Tallaght RFC has originally planned to run from Thomond Park in Limerick to our home pitch in Firhouse on Saturday the 22nd of August. The plan was for 40 runners from the club to cover the trip running 4-5km each over a 24 hour period from midday on the Saturday through to midday on the Sunday. The run in aid of the mental health charity Aware was originally launched in July.

Initially there was a target set of 10,000 euro. However when the run was announced in July just on social media by the club and the individual runners, the response was frankly astonishing. In just two weeks, the target of 10,000 euro had been donated. A revised target of 15,000 euro was set.

However because the route would take taken us through counties in lockdown, the plans had to be changed on Thursday. Instead Tallaght would attempt to cover the same distance by running for 24 hours doing laps on our home pitch in Firhouse. So they started at 12 noon on Saturday and kept going despite the wind and rain. The good thing about the re-arrangement was that the runners’ children, friends and pets were able to join them for a lap or two. Passing motorists beeped in support as the teams ran through the night in prearranged shifts. On Sunday morning the youths teams and their coaches joined in to keep the running going.

The runners covered closer to 300km in the end and the final laps were completed by coach Gary Brennan and the IRFU director of rugby development Colin McEntee. All of this drove the fundraising on and the target of 15,000 euro was reached early on Sunday morning.

The club is hugely proud to have generated this much money for such an important cause. We want to thanks everyone who made a donation and all our runners and their friends and family who supported them. We want to thanks everyone at Aware and also Alan Quinlan, Donncha O’Callaghan and everyone in the media who helped publicise the run.

We want to thank everyone at the club who helped organise the event and who volunteered to man the station to support the runners on the day. A special thanks must go to PRO Emma-Louise Doyle who’s ninja level social media skills drove the fundraising on. Anne Kavo Kavanagh was no only one of the runners but also supplied great photos of the event, a selection of which you can see below.

Last but not least, everyone at the club wants to thank our Chairman Luke Tyrrell who originally came up with the idea and put in a huge amount of work with Aware to make it happen. There are still ambitions to do the run from Limerick to Tallaght next year should it be possible. But this was still a wonderful day when the club pulled together for a great cause.

The donation link is still live for another week so it’s not too late to donate here.