Brotherly Love Helping Dublin University In Push For Promotion

The silence that settles over College Park on a midweek evening ahead of a big Energia All-Ireland League home match is different at this time of year. It is heavier, thicker with consequence.

The long shadows stretch across the outfield as the light fades and every carry, every collision, every call from the touchline seems to echo a little louder.

There are four games left in the Energia All-Ireland League’s regular season, and for David Walsh, a final year Geography and Geoscience student, and captain of the Dublin University first XV for the first time, the margins between satisfaction and heartbreak feel impossibly thin.

On one side of the 23-year-old’s life sits a thesis due in a couple of weeks on mechanisms, pathways and kinetics of calcium carbonate crystallisation in relation to fluorine pollutants.

A mouthful in comparison to the other, where the raw, unforgiving theatre of Division 1B rugby lies, where last season Dublin University were fighting for survival, and this year they are battling for silverware and promotion.

Trinity sit second in the table, three points behind Old Wesley, locked in a rivalry that has sharpened with every passing round. One slip-up proved quite costly along the way, but when Wesley dropped points last weekend, the door creaked open once more.

Tony Smeeth’s charges have four games left to define their season – UCC at home, then a trip to Naas after a break in fixtures, before City of Armagh and Blackrock College close it out. Promotion back to Division 1A is the prize at the end of that road, but Walsh refuses to let the conversation stretch that far.

“I feel like that is kind of one of those things where it’s always going to be sitting in the back of your head a little bit. But at the same time, it’s like I’d rather be the hunter than the hunted,” he told IrishRugby.ie.

“Just something that one of our coaches said yesterday, and I completely agree with him. This isn’t our league to win at the moment. This is Old Wesley’s league to win, and we kind of just have to keep going.

“This Saturday it’s UCC. Once that game’s done, we move on to Naas and we just take it game by game. There’s no point in looking at the long run.

“Coming into the season off the back of the last two seasons, I think if you had told us that we’d be battling for fourth spot to make play-offs, I think everyone would have turned around and be absolutely delighted with that.

“Just the fact that we are where we are now, it’s a credit to the hard work all the boys have put in. There’s no point in getting ahead of ourselves just yet.”

That restraint has defined them. For a College outfit, youth is both a gift and a vulnerability. Twelve months ago, heading into round 15, Smeeth’s side were staring at the bottom half of the table. Eighth place. Four fixtures left.

Every encounter a scrap for second tier survival. They were young, painfully young at times, and when injuries struck, the depth simply was not there. Results slipped. Margins went against them.

By the time the relegation play-off arrived against Cashel, it had the air of a final nobody wanted to be in. It took a Matty Lynch penalty, struck under suffocating pressure, to secure their Division 1B status.

Relief washed over College Park that afternoon, but relief is not ambition. Survival is not legacy. This season feels like it belongs to a different team.

“I think there’s a couple of factors that come into it. To be honest, I think probably the biggest thing this year that we didn’t really have last year has been squad depth. Last year we had a good kind of 20 players who were able to kind of compete with the standards.

“As a College team, you’re a lot younger than a lot of the lads, you’re a lot smaller. You’re playing against guys and they’ve got their wife and their kids standing on the sidelines and you’re here being like, ‘I hope mum has dinner when we get home!’. So that’s kind of one of the things.

“And then once those kind of 20 lads get injured, you’re starting to rely on 18, 19-year-olds where maybe they’re not really at that standard yet.

“I think the other thing this year was we got a new forwards coach and a new kind of defence head coach in Killian Hickey and Shane Murray (pictured above). Those two have been unbelievable this year.

“Killian’s a young enough coach in terms of AIL standard. He’s only four or five years older than me. He understands how to get the best out of young guys, because we are a very young team compared to all the others.

“Then Shane just pushes that whole thing with brutal honesty and that’s the only way to get through this season. And look, it’s worked with us. It’s been working well this season. I think they’re probably the two main factors.”

Depth has changed everything. Where once injuries meant crisis, now they mean opportunity. Fresh legs off the bench. Competition in training. A relentlessness that was absent twelve months ago. The belief has grown quietly, week by week.

Nothing encapsulated that shift more than their trip to Instonians last Saturday. The Belfast side had not lost at home since returning to the All-Ireland League in 2022. 33 straight wins at their Shaw’s Bridge fortress. The number carried weight in the build-up.

However, Trinity became the team to topple Inst and end that incredible home record. The belief from that 29-12 bonus point victory has been felt throughout the group.

“That was massive,” admitted Walsh. “It was a weird one going up there because we weren’t even concerned with the fact that that’s how many games they had won. We were looking at it more like if we can pull this one off, it will set us up really nicely for the run-in.

“There are things like that that kind of do come into play. But at the end of the day, it’s more of a game-by-game basis. There’s no point in looking at the long run or what the other team has.

“It’s kind of looking at yourselves and being like, ‘Do we have enough belief in ourselves that we can go here and we can get this job done?’. That was unbelievable, to be honest.”

In ending Inst’s proud run, they left with five precious league points and a sense that something tangible was forming. They battled hard throughout, leading by two points at half-time and eventually prevailing thanks to tries from Alex Finlay, Davy Colbert, Lynch, and Paul McConkey.

Walsh’s leadership has grown alongside the team’s ascent. In Trinity, the captaincy is not bestowed upon a player by a head coach or director of rugby behind closed doors. It is voted on. Earned publicly.

Speaking about becoming this season’s captain, he explained: “I don’t know how many other clubs do it, but the way we do it in Trinity is it’s the squad come in, we give our own speech, so anyone who wants to run for captain.

“Then the players pick who they want to lead them for the year. I really like that way. It’s being chosen by your peers, it’s being chosen by your team-mates.

“I feel like it is a bigger honour then, because it’s not the coach picking you, it’s the 14 guys who are standing out in the pitch with you every Saturday. They’re kind of going, ‘He’s the one we want to lead us this year’. So it’s a massive honour.”

Number 8 Walsh is part of a powerful pack, a unit that has been central to Trinity’s rise. And this year, leadership carries an added layer of personal significance, with his two younger brothers, Mark and Michael, lining out alongside him.

“Michael and Mark are my two little brothers. That was also a big factor in why I was going for it this year. It’s going to be pretty cool to be the captain of the year both of my brothers are playing with me.

“I was lucky enough to play with Mark last year, and then Michael was in sixth year. But the year before that, Mark and Michael got to play a Senior Cup campaign together (with Blackrock College).

“I was always kind of jealous of Mark, and then it just so happened that it all worked out. Michael did a bit better in his Leaving Cert than we all expected, and he ended up getting enough points.

“Once me and Mark were onto him enough, he decided he’d come here (to Trinity) and give it a shot, and now we’re getting to play with each other every weekend, so it’s unbelievable.

I remember chatting to a few of the old lads from the club, and they were saying that they think this is the first time we’ve ever had three brothers play on an AIL team together in the club. It’s pretty good, it’s a nice thing to have.”

There is a symmetry to it. All three went to Blackrock. David is three years older than Mark, and four older than Michael. He watched them win the Leinster Schools Senior Cup in 2024, while he was already carving his own path with Dublin University’s Under-20s.

“I was in my second year of college, watching the two lads play in the Senior Cup, sitting up in the stand being like, ‘Wow, I’ve actually never been so jealous of the two of them’, and that is a very rare thing for me to admit!

“I always dreamed that one day maybe you’d be able to convince them to come here, and it did take a lot of convincing because they’re both savage players. A lot of other places were trying to get them to come.

“But got them in, took them for a tour of Trinity, and they realised this really could be the move. Then once they were in, it was kind of the past is the past now. We’re all here, so let’s look forward to what is about to come and have a bit of craic with each other.”

The family thread runs deeper still. Walsh began playing at Lansdowne FC at five years old, staying through to Under-17 level. His father Kieran remains the Honorary Secretary there. Rugby is woven into the fabric of their household.

“I played from Under-5s up until U-17s in Lansdowne. In fourth year, I got brought up to the senior squad in Blackrock. So, I had to stop playing in Lansdowne. My dad is still the Hon Sec in Lansdowne, we have a very big family connection there.”

Now with Trinity, he stands on the brink of something transformative. Their round 11 defeat to Highfield was a painful reminder of just how unforgiving Division 1B is.

Despite a campaign full of strong performances, one single loss can bring you down to earth, but what happened afterwards – winning three games on the bounce, including overcoming Old Wesley at home and and Instonians away – were not just results, they were statements of intent.

“Those games where we do fall on the wrong side of the result, it’s what learnings can we take from that, where did we go wrong, where did we slip up, or where was our game just not good enough, and was that, like, the reason they exploited us or beat us that day.

“Then it’s just trying to build on them for the next week, and that’s kind of worked pretty well for the last three games to be honest. After Highfield, I think everyone said we really could have come away with a result here, but they were better than us on the day.

“We made too many mistakes, so where do we build from here now? And we went back to the drawing board, had a look at that performance, recognised we weren’t good enough here, this is where we were good. We kind of took the learnings from it, and it’s paid off now.”

That capacity for analysis mirrors his academic world. Diagnose. Adjust. Improve. It is no coincidence that a student immersed in Earth systems speaks instinctively about feedback loops and incremental change.

There is a quiet steel in that approach. No grand proclamations. No indulgence in hypothetical scenarios. Just preparation, performance, repeat.

Somewhere between laboratory reports and lineout calls, between thesis drafts and defensive drills, Walsh is navigating the most demanding months of his young life to date. Captaincy. Final exams. A title race. The weight is real, but so too is the opportunity.

Last season ended in a nervy play-off, a penalty that kept them afloat in Division 1B. This season could end with a trophy and a return to the Energia All-Ireland League’s top flight. Four games. Eighty minutes at a time.

The mouth-watering final stretch begins with UCC at home on Saturday afternoon, another University heavyweight, another side with ambition and pride. Walsh’s focus does not waver.

“We’ve got our own goals for each block, we’ll take UCC this weekend, go out and do whatever we can against them. Then we’ll kind of focus on the last three games. And it’s the same as every kind of game.

“Those last three games, they’re going to be just as hard as any other one we’ve played this year because those teams have their own things to be fighting for.

“If we don’t get our stuff right, and we worry about them too much, then things can go either way. So there’s no point in looking at the other teams. It is about looking at what’s in front of us next, and what can we do to get ourselves ready for that one,” he added.

– Photos provided by Rory O’Sullivan Sexton (@filmbyrossi)

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