in the girls section, Nenagh Ormond underage have always been ultra-competitive with the under 16’s and under 18’s winning their respective cup competitions this year.

However, pride of place must go to the under 13’ side, who managed a feat that has never been achieved by any team, not to mind a Nenagh Ormond team, before at this grade and may never be done again, by going through the season unbeaten winning every competitive game they played in.

They secured the prestigious Pat Lawlor Tournament last September and followed up with a league and cup double completing a clean sweep of all before them and an almost unbelievable treble, a remarkable feat in the bear-pit of North Munster club rugby, all the more impressive by the fact that due to pitch unavailability this team played every single game bar one away from home.

It began a number of years ago at mini rugby when the coaches involved suspected they might have a special group of youngsters as sometimes happens. With a coaching strategy that seemed unusual at the time at the time but has borne fruit now and hopefully will continue to do so.

When asked about how it came about, coach James Cullinane revealed “we decided early not to worry too much about set-phase play and rucking etc… and really concentrated on working on handling, looking for space, alignment, and lots of offloading.

“This gets the lads programmed to play a quicker, free-flowing game, and results in them keeping the ball alive a lot more than the opposition.

“If we went down the road of the traditional game, we would have done well too but we wanted to be different and play a different way and not just be another team. To be fair we had the raw materials, but all the lads now play that way without even thinking and some of the new lads coming in almost have to be re programmed if you like.

“This allows us to get into space behind the opposition defence and once we do that they are scrambling, and we have great pace in our backline which invariably punishes them.”

The teams historic campaign began with the Pat Lawlor Tournament in Limerick, a prestigious tournament in its 40th year that many internationals and Lions have played and coached in and never won.

Nenagh Ormond had never won the tournament before but that changed when they battled their way through a tough group winning all five games and gaining a place in the Cup semi-final where they beat Newcastle West, and saved the best until last with a great win against Shannon in the final.

Moving onto the league campaign, Nenagh started motoring with some big wins, a come from behind epic against Shannon in UL, dispatching Garryowen, Young Munster, and UL Bohemian along the way, with probably the most complete performance against Bruff.

This put us in them into a semi-final against St. Senan’s in Nenagh’s only home game of the year. Played in a mud bath, Nenagh prevailed in niggly encounter to meet foes Shannon in the final.

Despite topping the league and should have had a home final but had to play at Shannon’s ground in Coonagh. The weather hadn’t been great, and the pitches were soft which didn’t suit Nenagh but suddenly the weather improved, and ground dried up just in time for three weeks in a row of massive games which defined the season.

Nenagh started very well and had an excellent Shannon team in real trouble at 26-7 at half time but lack of concentration allowed Shannon back into the game to take the lead 28-26 with ten minutes to go. Again, Nenagh’s style of play meant they are capable of scoring from anywhere and two well-worked tries saw them to victory to raucous scenes in Limerick from the Nenagh support. The second leg of the treble was now complete.

Onto the Cup, the following Sunday they were away to a Garryowen team who had this game lined up for weeks and they threw everything they had at Nenagh from the start and raced into a 14-0 lead with some of players starting to look leggy, but suddenly as if a switch had been flicked we responded with four converted tried to pull 28-14 clear and a consolation try at the death making it 28-21, and onto the final, could it be done?

Coaches James Cullinane, Robbie Powell, Pat Fitzpatrick and Donie Comerford had a meeting before the match and James Cullinane takes up the story.

“We were very worried to be honest,” he revealed.

“Our lads had played three massive game three weeks in a row and were now being asked to go to the well one last time. Bruff have huge underage tradition and would not be one bit afraid of us, coached by former head of the Munster academy player Peter Malone and Brian Cahill, we knew it would be a dog fight. They had the three weeks off to line this up and our lads were really leggy, and we knew that this could be a bridge too far.”

And so, it proved, with Nenagh not playing particularly well they managed some early scores and led 22-10 at the break but a Bruff try made it 22-17 early in the second half.

What happened next can only be described as pure heart and determination. Bruff camped pretty much inside the Nenagh 22 for fifteen minutes with wave after wave of attackers being repulsed and the defenders hanging on by a string. It’s all well and good playing a free-flowing game but to see the defensive effort gave great pride to the coaches with Donie Comerford over heard on the sideline saying: “if we get out of this one it will be greater than the miracle above in Knock.”

But Bruff could not breach the red wall, with Nenagh Ormond finally lifting the siege and breaking up the field into the 22 the referee blew the whistle and that was that.

A visibly exhausted Nenagh Ormond team almost fell to the floor, there is reason these things are hard to do as you get to the end of season and invariably have four big games in four weeks which is hard physically but even more mentally. But these lads are different gravy.

A remarkable year, winning every game played against some of the biggest clubs in Ireland and winning the treble, something these young men will never forget and will bind them together forever.

Squad: Tadhg Cahalan, JP Callahan, Jack Comerford, Ferdia Covill, Michael Cullinane, Dara Dillon, Tiernan Dillon, Michael Donnellan, Oliver Duff, George Graham, Andrew Hanly, Dara Hanrahan, Eoin Hogan, Evan Jones, Craig Kennedy, McKenzie Koh, Brian Ley, Enda Maxwell, Conor McAuliffe, MJ McNally, Tommy Morgan, Gavin O’Brien, Sean O’Brien, Shane O’Donoghue, Aidan O’Gorman, Sean O’Kelly, Liam O’Meara, Ben Platt, Robbie Powell, Kevin Quinlisk, Harry Quinn, Christopher Ryan, Tommy Ryan, Paraic Sheehy, Hugo Stanley, Fionn Tucker, Paul Williams, Justin Ziolinis.

Coaches: James Cullinane, Robbie Powell, Pat Fitzpatrick, Donie Comerford.