Mullingar RFC - 100 years old and only getting going

On October 2, 1925, a group of young men met in The Greville Arms Hotel one evening and established Mullingar Rugby Club.

Fast forward a century, and today the club is one of the fastest-growing and most progressive in the country. With facilities the envy of many AIL clubs and almost 20 teams, male and female, as well as a thriving underage set-up, Mullingar Rugby Club in 2025 is a testament to what decades of volunteerism and forward thinking can achieve.

To mark this milestone event, the club held a Centenary Ball in the Mullingar Park Hotel on Sunday, February 2. Over 550 people packed into the main ballroom to celebrate the club's contribution to the community over the past 100 years and to look ahead to what is sure to be a bright future.

Vice-President Denis McDermott and PRO John Keane have also written a book cataloguing the fortunes of the club since that fateful night in The Greville Arms, where Berchmans Hannin of the Hibernian Bank was elected its first president.

The well-researched book, A Century of Rugby – The Story of Mullingar RFC 1925-2025, provides readers not only with a concise and highly accessible history of the club but also with insight into the broader socio-economic landscape as Ireland moved into the modern age.

The book also highlights some of the many people who kept the club going through the decades and laid the foundations on which today's thriving organisation is now built.

John says that the book is a "celebration of community."

"Our mission and the purpose of our club is to serve our community through rugby. For both myself and Denis and the other club members who worked on this project, it was a celebration of community, a celebration of Mullingar, and with nearly rugby as a sideline.

"It's a story of friendships and families that have evolved over 100 years, and you can see many family names there in the early days that are still active club members.

"For us, our centennial celebration is really a celebration of community and what we can achieve through rugby and community."

That community dimension—the ties that bind clubmates down through the decades—is very much to the fore in Noel McIntyre's well-crafted documentary, Mullingar Rugby Club: The Movie, which skilfully tells the story of the club's past and present through contributions from some of its most esteemed male and female members.

The documentary, which took award-winning filmmaker Noel 18 months to complete, received it premiere at the Centenary Ball and by all accounts there were very few dry eyes by the end.

Each chapter of Mullingar Rugby Club's history is vividly brought to life through interviews with members, past and present, which are complemented by video footage from different eras.

One of the people interviewed is former Ireland manager Joe Schmidt, who brought a one-man rugby revolution/evolution to Mullingar when he was a player/coach in the early 1990s.

John 'Banjo' Quinn, who played with and was coached by Joe during this period, described his arrival as a "game changer."

"Our skill levels increased. We were never without a ball in training... The big forwards were tipping the ball to each other, and all of a sudden, it became the norm not to drop a ball."

The film also features contributions from the club's female members, including interviews with Sarah Farrelly and Marian Gillespie, members of the ladies' committee in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were tasked with making post-match stew.

There are also insightful interviews with some of the club's contemporary female stalwarts, such as Adrienne Matthews, Claire O'Brien, and Mullingar RFC's latest player to gain international recognition, Katie Heffernan, who spoke eloquently about the growth of women's rugby locally in recent years.

Mullingar Rugby Club may be 100 years old, but it is only getting going.