The pathway from clubs and schools rugby to Ulster & Irish rugby is directly through talent identification and then development of that talent in the rugby academy. We feel this statement carries logical weight. Each province has an Academy therefore they must believe and agree that that is a good place to develop talent, again this seems a very logical position.
However: We currently have the smallest rugby Academy in Ireland but the number of schools and Clubs in the province of Ulster surpasses all other provinces as per the data below.
Below is a table of the numbers of rugby playing schools and clubs across the 4 provinces and the number of academy players in each province
Province——- No. of Schools——- No. of Clubs—— No. of Academy Players
Connacht—————33—————–28——————–15
Ulster——————-96—————- 57——————–12
Munster—————–61 —————-67——————–20
Leinster—————-50 —————-50+——————-23 (the Leinster figures are less reliable than the other 3 we will improve this data over time)
Conclusions
Travelling as we do across Ulster Rugby Schools and clubs each week and over the course of time literally having visited every rugby club and a large number of rugby schools it is our opinion that we have the potential to produce a provincial rugby I XV to rival anything anywhere!
Having the lowest number of academy players in Irish provincial rugby is not the way to do this.
Focusing on signing overseas players is not the way to do this.
The claim by some that our players are not big enough or good enough is in our opinion indefensible, an utter fallacy, simply not the case and the utterence has no place on this website. This statement is 100% not true.
We believe that the rugby players of Ulster are just as good and have just as much potential as any children and young adults anywhere in the world, to believe otherwise is to put down the ability, and potential of your own people.
All these figures are obtained through looking up information available online and have not been completely verified or monitored. They are however done as truthfully as we can, and we will develop this information further as time goes by to make sure that these figures are representative. They currently do reflect the information available on provincial websites and generally on line.
