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Ritchie McMaster

Ritchie McMaster

Geography teacher and Head of Yates's House at Campbell College Belfast; head coach of the school's 1st XV rugby team and former Ulster schools' rugby coach.

Sep 9, 2026

16:26
But I think a lot of people, I don't know, I want to hear from your experience, like a lot of people then just pack it in, you know, if they don't make it immediately, how do you sell the club game and keep people engaged in the game?
16:37
Yeah, you know, Peter, I understand the club game is for certain boys leaving school and for others it's not, you know.
16:44
But I think that at the moment we've a really vibrant club scene.
16:49
Like if you look at Armagh going pretty well in 1B and Stonians going pretty well in 1B and... littered throughout the All-Ireland League and even in the Junior Leagues we've teams who are going well and I think the best thing about club rugby is that you can train hard on a Tuesday train hard on a Thursday play on a Saturday and have a few beers with your mates afterwards and I think that's really important those are for me the staples of rugby so not everybody's going to be a pro rugby player you're right there's some cracking players coming through schools rugby both north and south of the border at the moment but Only a small percentage of them will move into the pro game.
17:29
But the thing about the club game as well that I like, you can still get opportunity that if you're a late developer, so say you don't really kick on until you're 19, 20, 21.
17:38
Like we look at Stuart McCluskey.
17:40
Stu played a year at Dungannon before he was picked up by Ulster.

29 MINS LATER

47:11
stick to the party line exactly but um in terms this is we sort of wrap up in terms of um the big questions and you sort of alluded to it but Beyond doing well in rugby and all that, what do you hope the boys who play for your teams take with them from rugby after they leave school?

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