Kinsale Rugby 7s: ‘People say it’s riddled with drugs, and it’s not’

Maybe they didn’t quite pack the punch of a blindside tackle, but they still took some sidestepping. At entry points into Kinsale and at pitch side at the town’s rugby club, the specially erected signage had a very clear message.

Alongside the warnings over disorderly conduct and the kindly advice to drink sensibly, they declared: “Remember that a conviction for a drugs offence will affect your career prospects and may spoil your future travel plans.”

By midafternoon on a soggy Bank Holiday Saturday, the beer was flowing, the pitches were cutting up nicely and the ball, thanks to persistent drizzle, was like the proverbial bar of soap. But the rugby is only part of the gig at the annual Kinsale Rugby 7s tournament, which is the club’s main fundraiser and a hugely popular event for locals and visitors alike. Only, in recent years and through no fault of its own, it was come to be associated with something else.

Back in early February at Bandon District Court, Judge James McNulty ordered the signage as a “special condition” to the granting of the licence for the 7s tournament, which as returning for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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We highly police the event – the more guards you have on the more you are going to find

It followed a spate of cocaine seizures at previous editions of the event, mostly notably in 2019 in what the judge later described as a “snowfest”. The media attention on those drug detections, and the subsequent procession of graduate class young people brought before the court, meant the 7s became embroiled in what one solicitor described as “a perfect storm” – a sort of inflection point for the prevalence of cocaine across the country and the apparently casual approach to its use by some in the middle class.

In 2020, one person familiar with court proceedings spoke of the judge’s approach – admiringly but with tongue in cheek – as that of “the righteous parson”, but it is clear many were in full agreement. One well-placed Garda source said: “It was fair for the judge to deal with those people the way he did because of the breaks they had and the earnings they had.”

And so something different was always likely for this year’s iteration of the 7s. In addition to the specially commissioned signage, the ticketing system was changed. Where previously people went to the Kinsale community centre (located in the Temperance Hall) to get their wristbands, this year tickets had to be bought online with full ID.

Extra security was placed on site, in addition to a highly visible Garda presence around the town. Tomás O’Brien, spokesperson for the organisers of the event, freely admits: “It’s costing us a fortune, to be honest.”

Not that the organisers would do anything differently. Judge McNulty’s novel approach to signage was swiftly and enthusiastically accepted, with the tournament website declaring that it welcomed the ruling, adding: “We see Judge McNulty’s ruling as a further step in our close engagement with the entire local community.”

The Kinsale tournament is a fixture on the 7s calendar and in past years has hosted rugby royalty, such as Fijian legend Waisale Serevi. Some 42 teams competed this year across men’s and women’s social and elite classes. It included teams from the North, France, and even California, in the jerseys of the Saratoga Jockeys. The athletes did shuttle runs and sprints pitch side in preparation for their games; in the social categories, limbering up was more likely to involve dragging on a roll-up and taking a sip of something that might have alcohol in it.

It all made for a fun, boisterous atmosphere as players built like office blocks mingled with others dressed as dolphins, wielding inflatables and wearing Friar Tuck-style smocks. One team went by the name Craggy Island Over-75s; another was called “Enoch Burkes We keep coming back” ... Well, no one can say they weren’t warned.

The same goes for the drugs messaging. Going above and beyond what the court requested, some 400 flyers bearing the same drugs-aware messaging were dispensed across the town. According to Tomás O’Brien: “I think the issue that happened in the past is a societal thing – it’s happening in little villages and town around the country.

“We highly police the event – the more guards you have on the more you are going to find.

“On behalf of the club I don’t think [the previous drugs issues] has impacted negatively on the club,” he said, “it has made more people entrenched in the club, and more involved.”

However, solicitor Fleming, who defended many of those who came before the courts in relation to the 2019 event, isn’t quite so sure. He professes his fondness for the club and its work in the community. “It attained a huge amount of publicity for drug abuse, which in itself is a good thing,” he said. “But Kinsale is a junior rugby club, it has been using the 7s for fundraising for the last 30 years, and they found the perfect storm and now it is almost like a byword – people just say Kinsale 7s is riddled with drugs, and it’s not.”

Fleming stressed that he has no criticism of gardaí doing their work, but he also pointed out that in all the cases of the young professionals who came before the courts arising out of the 2019 event, none were convicted on appeal, with all receiving the benefit of the Probation Act on a donation to the court poor box and one conviction was overturned. He acknowledged that Judge McNulty is “very protective of his district”, but that “there needs to be something more than just a criminal sanction for cocaine abuse at the moment”.

A Citizens’ Assembly, currently meeting, will probe every aspect of the drugs issue, and it is notable that in some areas where the court still has discretion – such as being able to dismiss cocaine possession cases under the Probation Act – it does not have the same powers when it comes to other offences, such as drink-driving. Others refer to a possible role for spent convictions, meaning that one youthful indiscretion, if leading to a conviction which sticks after appeal, could still disappear after a few years.

For Eamonn Fleming, “criminalising people for drug use, in my view, should be a last resort.” Then there is cocaine’s role in public order offending; according to Tony Greenway: “The gardaí are out there at night and if they come across a guy or girl who has had too much to drink, that’s one scenario, but if you come across somebody with drugs and alcohol, they don’t know how it is going to end up.”

It is a story repeated in courts round the country, even as the debate continues over how national policy on drugs should develop. The signs dotted around Kinsale town and rugby club may prove effective, but the associated media attention will likely do what the signs on their own may not – focus attention on whether some people, in the height of drink, are just bumbling into a bad decision, a regrettable one-off, or whether they are actively engaging in a trade which Judge McNulty stressed “makes millionaires out of thugs”.

In setting out the conditions for the event licence last February the judge referred to “the ABC” – “awareness, boundaries, and consequences”. He added: “While we are not dealing with children, we are dealing with young adults and just like older adults they need to be aware of the boundaries and the consequences.”

Time will tell how effective or otherwise all the new measures will be, in what is a different type of test rugby.