Galwegians are inviting our Boys and Girls youth players from U14 to U18.5 to an exciting panel discussion evening in the Connacht Hotel on Wednesday January 22nd at 8pm.

The panel will be made up of former players who have experienced success playing for Galwegians, and other clubs. Some have gone to success with provincial and Irish teams, and in other areas of life beyond rugby.

The discussion will center their playing experiences, their preparation and managing their emotions in those “Championship Minutes” in the cauldron of competitive rugby, and other life challenges.

As a background to this event, Galwegians Rugby Football Club are setting out an exciting new strategy called Galwegians 2025. The objective and vision for the strategy is to build a solid pathway for our youth team players to become core to our senior rugby teams in the coming years.

With the exciting development proposed at Oranswell in the planning stage, which will put playing infrastructure in place to meet our ambitions as a club, the Galwegians 2025 strategy will put the pathway and support mechanism in place to help players transition from youths rugby to our senior men’s and women’s teams.

The strategy, among other things, will leverage the unique “Rugby DNA” in the Galwegians club that has led to our success in the past. With a clear vision for the future of the club, this strategy will bring together some of the best coaching and playing standards to achieve this goal by 2025, and create a framework for the future.

Over the past three years under the guidance of Joe Healy, Director of Galwegians Youth Academy, some best practices around coaching and rugby standards have been put in place in our youth teams, including coaches who are current and former Galwegians senior players.

The objective of that plan was to coach the “Galwegians Way”, to instill a sense of belonging to the club and its ethos, and to build a work-ethic commensurate with our vision to help payers become better footballers and people. The recent success of our U20’s U18.5’s, U17 and U16 teams is testament to the success of that work.

The next phase of the evolution of the great work done in our Youth Academy is the Galwegians 2025 strategy. The key component of this strategy are our youth players. We want to share with them our vision and goals for the future, and put structures in place to help those players achieve the objective of playing senior rugby with Galwegians.

To kick this off, the panel discussion will provide valuable insights into playing, preparation and dealing with pressures of rugby at a higher level. Hosted by compere James Heaslip, Director of Rugby and himself a former member of successful Galwegians senior sides. The panel members are:

  • Ruth O’Reilly Galwegians Ladies captain, Connacht & Ireland
  • Mary Healy Galwegians, Connacht & Ireland
  • John Casserly Galwegians club Captain, currently coaching Galwegians U14s
  • Mervyn Murphy, Galwegians, Connacht, Ireland and Irish Rugby Performance Analyst.
  • Jack Clarke, Dolphin RFC, Munster and all levels for Ireland, International Javelin athlete, current Coach to Galwegians U16 Girls and U17s Boys
  • Andrew Browne, Galwegians, Connacht & Ireland, current Galwegians senior head coach
  • Damian Browne, Galwegians, Connacht, Ireland, Northampton, Brive, Leinster, Heineken Cup winner, Oyonnax, Adventurer, and current Galwegians U18.5 head coach