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ULSTERRUGBY
.com
We are not perfect; we have a huge distance to
go to reach the soccer industry in England, for
example. However, the league is doing positive
things to deliver strong television revenues,
and the PRO12 teams continue to collaborate
and share ideas in order to innovate and move
forward together. Over the next two to four
years, I can only see greater momentum.
Ruan Pienaar’s departure…
We are very disappointed to lose Ruan and he
is disappointed to be leaving. He is an excellent
player, an excellent individual, and who knows,
maybe one day we will see him back.
We have an excellent relationship with the IRFU
and I don’t think the Ruan situation in any way
damages that. There will always be decisions
that you aren’t happy with or don’t agree with,
and this would be one of them, but we respect
our governing body. In the past, their decisions
to protect international rugby have been good.
Inclusivity…
In the last few years we have had 20,000
young people complete rugby programmes of
6 to 8 weeks and we are continuing to do that
work.
There is so much potential out there; there are
2.1 million people in the nine counties of Ulster
and we want to bring what’s good about rugby
to all of them. We want as many people as
possible to benefit from the social aspect of
rugby, as well as the physical and mental
health benefits that it brings.
We are increasingly strong in both female
and disability rugby and it’s important
that that continues to develop. We won
the first ever Girls U18 Inter-provincial
Championship last month, which is
extremely encouraging. We are hosting
the final stages of the Women’s Rugby
World Cup 2017 in Belfast next
summer.
We now have nine clubs in Ulster
with disability rugby sections
and we held the Wooden Spoon
Disability Festival in 2014 which
was the largest event of its kind to
be held in Europe and was a
great success. So we are a
game for everybody and we
don’t want to leave anyone
out.
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