Leinster Rugby Support the 2025 IRFU Charitable Trust Rugby Ball

Leinster Rugby this morning welcomed the IRFU Charitable Trust to UCD to highlight the upcoming IRFU Charitable Trust Rugby Ball, which takes place on Friday, 7^th March at the Mansion House, in Dublin. The IRFU Charitable Trust Rugby Ball is the Trust’s biggest fundraising event of the year, with all funds raised supporting seriously injured rugby players and their families across the four provinces of Ireland.

The IRFU Charitable Trust is a registered charity and was established in 1978 to help seriously injured rugby players and their families with every day needs such as medical care, wheelchairs, physical therapy and education, transport including vehicle adaptations, home alterations, and just being there for them when they need someone.

Last March, Leinster Rugby announced a formal partnership with the charity to try to help raise awareness of the Trust and the work they do to help the 36 players that are currently in receipt of the Trust’s help. 12 of the 36 injured former players are based in the 12 counties of Leinster or played with Leinster Rugby clubs.

The guest of honour at this year’s IRFU Charitable Trust Rugby Ball will be Ciarán McCarthy who was seriously injured playing rugby for CYM RFC, Terenure in 2002.  Ciarán recently launched his second book ‘Closer to Walking Again’ in the RCSI which brings readers on Ciarán’s journey following his life-changing accident, to his involvement in ground-breaking research in spinal cord injury repair, which the IRFU Charitable Trust supports.  Speaking at UCD this morning, Ciarán said, “On the 27^th January 2002 I became a paraplegic as a consequence of playing rugby. I don’t blame rugby at all. I blame a water-logged pitch!

The Charitable Trust has been very good to me. I had a lift installed right at the beginning in 2002, but it was becoming undependable and was requiring too much maintenance.  The Trust arranged for it to be replaced and that’s not cheap. They’ve been very good to me and consistently so over the last two decades.”

Former Leinster, Ireland and British & Irish Lions star Ollie Campbell is also a volunteer and a committee member of the Trust, and he commented, “There but for the grace of God, go any of us, who play or have ever played the game and I think the eternal admiration for the injured players is the way they have dealt with their injuries and the way they have gotten on with their lives.  They are extraordinarily independent and yet do need the support from time to time of the Charitable Trust.

“The rugby community in Ireland, it’s a very tightknit family that have been remarkably supportive of the Trust over many years.”

Leinster Head Coach Leo Cullen was in attendance this morning and said, “To have a body like the IRFU Charitable Trust that takes care of so many injured rugby players across all different levels of grassroots rugby, is great, and it’s a great partnership for us to be involved with as a club.

“The more people can get behind some of these events coming up like the Rugby Ball in terms of raising much needed funds for the Trust, the better, because we have all seen at first hand the amazing work that they do.”

This year, the IRFU Charitable Trust Rugby Ball, in association with the Vodafone Foundation, takes place on Friday, 7^th March at The Round Room at The Mansion House, kicking off at 7pm with a drinks reception kindly sponsored by Guinness.  The black tie event takes place the night before Ireland take on France in the Aviva for the Guinness Men’s Six Nations and there is definitely a French flavour to the night with one of the special guests being Dimitri Yachvili, the former French and Biarritz star, who earned 61 caps for France at scrumhalf.

The Trust also announced very special guest, Irish rugby legend, Eimear Considine Ryan, who recently announced her retirement after a glittering career and she will be joining Dimitri, with perhaps a surprise guest on the night!

As part of the ongoing partnership, Leinster Rugby will continue to support the IRFU Charitable Trust with proceeds from match day programme sales donated to the Trust, as well as tickets for all home match days and other fundraising support across the season.  

For further information, please check out the link here.

To view the original article on LeinsterRugby.ie click here. 

Photographs courtesy of Sportsfile.