BY JOHN DAVIDSON
Exclusive: Former Rugby League Ireland chairman Barry Coade has taken aim at European Rugby League (ERL) and the Irish governing body and questioned the veracity of their participation figures.
According to the ERL, Ireland’s number of registered participants increased from 480 in 2022 to 501 last year. According to the ERL, Ireland had 420 participants in 2021, with two years of consecutive growth.
However, in March Ireland was demoted to affiliate status by International Rugby League (IRL), due to non-compliance of IRL membership policy, with one component of that a lack of participation in the country. It is not eligible to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.
Coade, a former head of Rugby League Ireland (RLI), says the status of rugby league in Ireland is much worse than has been claimed.
“The figures in the ERL report for Ireland are miles off and RLI should be ashamed for bringing the sport and the country to where it is now,” he told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads.
“You could halve the figures for Ireland and still we would be talking blarney. When reality hits we can then deal with it and recover from the crash of rugby league in Ireland.
“This has happened over the past two years under the current RLI board.”
Coade has claimed that there are now only three clubs in Ireland that played a full season this year – Longhorns Dublin, Tribesmen Galway and City Exiles Dublin – and that sides Bambridge NI and Athboy did not field teams.
He said Bulls Cork did not field a full season of matches in 2024 and needed players from other teams to field a side for every game.
“Loughshinny and Athboy were kicked out and there was no real reason given,” Coade said.
“There’s no junior comp for under-12s. There’s only two women’s teams in Ireland – Exiles Dublin and Galway.
“All of Ireland’s national teams have a heavy reliance on UK-born players. Training for RLI Under-16s and Under-19s has been held in the UK with players having to pay for their own flights.
“How could we be demoted internationally if our number of registered participants increased? Which it did not, it reduced to about 150 players max in 2024.
“There is no funding for the clubs remaining despite Sport Ireland giving $35,000 Euro extra Covid funding for clubs, but no club got a cent.
“The last RLI accounts financials are still incomplete from 18 months ago and there are serious questions about those incomplete accounts.
“The ERL has been aware of this for the past 24 months. It gives me no pleasure as a past chair to expose this, but to save the sport here it must be done.”
The ERL has been approached for comment, as has RLI repeatedly. Both had not responded at the time of writing.
Another individual closely connected to the governing of rugby league in another European country, has also questioned the ERL’s process of how it records participation across the content, to rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads.
“I think those figures are spurious,” the source said.
“How do they arrive at those numbers? Are players counted more than once?”.
In March Coade and two others were given lifetime bans by the RLI.
