Rugby For All - Vision Impaired Rugby

As part of Energia’s Rugby For All Campaign, we teamed up with Vision Sports Ireland and content creator Eric Roberts to put some of our favourite Leinster Rugby Players through their paces and learn what Vision Impaired Rugby is all about.

Leah Tarpey, Robbie Henshaw, Harry Byrne and Cormac Foley joined us in Energia Park to join Old Wesley RFC’s Vision Impaired team for a training session and a ‘friendly’ game. During this session, the Leinster Rugby players got to experience what it would be like to play rugby with a visual impairment by wearing a variety of sim specs. These sim specs demonstrate a number of conditions such as retinal degeneration, loss of vision and reduced visual acuity.

If you, or someone you know, is interested in getting involved with Vision Impaired (VI)  Rugby, there is an adult training date on Saturday November 9^th in Energia Park.

Vision Sports Ireland and Old Wesley RFC

Founded in 1988, Vision Sports Ireland is a registered charity and acts as the NGB for Blind/Vision Impaired Sport in Ireland, collaborating with a wide number of national governing bodies to make sport more accessible to people who are Blind/Vision Impaired. On World Sign Day -October 10th Vision Sports, Vision Ireland, DCU and Insight SFI Research Centre launched our research into the physical activity levels of adults and children who are blind/vision impaired which found that only 1 in 5 adults and 1 in 10 children who are blind/vision impaired are meeting the WHO National Physical Activity Guidelines.  

The Old Wesley VI Rugby team train once per month at Energia Park. The team will be traveling to London to compete in the Vision Impaired Rugby Autumn International where they will compete against England, Wales and Japan. Old Wesley VI will be the only mixed team with both males and females competing in the competition.

Get in touch!

New players and coaches/volunteers are always welcome to join the squad, email [email protected] or check out VisionSports.ie for up to date training information.