President's Message 29.10.25

Another emotional week for our Club as we continued to mourn the terrible loss of our dear friend John Kirby. John’s family greatly appreciate  how we, as a Club, continue to mourne his passing. We retired his No 1 jersey and held a minutes silence at both our senior Men’s fixtures. Details of John’s funeral next Tuesday are available on RIP.ie and have been circulated on the various WhatsApp groups.

Our J1s put in an excellent performance on Friday night vs UCD and the 14-28 scoreline doesn’t reflect the quality effort. Our firsts came up against a very strong Garryowen team on Saturday. Garryowen were unbeaten coming into the fixture but our lads put in a superb performance, particularly in defence, to pull off a wonderful victory. Tommy Butler was named man of the match but it could have been awarded to a number of others in what was a superb squad performance, full of resilience and an incredible will to win. It is a testament to our managers, coaches and players how they played.

Congratulations to Peter Quirke, who reached a remarkable milestone on Saturday, earning his 150^th AIL cap and thereby becoming the Club’s most capped AIL player. I remember Peter playing SCT for the school back in 2012/13 when he played outhalf on a cup winning team. Since making his senior Club debut in late 2013, he has been ever present in the Men’s squad since. What a player and an incredible servant to our Club.

The post match dressing room gave the coaches and players time to reflect on an excellent win, celebrate Quirkey’s achievement but also think about their lost friend, Kirby. It was very poignant.

I'd also like to mention another huge milestone achieved for another Rock player, congratulations to Ciaran Mangan who won his first senior cap for Leinster in their win over Zebre at the Aviva on Saturday.

At our pre match lunch on Saturday we made presentations to John and Martina Coclough and Mick Hearty for their incredible effort in organising a truly memorable Club Tour. Cokes regaled us with many stories and gave us an insight into both the charitable and sporting elements of the tour. A beautiful presentation of two framed local Ugandan jerseys was made to the Club. Memories to last a lifetime!

A very successful weekend for our women’s teams. Our J1s had a very impressive 43-5 win over Greystones in the Metro Cup on Thursday night while our firsts pulled away in the end vs Ballincollig, winning 60-14 on Saturday evening. Both our women’s team play a very similar exciting brand of rugby under our new coaching tickets. Aoife Moore picked up a nasty facial injury and we wish her a speedy and full recovery.

On Monday morning we received the terribly sad news that John Rogan, past player, former past President of the School Union and father of our senior men’s player, Jamie, had passed  away. One of life’s true gents, John has been taken away far too young. On behalf of the Executive Committee and all our Club members, players and supporters, we share our heartfelt condolences to his wife Nikki, his children Jack, Jamie and Ana, father Shay, his brothers Alan, Simon and Mark and the wider Rogan family. May John rest in peace.

Against this background it’s difficult to focus on rugby matters but we have a busy weekend of fixtures with the Men’s firsts at home to high flying Armagh at 2.30pm on Saturday in Stradbrook. Our JIs and U20s are away to Barnhall and Corinthians on Sunday.

It’s fantastic to see the huge number of minis and youths players and coaches that turn out every weekend, and long may it continue.

I know our players really appreciate your support. Please make an effort to come out again this weekend to cheer on our teams.

All the best,

Mick

Mick Dwan

President 2025/ 2026

Blackrock College RFC