Club feels like it’s ‘a campaign to force rugby out of Tallaght’

REPEATED incidents of vandalism affecting a local rugby club feels like “a campaign to force rugby out of Tallaght”.

This is according to the honorary president of Tallaght RFC, Jim O’Connor, who spoke to The Echo after the club’s sign and containers on the Firhouse Road were vandalised last Friday.

The sign for the club was taken down and daubed with graffiti, including a scrawl of ‘f**k rugby’, and the shipping containers used by the club to store equipment and for changing were also graffitied.

Mr O’Connor told The Echo: “It’s just really, really grim but, at the same time, we’re going nowhere. “It seems to almost be a campaign to force rugby out of Tallaght, whether it’s people with a particular grudge where they think rugby is an upper-class sport without a place in Tallaght.

“They ripped down the sign, and that sign was screwed in, so it would’ve taken a fair effort to take it off.

“It really does indicate that someone’s really got it in for us. It’s distressing, but it’s also pointless for the toerags that are doing this because we’re not going anywhere.” The club’s pitch up near the National Basketball Arena has also been vandalised on several occasions, said Mr O’Connor, but he added that the club would not be deterred.

“I’m proud to be a member of the club and to be associated with it,” he said.

“I’ve met so many fantastic people through it.

“Tallaght will have a bad reputation for some people no matter what, but I’ve met so many brilliant people through the club and part of me is sad for the people who have to put up with this stuff.

“To the people who are doing this: you’re wasting your time, and you’re just sad, sad people.

“It’s just pathetic, really, that all they have in their lives is going around wrecking things.

“We have virtually nothing – we have two shipping containers, so they’re kicking down on a club with virtually nothing and they’re going after the little that we do have. I don’t get it.”