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Banbridge RFC

Irish rugby union club, based in Banbridge, Co. Down

Field	Value
teamname	Banbridge
image	Banbridge rfc logo.png
imagesize	120
fullname	Banbridge Rugby Football Club
union	IRE IRFU
countryflag	Northern Ireland
branch	Ulster
founded
region	Down
ground	Rifle Park, Banbridge
chairman	John Ewart
president	Cliff Harris
rugby director	Marc Eadie
coach	Head Coach- Rob Logan, Assistant Coaches- Paddy McAllister, Ricky Andrew & Rob Lyttle
captain	Alexander Thompson
league	All-Ireland Div. 2A
season	2024–25
position	6th.
pattern_la1	_goldborder
pattern_b1	_gold and claret horizontal
pattern_ra1	_goldborder
pattern_so1	_hoops_navy_gold
leftarm1	000066
body1	000066
rightarm1	000066
shorts1	000066
socks1	84233A

Banbridge Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club based in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland, in the province of Ulster. It plays in Division 2A of the Energia All-Ireland League since gaining promotion in 2017, and Division 1 of the Ulster Rugby Premiership. In addition to the senior team, the club fields another 4 adult junior-standard teams, a Women's Team, an U21, youth U18, U16, U14 and U12 teams (boys & girls), as well as a large mini rugby section and a Mixed Ability Rugby Team named The Barbarians.

Formation

Late in 1925, a group of former Banbridge Academy pupils interested in the game of rugby, got together to form a team to play Newry. The date of that historic first game was 2 January 1926. One of the players in that first game was F. E. McWilliam; later the well known Irish surrealist sculptor.

Banbridge spent the next 72 years in the ranks of Ulster junior rugby, with mixed fortunes.

Honours

All Ireland League 2A Winners: 1
- 2016-2017
Ulster Towns Cup: 3
- 1932–33, 1988–89, 1992–93
Ulster Junior Cup: 1
- 1989-90

Senior status

At the end of the 1997–98 season, Banbridge won the round-robin play-offs against the other provincial qualifying champions Naas, Monivea and Midleton. Their victory secured promotion to Division Four of the All Ireland League for the 1998–99 season. They have remained as an AIL senior club since then. In the 2016–2017 season Banbridge gained promotion to AIL 1B.

Touring team

The club also have a touring team called the Bluesox that have travelled to Oldham, Newcastle, Cardiff, Edinburgh, The Netherlands, Isle of Man, Czech Republic, Uxbridge, Estonia, Blackpool. Germany, Devon, Germany, Portugal, Irvine, Italy, Leeds, Cardiff, Aylesbury, Bristol, Newcastle, Galway, Carlise, Spain, Malta and Belgium since 1997. In 2020 the tour to Edinburgh was postponed to 2021 due to the Corona Virus Pandemic.

Notable current players

Rob Lyttle, Ulster rugby union team
Nick Timoney, Ulster rugby union team and Ireland national rugby union team
Mike Lowry, Ulster rugby union team and Ireland national rugby union team

Notable past players

Tyrone Howe, Ireland and British and Irish Lions
Simon Best, Ireland
Rory Best, Ulster rugby union team, Ireland national rugby union team and British and Irish Lions
James Hume, Ulster rugby union team, Ireland national rugby union team
Greg Jones, Ulster rugby union team
Jonny Murphy, Connacht rugby union team
Luke Marshall, Ulster rugby union team and Ireland national rugby union team
Eric O'Sullivan, Ulster rugby union team and Ireland national rugby union team

References

[https://www.irishrugby.ie/all-ireland-leagues-old/men/league-tables/ A.I.L. Tables 2024–25]

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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