Girls Youth Rugby

Any girls between 12-18 years old who are interested in playing rugby come on down to our Open Day this Sunday between 12-4pm

For more details on our Club Open Day see:  http://stmaryswomensrugby.blogspot.com/2011/09/club-open-day-this-sunday.html

Club Open Day This Sunday

There's a jam packed day planned in the Club this coming Sunday. The aim is to encourage people who wouldn't have thought of joining St. Mary's before to come and see what the club has to offer and hopefully to never leave! We're always looking for new members whether they would like to get involved in rugby from a coaching, playing or volunteering level or to simply enjoy the social side of one of Ireland's best rugby clubs.
From a women's rugby point of view we'll be recruiting new members for both our senior team (18+ years) and our youth teams (12-18 years) so come along if you're interested in giving women's rugby a go! Any questions beforehand please get in touch with Aoife on 0851302745 or aoifethompson@gmail.com

There's lots of activities planned for the day and aimed at all age levels so grab your families, friends and neighbours and head down to Templeville Road this Sunday from 12-4pm.
See this link http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/domestic/newsroom/8344.php and the flyer below for more details.

Women's Inter-provincial Series begins this weekend!

Well it's only a matter of days now until the Interpros kick off for the coming season and St. Mary's are proud to have players involved in both the Leinster and Connacht squads. Fixture details are below so if you're at a loose end on a Saturday over the next few weeks why not head along to a match to support the women's game and our own Saints in representative action!
Best of luck to all of the girls in selection over the coming days and for the matches over the coming weeks!

Women's Inter-provincial Series 2011/12

Saturday 3rd September - Connacht v Munster - Corinthians R.F.C. - 2.30pm
Saturday 3rd September - Ulster v Leinster - Ravenhill - 3pm

Saturday 10th September - Munster v Ulster - Garryowen F.C. - 3pm (TBC)
Saturday 10th September - Leinster v Connacht - Ashbourne R.F.C. - 6pm

Saturday 17th September - Ulster v Connnacht - Ballymoney RFC - 2.30pm
Saturday 17th September - Munster v Leinster - Highfield R.F.C. - 3pm

The Countdown is on to the Rugby World Cup!

Not long to go now! Full fixtures can be found at http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/fixtures/poolstage.html 

All of the Ireland matches will be shown live in St. Mary's RFC Clubhouse. More details will be available on http://www.stmaryscollegerfc.com 

Missed our Open Evening?

But still want to give women's rugby a try? 

That's not a problem as we're accepting new members all of the time!

Either come on down to training any Tuesday or Thursday at 7pm in St. Mary's or get in touch with Aoife at aoifethompson@gmail.com for more information.

Hope to see you out on the pitch soon!

Open Evening tonight at 7pm!

Open Evening FAQs

It is now just two days until our fun filled Open Evening on Thursday 4th August at 7pm (yay!) so we thought we'd post some FAQs to give you a bit more information. If you're still scratching your head wondering about something, drop us an email at stmaryswomensrugby@gmail.com and we'll do our best to help!

Who can attend St. Mary's Women's Rugby Open Evening? 

All females over the age of 18 can play women's rugby and are invited to our Open Evening. We have a girls youth team for females between 12-18 years- please get in touch if you or someone you know would like to try girls youth rugby. 

If you have never played any kind of sport but would like to try something new, rugby is ideal! It is a sport in which there is a position for everyone irrespective of size, shape, age, experience, fitness levels. There will be complete coaching given to all players and safety is always our first consideration.

Most women that join have never played rugby before and many take up the sport in their late twenties/early thirties so there is really no excuse not to give it a go!

Location of St. Mary's College RFC- Directions for Open Evening

St. Mary's College RFC is located on Templeville Road in Templeogue, Dublin 6W.

Here is a map of the location of the Club:


View St. Mary's College RFC in a larger map


Directions from the M50:

Calling all tag players!

Come along to our Open Evening on Thursday the 4th of August at 7pm in St. Mary's College RFC, Templeville Road, Templeogue, D6W.

For more information get in touch with Aoife on aoifethompson@gmail.com or 0851302745

Sportswomen in the Media

Today, a bit of a political post! After a little bit of a break and in the middle of our preparations for the forthcoming season we just thought that it would be nice to mention a few sportswomen who have been in the spotlight lately and quite deserving of it too!

Sarah-Jane Belton on "The Breakdown"

Former Irish International Women's Rugby Captain Sarah-Jane Belton was a guest on Setanta Sports rugby review show "The Breakdown" a while back. This was quite a while ago now (a little delay in posting involved here!) but it was great to see women's sport, and in particular women's rugby, getting some airtime and positive press. Sarah-Jane was in studio to talk about Sevens rugby, its inclusion in the Olympics in 2016 in Rio, and the progression of women's rugby in Ireland. Sarah-Jane and Breakdown host Matt Williams are both involved with Shamrock Warriors- Ireland's only 7's Club endorsed by the IRFU. Shamrock Warriors have had a men's team since 2009 but 2011 is their first year entering a women's team into competitions. It was great to see a feature on mainstream television about women's rugby  and fairplay to Matt for spearheading this and getting it the attention it deserves!

For more information on the above see: http://www.shamrockwarriors.com/ and

http://www.setanta.com/ie/Sports/The-Breakdown/

Katie Taylor Dominating the Media

The boxing legend with no fewer than six Gold medals in the European Championships and three Golds in the World Championships, along with caps for her country for playing soccer, has branched out into advertising and music videos!

Monster Skills Monday...

There have been some top quality matches over the last few weeks so we thought we'd share some highlights from some of the best ones! Enjoy!

Heineken Cup Final: Leinster v Northampton Saints
What can we say, this match had it all- drama, incredible tries, outstanding performances, and of course that comeback!

Monster Skills Monday!

As promised, in the spirit of sevens we have some match clips and samba for you today! In the run up to the IRFU All-Ireland Club 7s which is taking place this Saturday, these videos have been hand picked for you by our very own El Capitano so enjoy, and get practising!

Flaps on the Other End of the Lens

Blatantly just robbing another blogs post here but good to see what a Mary's guy is now at in his post-professional playing days...

Conor McPhillips gives an insight into his life as a video analyst with Connacht Rugby:

Courtesy of http://officialconnachtrugby.blogspot.com/2011/04/insight-into-conor-mcphillips-world.html

Skills!

With the last 15-a-side match of the season done and dusted it's time to step into the sevens light! Yep hard ground, (some) sunny weather and flying insect things mean only one thing! It's 7s season!

As is tradition, we're heading to Kinsale this weekend (look out Cork) and while some fancy footwork or space creation might seem like the right thing to be thinking about now, we've decided to post something about what really matters- the try scoring celebration!

Templeville Road the stage for All-Ireland Bateman & Junior Cup Finals

Looking for something to fill in time before the big Heineken Cup matches kick off late Saturday afternoon? Why not head down to Templeville Road to take in some live action...

Table Quiz!

We're hosting a fund raising table quiz on Friday the 15th April in Templeville Road. Get a group of friends or family together and enjoy a night of fun with some great prizes up for grabs!

Monster Skills Monday!

A couple of random videos today but just thought they looked interesting and most can be done with small numbers so get practising! They're mostly to do with the contact situation so get your grr on!

When watching this first video make sure to look at the three different possible roles- that of the tackler, the tackled player and the support player and think what could be done in each of the positions...

The following is a good video for both attacking and defensive training. While it is a defensive drill, much can be gotten out of it for the attackers as a 2 v 2 presents a good opportunity to try to draw defenders.

And lastly, this drill teaches the ball carrier good skills (the voiceover reminding wide foot stance and good footwork is simple but it's always the simple things we forget!) while also giving the support player a chance to practise getting in a position to receive an offload. 

  

Videos courtesy of London Irish Community and Ford Academy

Double Header in Anglesea Road On Saturday!

Our match this weekend is on Saturday the 2nd of April in Old Belvedere at 1pm. The IRFU have set up this double header with the men’s firsts, who play in Anglesea Road at 2.30pm, in order to promote the women’s game. So if you are heading over to Donnybrook on Saturday afternoon, pop over a bit earlier as the girls in blue would be very grateful for your support!

St. Mary's crowned All-Ireland Plate Champions!

What a day it was last Saturday in Wanderers RFC! Beneath glorious sunshine, St. Mary's Women's team overcame City of Derry RFC to take the All-Ireland Plate Title. This is the third piece of silverware in three years for the team and is added to a trophy cabinet in Templeville Road that is already filling up!

All-Ireland Plate Final

Women's All-Ireland Plate Final
St. Mary's College RFC v City of Derry Ladies
Wanderers RFC, Saturday 19th March, Kick-off 12pm

Youth Rugby Open Day a Big Success!

Girls youth rugby in St. Mary’s College RFC 
The St. Mary's College RFC Women's squad hosted an open day for girls aged 12 to 18 at Templeville Road Saturday the 5th of March. The day was a great success with all girls enjoying their introduction to rugby, so much so they are all coming back for training sessions on Friday evenings from 5.00pm-6.00pm. Training will be fun filled and a great way to meet new friends.


Why not come and join the St. Mary's girl’s youth team. So, if you are aged between 13 and 18 and interested in rugby and want to try out a new sport then get down to Templeville Road in Dublin 6W on Friday evenings from 5.00pm-6.00pm
Contact stmaryswomensrugby@gmail.com for more details.

Article courtesy of www.stmaryscollegerfc.com

Monster Skills!

It might not be a Monday but it's time to bring the skills!!
A little bit on defence today and as it's so serious we then have a very entertaining video which is a spoof of a similar video to one we featured here before and didn't want to believe it was too good to be true! 

With the defensive videos, they're good to watch and have a think about and even if you only take one little thing from them they're very worthwhile! Any questions stick them in a comment below!
Obviously the points made in the videos should be taken in context with the overall team defensive system.

Now for a bit of a laugh!

Thanks to Smarter Rugby and the Waratahs for the videos!

Girls Youth Rugby!

Monster Skills Monday

Apologies for the few weeks break in skills posts but we're back with kicking!

The Grubber
Despite the fact that Jeremy Guscott is wearing wellies (!) this is a very good video (what else would you expect from the BBC) about grubber kicks which also demonstrates a good way to practise them and improve accuracy...

The original of this video can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/skills/7362483.stm

The Spiral
Though this doesn't show an actual demo it does talk through how to execute a spiral kick very well. It also starts you thinking about where on the ball you should be making contact with your foot for where you want it to go and how you should hold the ball. This important not just for spiral kicks but for all types of kicks so it's well worth having a think about and trying out your own ideas to see the results.

Kicking Games
This last one is for Fitzer who always claims kickers can make a ball bounce up where and how they want! The curl on some of these is amazing and it's all from the positioning of the ball and the spot on the ball that's kicked. Also love the idea of having some games/competitions after kicking practice to make it a bit more fun!

Thanks to the Beeb and allblacks.com for all of these helpful videos! Now get practicing!

Ireland Women's Home Match

Congrats to Dougie for getting her very first cap for Ireland at the weekend! She has again been named on the bench for this Friday nights clash with France at Ashbourne RFC.
Head along and support the girls in green and St. Mary's player Gill 'Dougie' Nolan.

Jamie and the black stuff
Just couldn't help putting this in! Althought the video itself is very staged the stats are awesome and nobody would doubt them having seen what Jamie puts his body through. Definitely turning into another talismanic player and leader ala O'Driscoll. Roll on Sunday and him and O'Brien together in the backrow!

Roundup of the Week

Well it has been quite an eventful week all around!
This week included the run up to our opening match to defend our Paul Flood Cup title. Starting off a new competition with a clean slate various things were instigated by the management including motivational posters in the dressing room along with a "This Is Our Team" initiative among the squad members. With some recent tough losses, the start of the cup campaign was seen as a chance to not only wipe the slate clean, but to take what had been learnt throughout the league so far and to put it to use. It also signified a bringing together of the team in the aim to further boost team morale. Picked up on twitter then, through the St. Mary's Women's Rugby twitter account @stmaryswomen was confirmation that the best teams employ similar strategies. Courtesy of Cian Healy (@ProperChurch worth a follow #ff) and straight from Ireland Camp down in UL, we discovered this:

Perhaps we should get our very own Rala a.k.a. Tony to begin a similar publication? All thoughts to stmaryswomensrugby@gmail.com

Another noteworthy mention...
This week our very own Dora The Explorer Maria "Ryaner" Ryan made it back home safely after 6 months travelling the world! To say a proper welcome home and look what you've been missing (apart from ourselves of course!) this is specially for her:

Will give you a couple of minutes to recover from that.
Yes that is body paint and wipe that drool off your chin.

And well we don't want to discriminate against Monaghan people and leave poor Tommy out (basically any excuse to throw this in!):

And finally, leaving the best til last... Gill "The loud one" "Dougie" Nolan has been named in the 25 player Ireland Women's Squad for the upcoming Six Nations Campaign.

Dougie's Leinster Mugshot

Yes that's right she is famous. Form an orderly queue now. A big congrats to Gill from all in St. Mary's, she well deserves it and best of luck to her! To see a proper write up on it, see this Thursday's Club Newsletter which can be found here http://stmaryscollegerfc.com/NewsItem_Preview.aspx?ID=207

Don't forget!
Our match this Sunday in the Paul Flood Cup is against Trinity in Santry with a kick off time of 1pm. All support greatly appreciated!

Monster Skills Monday

Right some one-on-one stuff today. This is from a newsletter called Dan Cotrell's Better Rugby Coaching. It's free and worth signing up to so have a look at the website http://www.betterrugbycoaching.com and don't forget to have a go at the one-on-one skills at training!

The above clip is courtesy of Better Rugby Coaching and can be found here:
http://www.betterrugbycoaching.com/rugbyforum/Topic2258-4-1.aspx

Monster Skills Monday plus some more good press for Women's Rugby!

Who's got skills???!
Another handling one for you all, good to warm up with before training- will get the brain switched on and the blood pumping! This video contains two different handling exercises, the second one being one of Rossy's favourites, so give them a go this week!

The Machine!
Maggie 'The Machine' Alphonsi has been making numerous headlines since her phenominal performance at the World Cup in August and September. Here's the most recent article about her: David Flatman: Man's game? Girl power is here to stay
If you've been living under a rock for the last few months, here's a few bits to fill you in on what you've been missing...
Alphonsi was without a doubt the outstanding player of the World Cup and many will agree that she was robbed of the title by a talented player that was on the winning side in the final, as Carla Hohepa was named the IRB Women's Personality of the Year 2010. Alphonsi did scoop the award in 2006, a World Cup year, and indeed she was on the losing side again in 2010 to finish runner up to four time champions New Zealand but surely this clip should show that winning the award previously and not being on the best team in the competition should not stop the award from going to the best player?

Soon after the World Cup, Alphonsi was named the Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year (Alphonsi scoops top sports star accolade) before then becoming the first female player in the 50-year history of the Rugby Union Writers' Club to be honoured with the prestigious Pat Marshall Memorial Award as personality of the year for 2010 (Maggie Alphonsi award is powerful statement for women's sport, Maggie Alphonsi winning the Pat Marshall Award at the Rugby Writers’ Dinner is a victory for rugby as a whole). In between all of this she managed to fit in some appearances on Sky Sports as a guest and commentator (Alphonsi set to become the face of the women's game ). Oh, as well as continuing to play some rugby (Alphonsi hatrick in Premiership see Saracens v Darlington Mowden Park Sharks match report).

Back to the green green grass of home; Upcoming match; Adios to Whitey

Pitch training was back this week. Yes the green stuff did come as somewhat of a surprise. Also mud doesn't make as good a snowball as snow does. On seconds thoughts that's probably just as well! Everybody got stuck in though and looked glad to be back doing what they do best- playing some rugby and getting a bit muddy!

Our first match of 2011 is against Highfield at home this Sunday. Kick off is 1pm. If you're interested in playing women's rugby come down to see what it's all about and have a chat with some of the girls in the bar after. We've a great range of players from young to old, newbies to experienced and crazy to pretty sane! If you'd like to get in touch for some more info email us at stmaryswomensrugby@gmail.com

Well as Whitey prepares to not so much hang up her boots as pack them in her suitcase for her trip to Oz we must say a teary eyed goodbye. She has been an unforgettable member of the team since she joined and everyone will miss our very own "Single Lady". There really are no words... except, da hack of ya! Watch out Australia and keep in touch Whitey!

We've a small piece up on the Leinster Website, here's the link http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/domestic/6521.php so make sure you have a look at that and see you all on Sunday!

Monster Skills Monday

Moving on from the fast feet we had last week we're going to throw in some side stepping! This is perfect to celebrate getting back on the pitch after far too many weeks snowed off!

This is a basic skill that every rugby player should have and when used by the top internationals can look sensational and be devastating. All it takes is practice to improve your step and you could have one as good as the best you'll see on television!
Here are a couple of videos (good to see women coaching and demonstrating in these!) and hope to see you all having a go at training this week!