The closer the neighbours, the more intense the rivalry. As befits a first meeting in the knockout stages between St Mary’s College and Terenure College on Saturday (kick-off 2pm), this latest and most meaningful instalment in the D6W derby is already a 4,000-plus sellout.
It will be the biggest crowd ever at a match in Templeville Road and the excitement has been building since these two finished first and fourth in the Energia All-Ireland League Division 1A table a fortnight ago.
“This has never happened in the history of the AIL, so it’s huge,” says the St Mary’s president Gareth Logan. “To think two clubs less than two kilometres away from each other can get themselves in a position to be in a semi-final against each other, it’s unreal.”
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Absence makes the heart grown fonder, it’s said, and the seven seasons St Mary’s were in Division 1B assuredly heightened the renewal of this D6W derby when the latter won promotion two seasons ago under Mark McHugh, after assisting Sean Cronin and then taking over when the latter joined Munster.
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Terenure bringing 6-8,000 supporters to three successive finals a the Aviva from 2022 and lifting the trophy for the first time in 2023 was a huge incentive for St Mary’s, as Logan concedes.
He jokes that most of the yellow cards in his playing career were against Terenure, and he regrets none of them. But he readily admits: “We went down and we learned an awful lot from what Terenure have done in their time. They’re a great club. They’re great people. So, we’re privileged to be neighbours.”
He adds that when the Templeville Road pitch was unplayable for a game against Ballynahinch earlier this season, Terenure readily offered their all-weather pitch at Lakelands Park.
Each of the four derbies in the last two seasons have drawn crowds of 3,000-plus and have been won by the home side, as it’s morphed into the biggest club rivalry in the country.
“I think it’s that community piece, that we literally share the same parish and we’re just on opposite sides of it,” says Logan, citing the story told by his Terenure counterpart David Lynagh emerging from his driveway to walk to one of these derbies and doing so along with a near 50-50 split among neighbours, before dividing into two on entering the ground.
“This is a local battle,” adds Logan. “You know when you’re growing up and there’d be a gang up the road and a gang down the road? That’s what this is like, but there’s more respect. We drink, we socialise, we break bread together day in, day out, but when it comes to match day and on that pitch, it’s just a completely different battle.”
Earning a home playoff match is the only additional “earner” in a club season, so this derby is a welcome little windfall for St Mary’s although hardly earth-shattering.
“The reality is you don’t get paid anything for making a final. Every penny every club makes goes back into the club. It’s not like you’re rubbing your hands together. In fact, you’re actually going: ‘Well, thank God we can pay for the pitch maintenance now’. Or ‘thank God we can fix that leak over here’.
“It’s not about the windfall. It’s about survival. And I think clubs could do with it [prize money]. When we won in 1999-2000,” says Logan in reference to Mary’s becoming the first club outside Munster to win the AIL, and of which he was a part, “it was 15 grand for winning the league – 15 grand if you won the playoff. There’s nothing now.”
The rivalry is fostered by the two feeder schools, which has been intensified by St Mary’s beating Terenure in both a Leinster Junior Cup final two seasons ago and the Senior Cup semi-finals this season en route to winning the trophy for the first time in 24 years. The SCT team will be in attendance, as most likely will celebrated former players such as Ireland captain Caelan Doris and Johnny Sexton.
To accommodate both 1A semi-finals being on Irishrugby+, the Clontarf-Lansdowne match in Castle Avenue will follow with a 4pm kick-off, and St Mary’s will show that game on a large screen in Templeville Road as well as hiring extra security and bar staff, and food outlets.
“We’ll also have ‘the Stars’, our Additional Needs team, who will be helping out at the gate for when people arrive. Talk to anybody and the hairs are up on the back of everybody’s neck. This is one of the special days in the history of the AIL and for both clubs.”
