Clubs and Club Volunteers Paint A Picture Of Grassroots Rugby

The IRFU is reporting a hugely positive response to its SROI Project with almost 2,000 people completing an individual survey and over 200 clubs participating in the club facilities audit.

SROI stands for Social Return On Investment and the IRFU’s SROI project is designed to calculate the economic and social value of rugby union in Ireland.

The IRFU SROI Project has two main objectives:

• Generate data that improves access to public funding for clubs, provinces and the IRFU.
• Assess and enhance the impact of rugby on Irish Society.

With so many clubs and club volunteers taking the time to contribute to the project, the date capture phase has now been completed.

This information will provide a clear picture of where Irish Rugby is in its continued recovery from a global pandemic and direct key projects and strategic planning for the next number of years.

The next phase of the project will be to collate and analyse the data. This will take place over the coming months with high level finding to be shared in due course.

The IRFU and provinces are also continuing their internal evaluation as part of the overall project.

A club prize was offered to incentivise completion the SROI Individual Survey, with Cobh Pirates confirmed as the winner. The club will receive a signed Ireland jersey,  a number of tickets to an Autumn Nations Series international and a skills development session run by the IRFU Rugby Development Department in their club.

“There is a hard working project team behind this initiative, and on their behalf I just wanted to express my sincere gratitude to every club and club volunteer who got involved,” said Ultan O’Callaghan, the IRFU’s Head of Rugby, Research and Growth.

“We now have workable data directly from rugby volunteers on the ground that will create a picture of our sport and Irish Rugby will be all the better for it. This kind of study has been carried out in other sports, but the response here is almost unprecedented. As we continue to work with stakeholders, it’s exactly what we need to make evidence-based decisions and design our future.”