MATT D’ARCY’S EYES widen as he recalls his earliest memories at Castle Avenue. Now a father of two young kids, it’s hard to believe how he used to spend weekends on the main pitch in Clontarf.
“I remember being eight or nine, back in the day when safety regulations weren’t as high, we used to play in the dead ball while AIL matches were on, which is just crazy, but it was brilliant!”
As for so many kids in clubs all around the country, those early days watching AIL presented D’Arcy with some of his first rugby heroes.
“I remember Clontarf were on the verge of getting relegated, and watching Richie Murphy kick two from the touchline on a Friday night game here. I remember that so vividly.
“Then I used to watch Andy Wood play, as usual a Kiwi coming over was like the god of rugby, and he ended up being my only coach in Clontarf for my whole senior career.”
Andy Wood during his playing days with Clontarf. INPHO
INPHO
That’s more or less the story of any great rugby club. Time moves on, people remain. D’Arcy, who played for Clontarf from minis all the way through to becoming an AIL winner, is now settling into a new role as the club’s chair of rugby. Wood, D’Arcy’s coach for his entire senior career, has just moved from head coach of the AIL side to head of performance.
These are key positions at a landmark moment for Clontarf FC. This year marks the club’s 150th anniversary, and if you live in the greater Clontarf area, you’re going to read all about it.
This weekend over 6,000 letterboxes in Clontarf will receive a special 150th commemorative booklet charting the club’s 150-year story. The 56-pages provide a detailed run-through of how Clontarf FC stretched its roots while the small, seasonal holiday resort of the late 1800s transformed into the booming Dublin suburb we know today.
Formed three years before the IRFU, the official title of Clonarf Football Club leaves the club as one of the few in the country with the FC entitlement. The first recorded match in the club’s history was held on 20 November 1876, a 12 v 12 fixture against Bective. Today there are so many playing members that finding pitch time for all remains a constant battle.
********
At last week’s 150th anniversary launch night, the rhythmic thud of boot meeting ball could be heard as the last training session of the night came to a close. Inside the refurbished clubhouse, hundreds of members packed in to celebrate a milestone year and hear stories, some familiar, some less so.
The booklet details the good times – four AIL wins and a healthy list of representative honours – but also the bad. During the First World War, 107 Clontarf members – representing 38% of the total membership – saw service, with 18 killed. From October 1915 to January 1919, the club lay dormant.
A view of the Clontard clubhouse at Castle Avenue. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
There’s also a section dedicated to the more unusual tales from the club’s past, such as the time in 1985 when a bunch of junior cricketers were bribed with lemonade to sway a crucial vote around the club’s casual tenure at the Howth Road Cricket Ground, or the battle with roaming sheep that troubled the club’s playing surfaces across the first half of the 20th century.
And yet the more things change, the more things stay the same.
“Bankrolling in the early days was a fiver and it bought you life membership,” explains Brendan Smith, a 30-year member who now serves as president and was the driving force behind turning the booklet into reality.
“I was never really into history, but you start reading and all of a sudden you find stuff I could really relate to. It’s funny, the problems that were here 100 years ago are still here today.”
There are two main pitches at Castle Avenue, while the club also uses facilities in nearby Saint Anne’s Park and on the Distillery Road to accommodate the 600-700 involved from U6s up to U18s.
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“The last couple of years, our senior squad would have had eight or 10 guys or more who would have started off here at six years of age. So for the kids on a Sunday morning, you have to make sure they get to play at Castle Avenue three or four times a year.”
D’Arcy followed that path, playing with a core group of friends all the way up. Now, one of his chief aims is to ensure the club can keep people involved and invested, even if they might not go all the way to AIL level, with a major focus on developing U20s.
“A very successful club can have its drawbacks in that people can’t get into the senior teams as quickly as they would like,” D’Arcy says.
Matt D'Arcy (centre) celebrates AIL success in 2022. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
“It’s important to try and look after those guys who maybe will break in in two or three years.
“I think the 20s system is the key to success in the senior team, because when I played senior rugby here we went through a five-year phase with a lot of the same players, and that’s great when you’re successful, but you need to make sure that what happens after is ready to go. When Clontarf won the AIL in 2025, people were thinking, ‘Oh, that’s the end of an era’. A lot of us retired, but they (younger players) came straight in ready to go.
“It’s just trying to drive the U20s set up to keep the standards high and keep the guys who maybe aren’t going to play in the AIL but really enjoy themselves at a high level in the J1 league, to have a certain standard, but you can go and enjoy it as well.
“And there’s been great success in U20s, which is notoriously difficult for a club like us to compete against like UCD and Trinity and scholarships and academies and all that stuff.”
Some of the problems are good ones to have. Smith looks back to his early days in Clontarf, and cites the renewed wider interest in the AIL as a key factor in the club’s push towards a more high-performance environment.
“The Leinster Cup was the premier competition for Leinster clubs, we used to put marquees up outside here and they were massive days.
“Then AIL (started), and all of a sudden we ended up playing all over Ireland and for years never won anything, it was 2014 before we won our first AIL, having been at so many semi-finals and finals before that.
“As a result we were starting to get players noticed and going into Leinster, so a lot of kids from outlying clubs around North Leinster would come in here, because they wanted to get a grounding and get noticed.
“So certainly, we had to up our game. While we’re a voluntary club, you have to run it near-on a professional basis, control the money you’re spending and all that kind of stuff as well.
“Every business is a struggle, every day is a challenge, but the rewards are great.”
It’s a path that can lead right to top of the game. Thirty-six years after Clontarf’s formation, Charlie Stuart became their first capped Ireland international in 1912, winning his sole cap at fullback against South Africa at Lansdowne Road. The game is notable for being the Springboks’ first Test match in Dublin.
In more recent times, Bernard Jackman, Tadhg Furlong, Joey Carbery, Jack Aungier and Ben Murphy are among those to have worn Clontarf colours before representing Ireland. To date, 18 Clontarf players have gone on to be capped for the Ireland men’s team, with Cian Healy’s 137 caps establishing him as the most-capped player in Irish Rugby history.
Not that he needs the red carpet treatment at his home club. As Smith and others speak from the podium on launch night, Healy blends in among the audience. The former Leinster prop has wasted little time getting back involved at Castle Avenue. This season he’s coaching the scrum with the AIL side, while lending his expertise to anyone who might benefit in the club.
“We’ve got some amazing guys who not only have a lot to offer coaching, but are ingrained in Clontarf,” says D’Arcy.
“Mick Kearney had an unbelievable professional career and was very quick to come back to the coaching set-up.
“And like Cian, he used to come back here and play U16s when he wasn’t really supposed to when he was in Belvo, so Cian certainly hasn’t forgotten his roots. And that’s the thing, you want to be around it and be involved in it.
Cian Healy playing for Clontarf in 2007. Cathal Noonan / INPHO
Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO
“I know Church over the years, but it’s funny to think about, he’s the most-capped Irish player of all time and he’s just sitting in the room tonight, he’s coaching the lads and he’s helping out.
“I’ve seen him doing scrum clinics they organise for props in the club, whoever it may be, to come down and do an hour or half an hour with him before he does the senior team.”
All of which points back to why Clontarf still attracts such healthy playing interest at the top level.
“It gives you something,” D’Arcy continues. “It’s a very slim few who get to go from school’s rugby into an academy into playing (professional), but so many players, especially in the school and club set-ups, are unbelievable players.
“Now the AIL is of a level that people can continue that. When I played in the AIL, we were treating it as professional, no drinking during the week, training four times a week, you were disciplined, had the best coaching, the best nutrition, you were getting looked after.
The AIL fixture board outside Castle Avenue. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
“It is of a level where you come out of (school or an academy) and you haven’t quite made it, but you can still enjoy that competitiveness.”
“You’re playing to tick that box of what is the highest level I can play at, and you get that here, because you get the best coaching, analysis, S&C, you get everything someone in Leinster would, but with your mates, so it’s a good balance.”
When thinking about how the next chapter might unfold, Smith has clear ambitions and familiar concerns.
“Certainly another AIL, that’s the one we go for,” he says.
“But look, to be realistic about it, it’s to try get more people involved who are in their late 30s and 40s with busy lives and kids, because the risk is that there’d be a generational gap when it comes to the likes of myself and fellas around the same age as me needing to bow out. To have a bit of sustainability and a succession plan here is always a challenge.
“And we’re obviously limited. We’re not moving out of Clontarf, we’re limited with the two pitches we have. So it’s a question of managing the resources we have and being able to accommodate as many kids in the area that want to play.
“The underage rugby is huge, the women’s set up is huge and we’ve also got our additional needs team, the Bulls, so we’ve got kids that started at 5/6 as an additional needs kids, and we now have nearly a full adults team.
“Some of the guys are working in the bar at weekends, some of them have been through college and they’re back they’re still playing, they come down at weekends and have a drink with the parents, which is great. To see that from kids who were nearly too afraid to get out of the cars in the early days, it’s fantastic.
“All we need to do is just continue to do that. We don’t want to really change the world, just keep on doing what we’re doing.”
Indeed, matchday isn’t even the most important part of what keeps Clontarf going.
“It’s a really good fulcrum of the community,” D’Arcy adds.
“I know there are clubs around the country who don’t open the bar during the week or don’t have that (capacity), but the guys here are open every day and there might only be one or two people in.
“But it’s funny, my dad would be part of a group that come in on certain days at certain times for two hours, and it’s old school, they don’t even text, they just know whoever turns up will be there. There’s little pockets of people you see, I’d come in here after training on Tuesday and Thursday and there’s a group in and I’d know them all, in for three pints to say hello, and there’s always the alickadoos hanging around going, ‘What’s the team for the weekend?’ ‘Are you looking good?’ And giving you the instructions.
“But then they’re the first people who are here on a Saturday, going, ‘I told you so, there’s a pint.’ It’s kind of full circle, it’s great.”
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'You get everything someone in Leinster would, but with your mates' – Clontarf hits 150th year
MATT D’ARCY’S EYES widen as he recalls his earliest memories at Castle Avenue. Now a father of two young kids, it’s hard to believe how he used to spend weekends on the main pitch in Clontarf.
“I remember being eight or nine, back in the day when safety regulations weren’t as high, we used to play in the dead ball while AIL matches were on, which is just crazy, but it was brilliant!”
As for so many kids in clubs all around the country, those early days watching AIL presented D’Arcy with some of his first rugby heroes.
“I remember Clontarf were on the verge of getting relegated, and watching Richie Murphy kick two from the touchline on a Friday night game here. I remember that so vividly.
“Then I used to watch Andy Wood play, as usual a Kiwi coming over was like the god of rugby, and he ended up being my only coach in Clontarf for my whole senior career.”
That’s more or less the story of any great rugby club. Time moves on, people remain. D’Arcy, who played for Clontarf from minis all the way through to becoming an AIL winner, is now settling into a new role as the club’s chair of rugby. Wood, D’Arcy’s coach for his entire senior career, has just moved from head coach of the AIL side to head of performance.
These are key positions at a landmark moment for Clontarf FC. This year marks the club’s 150th anniversary, and if you live in the greater Clontarf area, you’re going to read all about it.
This weekend over 6,000 letterboxes in Clontarf will receive a special 150th commemorative booklet charting the club’s 150-year story. The 56-pages provide a detailed run-through of how Clontarf FC stretched its roots while the small, seasonal holiday resort of the late 1800s transformed into the booming Dublin suburb we know today.
Formed three years before the IRFU, the official title of Clonarf Football Club leaves the club as one of the few in the country with the FC entitlement. The first recorded match in the club’s history was held on 20 November 1876, a 12 v 12 fixture against Bective. Today there are so many playing members that finding pitch time for all remains a constant battle.
********
At last week’s 150th anniversary launch night, the rhythmic thud of boot meeting ball could be heard as the last training session of the night came to a close. Inside the refurbished clubhouse, hundreds of members packed in to celebrate a milestone year and hear stories, some familiar, some less so.
The booklet details the good times – four AIL wins and a healthy list of representative honours – but also the bad. During the First World War, 107 Clontarf members – representing 38% of the total membership – saw service, with 18 killed. From October 1915 to January 1919, the club lay dormant.
There’s also a section dedicated to the more unusual tales from the club’s past, such as the time in 1985 when a bunch of junior cricketers were bribed with lemonade to sway a crucial vote around the club’s casual tenure at the Howth Road Cricket Ground, or the battle with roaming sheep that troubled the club’s playing surfaces across the first half of the 20th century.
And yet the more things change, the more things stay the same.
“Bankrolling in the early days was a fiver and it bought you life membership,” explains Brendan Smith, a 30-year member who now serves as president and was the driving force behind turning the booklet into reality.
There are two main pitches at Castle Avenue, while the club also uses facilities in nearby Saint Anne’s Park and on the Distillery Road to accommodate the 600-700 involved from U6s up to U18s.
“The last couple of years, our senior squad would have had eight or 10 guys or more who would have started off here at six years of age. So for the kids on a Sunday morning, you have to make sure they get to play at Castle Avenue three or four times a year.”
D’Arcy followed that path, playing with a core group of friends all the way up. Now, one of his chief aims is to ensure the club can keep people involved and invested, even if they might not go all the way to AIL level, with a major focus on developing U20s.
“A very successful club can have its drawbacks in that people can’t get into the senior teams as quickly as they would like,” D’Arcy says.
“It’s important to try and look after those guys who maybe will break in in two or three years.
“I think the 20s system is the key to success in the senior team, because when I played senior rugby here we went through a five-year phase with a lot of the same players, and that’s great when you’re successful, but you need to make sure that what happens after is ready to go. When Clontarf won the AIL in 2025, people were thinking, ‘Oh, that’s the end of an era’. A lot of us retired, but they (younger players) came straight in ready to go.
“It’s just trying to drive the U20s set up to keep the standards high and keep the guys who maybe aren’t going to play in the AIL but really enjoy themselves at a high level in the J1 league, to have a certain standard, but you can go and enjoy it as well.
“And there’s been great success in U20s, which is notoriously difficult for a club like us to compete against like UCD and Trinity and scholarships and academies and all that stuff.”
Some of the problems are good ones to have. Smith looks back to his early days in Clontarf, and cites the renewed wider interest in the AIL as a key factor in the club’s push towards a more high-performance environment.
“The Leinster Cup was the premier competition for Leinster clubs, we used to put marquees up outside here and they were massive days.
“Then AIL (started), and all of a sudden we ended up playing all over Ireland and for years never won anything, it was 2014 before we won our first AIL, having been at so many semi-finals and finals before that.
“As a result we were starting to get players noticed and going into Leinster, so a lot of kids from outlying clubs around North Leinster would come in here, because they wanted to get a grounding and get noticed.
“So certainly, we had to up our game. While we’re a voluntary club, you have to run it near-on a professional basis, control the money you’re spending and all that kind of stuff as well.
It’s a path that can lead right to top of the game. Thirty-six years after Clontarf’s formation, Charlie Stuart became their first capped Ireland international in 1912, winning his sole cap at fullback against South Africa at Lansdowne Road. The game is notable for being the Springboks’ first Test match in Dublin.
In more recent times, Bernard Jackman, Tadhg Furlong, Joey Carbery, Jack Aungier and Ben Murphy are among those to have worn Clontarf colours before representing Ireland. To date, 18 Clontarf players have gone on to be capped for the Ireland men’s team, with Cian Healy’s 137 caps establishing him as the most-capped player in Irish Rugby history.
Not that he needs the red carpet treatment at his home club. As Smith and others speak from the podium on launch night, Healy blends in among the audience. The former Leinster prop has wasted little time getting back involved at Castle Avenue. This season he’s coaching the scrum with the AIL side, while lending his expertise to anyone who might benefit in the club.
“We’ve got some amazing guys who not only have a lot to offer coaching, but are ingrained in Clontarf,” says D’Arcy.
“Mick Kearney had an unbelievable professional career and was very quick to come back to the coaching set-up.
“And like Cian, he used to come back here and play U16s when he wasn’t really supposed to when he was in Belvo, so Cian certainly hasn’t forgotten his roots. And that’s the thing, you want to be around it and be involved in it.
“I know Church over the years, but it’s funny to think about, he’s the most-capped Irish player of all time and he’s just sitting in the room tonight, he’s coaching the lads and he’s helping out.
“I’ve seen him doing scrum clinics they organise for props in the club, whoever it may be, to come down and do an hour or half an hour with him before he does the senior team.”
All of which points back to why Clontarf still attracts such healthy playing interest at the top level.
“It gives you something,” D’Arcy continues. “It’s a very slim few who get to go from school’s rugby into an academy into playing (professional), but so many players, especially in the school and club set-ups, are unbelievable players.
“Now the AIL is of a level that people can continue that. When I played in the AIL, we were treating it as professional, no drinking during the week, training four times a week, you were disciplined, had the best coaching, the best nutrition, you were getting looked after.
“It is of a level where you come out of (school or an academy) and you haven’t quite made it, but you can still enjoy that competitiveness.”
“You’re playing to tick that box of what is the highest level I can play at, and you get that here, because you get the best coaching, analysis, S&C, you get everything someone in Leinster would, but with your mates, so it’s a good balance.”
When thinking about how the next chapter might unfold, Smith has clear ambitions and familiar concerns.
“Certainly another AIL, that’s the one we go for,” he says.
“But look, to be realistic about it, it’s to try get more people involved who are in their late 30s and 40s with busy lives and kids, because the risk is that there’d be a generational gap when it comes to the likes of myself and fellas around the same age as me needing to bow out. To have a bit of sustainability and a succession plan here is always a challenge.
“And we’re obviously limited. We’re not moving out of Clontarf, we’re limited with the two pitches we have. So it’s a question of managing the resources we have and being able to accommodate as many kids in the area that want to play.
“The underage rugby is huge, the women’s set up is huge and we’ve also got our additional needs team, the Bulls, so we’ve got kids that started at 5/6 as an additional needs kids, and we now have nearly a full adults team.
“Some of the guys are working in the bar at weekends, some of them have been through college and they’re back they’re still playing, they come down at weekends and have a drink with the parents, which is great. To see that from kids who were nearly too afraid to get out of the cars in the early days, it’s fantastic.
Indeed, matchday isn’t even the most important part of what keeps Clontarf going.
“It’s a really good fulcrum of the community,” D’Arcy adds.
“I know there are clubs around the country who don’t open the bar during the week or don’t have that (capacity), but the guys here are open every day and there might only be one or two people in.
“But it’s funny, my dad would be part of a group that come in on certain days at certain times for two hours, and it’s old school, they don’t even text, they just know whoever turns up will be there. There’s little pockets of people you see, I’d come in here after training on Tuesday and Thursday and there’s a group in and I’d know them all, in for three pints to say hello, and there’s always the alickadoos hanging around going, ‘What’s the team for the weekend?’ ‘Are you looking good?’ And giving you the instructions.
“But then they’re the first people who are here on a Saturday, going, ‘I told you so, there’s a pint.’ It’s kind of full circle, it’s great.”
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