Kiwi Broughton proud of players’ application

The Bay of Plenty is, by all accounts, a beautiful part of New Zealand where rugby is king. It's also the place from where Ashbourne head coach Scotty Broughton hails.

Broughton grew up playing the oval-ball game, moved to Ireland and ended up joining Ashbourne RFC where he performed as a prop. He helped the club reach their first Towns' Cup final in 1999 where they lost to Navan. He was also involved in the coaching side of things when Ashbourne finally won the trophy in 2014.

The Ashbourne head coach knows all about life in the front row. He knows the demands, the challenges faced. He especially knows how important the pack can be to fulfilling a team's ambition.

The performance of Ashbourne's pack on Sunday was a huge factor in ensuring they defeated Mullingar and made it back to the Provincial Towns' Cup final for the first time since 2014.

They now face Kilkenny on Sunday 17th April. It's a re-match of the 2014 final and Ashbourne will be hoping that's a good omen.

Sunday's victory was built on a coherent, hard-grafting display. All the players were involved in helping the Meath side recover from a slow start to deservedly claim their place in the final. Broughton was anxious to thank all the players for the way they carved their 23-15 win out of stone.

He also praised their dedication and commitment to training all year. Every time he mentioned the forwards, the pack, his eyes sparkled and his face broke into a broad smile because it was Ashbourne's dominance up-front that won them a place in the final. Nobody new that better than the Bay of Plenty native.

"Anybody who knows anything about rugby knows, the front-row, the second-row, the back row, is a unit and our pack was brilliant today," he added with a sense of pride before going on to say how this year a specialist scrum coach, David Duff, was brought in to help bolster the forward division. All the work certainly paid off on Sunday.

"It has really shown on the pitch, on day's like today," said the head coach

While anxious to praise everybody involved in Sunday's Broughton couldn't help but highlight the contribution of three players in particular - captain Sean McKeon, hooker James McCaghy and 40-something prop Mark Behan. They typified the kind of hard-running and relentless ethos that underpinned the team's victory.

"I'm an old school rugby man and the first person you look to provide solidity is the tighthead prop and Mark has been a mainstay for us in that position for years, but again he's got some good guys around him because it's all about the team, but Mark was great. Nobody knows what age he is. He said he's 49 but I reckon he has been 49 for the last five years!!"

Broughton felt McKeon's return helped Ashbourne turn a corner. "Sean was out injured but it was no surprise that when he came on for us in the Dundalk game away before Christmas we ended up winning. That was a catalyst for us. He came off the bench that day and scored the winning, bonus point, try. He's a big player for us."

Then there is McCaghy the hooker who retired a few years ago only to make a Lazarus-like comeback. He was in excellent form on Sunday.

"Three years ago it looked like James would have to give up the game because of a neck injury but he has come back to help us out this year and has been inspirational," added the head coach.

Last Autumn injury-hit Ashbourne looked to be facing a long, hard season indeed. They couldn't buy a win in their opening tranche of games. That was until near the end of 2021 when they travelled to take on Dundalk and, with McKeon's help, started to put a string of good results together that propelled them away from the real threat of relegation.

Now here they are in the final of the Provincial Towns' Cup - a competition that was first played in 1888. It remains a coveted trophy among junior clubs. Any team that wins it must be prepared to graft long and hard.

"What I said to the boys in the dressing room before the game was this was all about them. This is massive for Ashbourne RFC and it's great for the club but what some of these guys have been through in terms of coming back from injury, the sacrifices they have made, is amazing.

"It's not nice when you are losing but they stuck at it and won five or six games after Christmas, and we needed to. We got a good fourth place (in the Leinster League Div 1A) but it's all about the players. I can't fault their attitude, their workrate, the effort they have put in throughout the season."

Broughton admitted Ashbourne didn't play as well as they can on Sunday. He talked about how his team "conceded a series of penalties at breakdown time"; how his team found themselves 0-9 down before they knew it. Such a slow start could scupper Ashbourne's ambitions in the final, he's acutely aware of that.

In the next week or so Broughton and his players will be working on ironing out any difficulties they encountered on Sunday.

The Towns' Cup is within reach. They don't want to lose focus now.