Carlow's strength lies in the land

Carlow Rugby Club's formative months among Leinster rugby's elite class, since earning senior status at the end of last season, offers a stunning testament to what can be achieved with focus and purpose channelled positively.

The precocious provincial club have embraced their new found status with gusto, scattering reputations with a wonderful irreverence for the established order, or what that is perceived to be.

Carlow have eschewed the traditional role, offered to all `new boys', preferring to announce their arrival in resounding fashion with a litany of excellent victories in this season's Kitty O'Shea Leinster Championship. Success is manifest in a place in the semi-finals, having topped Section B.

The general club structure, both on and off the pitch, exemplifies the focus on, and commitment to, the professional era and is a huge contributory factor to their current pre-eminence, but there is a further ingredient to the cocktail of success - coach Jim Lowry.

By his own admission a limited player when donning the colours of first, Malone, and then Monkstown, he has thrived since embracing the role of coach. Fledgling steps in that capacity were taken at Sydney Parade where he remained for seven years before taking over at Garda.

During his five-year tenure he completely transformed the fortunes of Garda, so much so that he was offered further duties by the Leinster Branch, coach to the junior interprovincial side.

Leinster were crowned champions in five of the seven years in which Lowry was in charge and it was through this involvement that he was approached by Carlow. "I'm now in my seventh season at Oak Park so it was not a venture that I undertook lightly," Lowry conceded.

During that time the club have won five Provincial Towns Cups and qualified for Division Four of the All-Ireland League. The blueprint for success: "Longevity," Lowry claims. "I'm here a long time. For example, my loose-head prop was only 13 when I arrived here first.

"It takes time to develop the team. The players are very clear now about what we are doing. It may not be the right way of doing things but it is the Carlow way."

Another core ingredient may be gleaned from the composition of the team. "We bring a country hardness to the game. Over 50 per cent of the side are farmers whose day-to-day jobs involves heavy physical work and that dictates the manner in which we play.

"We specialise in heavy scrummaging. In every match we played this season we have scored either a pushover or penalty try or sometimes both. We have a strong front five and a very good back row."

The central cog in implementing the gameplan is 22-year-old New Zealander Andrew Melville whom Lowry describes as "as good as any number eight that I have seen in the Leinster Development league.

"His father sprinted for New Zealand and you can certainly see it in the genes even though Andrew is over 18 stones. But there is more to this than simply playing matters. There is a very professional set-up from the 200seater stand to the facilities available to the players. In recent years this has been a senior club in all but name only."

Lowry contends that Leinster provincial rugby is the last great untapped mine of players for the IRFU. "If one takes the case of scrum-half Leonard Peavoy. He's a dairy farmer and there is no way that he could afford to go to Dublin and play senior rugby. But we can offer him that opportunity here. Otherwise he could have been lost to the game."

Long-term goals for the progressive Carlow club remain unaltered despite the distraction of recent success. They want to emulate Suttonians' feat of escaping from Division Four of the AIL at the first opportunity.

"The priority must remain the AIL - anything else, while a bonus, would be a confirmation that maybe we were doing things correctly in Carlow."