Latest news with #BrianODriscoll
Irish Times
a day ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
From all-out brawls to eye-gouging and worse: a brief history of Lions Tour violence
Expect some conflict. Sit back and watch the claret flow. Take in some dust-ups and assaults, and hope the Lions get their retaliation in first. Bin the political correctness. The game against Argentina last Saturday at the Aviva Stadium was not like what may be coming down the line at the Lions, with a reasonable chance of some traditional brutality on the field. Why? Because that's the way Lions' tours always have been, a journey of character tests, challenges and physical melees, this first tranche of five episodes beginning on Saturday against Western Force in Perth before Queensland Reds, Waratahs, ACT Brumbies and an Australian and New Zealand invitational mix. The run-in games are, as history has shown, a softening-up process, a mincing machine where club players on the fringes of the national side, as well as those in Joe Schmidt's Wallabies squad, are playing to hold their place or earn their place. READ MORE The reputations of the touring players are there to be shredded, with folklore telling us nefarious methods come with the playbook. It has always been that way, and not just in the last century. From Duncan McRae raining down punches on Ronan O'Gara in 2001, to the tour-ending spear tackle on Brian O'Driscoll by New Zealand's Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu in 2005 and the gouging of Luke Fitzgerald at Loftus Versfeld in 2009, foul play has featured prominently on Lions tours. 'This is your f**king Everest, boys,' Jim Telfer told a room of bowed heads in the 1997 Living with the Lions documentary. [ Lions v Western Force: Kick-off time, team news, where to watch and more ] That's the way they have always set up, primed to play on the edge and it's the way the opposition have also been hardwired over the last 50 years or more. The most famous bout of thuggery was in South Africa 1974, although the plan for Lions players to punch their nearest rival had a gestation period of six years following the 1968 tour and a match against Eastern Transvaal. Derek Quinnell of the Lions is tackled during the brutal 1974 tour match against South Africa. Photograph: Allsport There Wales prop John O'Shea was the first Lion ever to be sent off for foul play. Pelted with oranges on his way to the locker room, he was blamed for the punch-up. His defence was that he had retaliated after an opponent attacked scrumhalf Roger Young. Leaving the pitch O'Shea was then hit by a spectator, triggering a tunnel brawl that involved reserves, officials and police as play continued. Then 1968 tumbled forwards to 1971 when the New Zealand touring squad travelled to Canterbury. The Lions won the match, but maybe lost in the battle when Irish prop Ray McLoughlin chipped a bone at the base of his left thumb and Sandy Carmichael was hospitalised with multiple fractures of his cheekbone. Carmichael, the first player to win 50 caps for Scotland, was doing what props do and bored into the opposition at scrums. For that, Alister Hopkinson, the opposing prop, landed a few punches on the Scot with the damaging shot that fractured his cheek bone in five places coming later via a backhanded fist that caught him in a lineout. McLoughlin's thumb injury occurred when a fight erupted with players from both sides pummelling each other near the touchline. Not the most accurate of blows, McLoughlin landed his shot on the head of Grizz Wyllie, breaking his left thumb. Grizz also punched Fergus Slattery as the Blackrock player unwisely held on to his jersey. The 1974 tour to South Africa was broiling before it even took off and its essence was the personality of captain Willie John McBride and his '99 one-in, all-in' spirit. Speaking to The Telegraph four years ago, former England forward Roger Uttley recalled the mood set by McBride when the squad had gathered in London. 'Before we had even left the country, we were gathered in the Churchill Hotel just near Marble Arch and outside we could hear the anti-apartheid demonstrations in full flow,' Uttley said. 'Willie spoke and you could hear a pin drop. 'Gentlemen. If you have any doubts about going on this tour, I want you to be big enough to stand up now and leave the room. I have been to South Africa before and there is going to be a lot of intimidation, a lot of cheating. So if you're not up for a fight, there's the door'. 'No one moved. I can still remember the silence and the hairs on the back of the neck rising.' The third Test in Port Elizabeth was the defining match of the series for its choreographed violence. Known as the Battle of the Boet Erasmus Stadium, Scotland's Gordon Brown punched his opposite number, Johan de Bruyn, so hard the Orange Free State man's glass eye flew out and landed in the mud. 'So, there we are, 30 players, plus the ref, on our hands and knees scrabbling about in the mire looking for this glass eye,' recalled Brown, who died from cancer in 2001. 'Eventually, someone yells 'Eureka!' whereupon De Bruyn grabs it and plonks it straight back in the gaping hole in his face.' After Brown's death, De Bruyn presented his widow with the glass eye in a specially made trophy. When another fight broke out, the Wales full-back JPR Williams sprinted over half the length of the pitch to deliver a right hook to second row 'Moaner' van Heerden. 'That's not something I'm proud of,' orthopaedic surgeon Williams said later. It wasn't always South Africa who transgressed, although the Springboks, of all the nations toured by the Lions, prided themselves on physicality. In 1989 the second Test against the Wallabies became the Battle of Ballymore when the Lions scrumhalf Rob Jones kicked off with Nick Farr-Jones at a scrum put-in. From there it was bedlam, with the commentary left to call it as it happened. 'They are all joining in now. There're punches galore. It's an all-in brawl,' the exasperated commentator said. 'It was [initially] between the half backs, but everyone joined in.' The wasn't much French referee Rene Hourquet could do about it, and when Dai Young later aimed a boot at Steve Cutler in a ruck another free-for-all kicked off. With the century turning, three tours in a row in 2001, 2005 and 2009 would see three Irish players targeted in different violent ways. In 2001 Ronan O'Gara's came up against New South Wales Waratahs midway through the second half. The images are of a kneeling McRae raining down the punches. Replays show that between the glancing blows and the fully landed punches as he held O'Gara with his left arm, the Munster outhalf took 11 shots resulting in eight stitches around his left eye. O'Gara's running commentary to the doctor as he was getting stitched in the changing room said it all. Duncan McRae, left, and Ronan O'Gara during that 2001 Lions game in Sydney. Photograph: Adam Pretty/Allsport 'F**king cheap shots,' he said breathing heavily as the doctors carefully pulled his face together. 'Caught me with the first one. Couldn't f**king defend myself. F**king trying to look after the ball.' The spear tackle on O'Driscoll four years later might come across as the most calculated act. It took just over 40 seconds in the 2005 first Test against New Zealand in Christchurch to end his participation in the match and the tour and to sideline him for seven months. Calculated how? Well, the ball was with New Zealand lock Ali Williams 30 feet away when Umaga and Mealamu almost cartoonishly turned the Lions' centre upside down and rammed him into the ground dislocating his shoulder. 'It happened in slow motion and I knew I had to get my head out of the way,' O'Driscoll said on Irish television after the tour. 'My shoulder took the brunt of the fall.' In Umaga's book Up Close, published in 2007, in a classless comment he called O'Driscoll a 'sook' or crybaby. In the 2009 tour to South Africa, the Lions lost their first Test match, making the second vital to save the series. On the day the Loftus Versfeld Stadium bristled with hostility. 'The South African fans appeared to be waving as our bus approached, but as we got closer we realised they were all doing the 'w****r' sign,' Welsh prop Adam Jones write in Bomb, his 2015 autobiography. Again, the match was brutal, physical and unforgiving and as Fitzgerald found out it quickly became insidious. Less than a minute in Springbok flanker Schalk Burger gouged the Irish winger. 'Luke said he had to pull Burger's hand off his eyes. That's not sport, that's not the way we play. It is not the gentlemanly thing to do – it's disgusting,' Wales and Lions' scrumhalf Mike Phillips said afterwards. And Burger's punishment? A slap on the wrist. He sat it out for 10 minutes. With the Lions, that's the way they roll.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Folau carry 'doesn't half put a smile on my face' - North's iconic Lions moment
Twelve years is a long time, and not just in June 2025 and George North is on the north bank of the Brisbane River, in the shadow of Story Bridge, practising yoga in the winter sunshine."It's probably the most Australian thing I've ever done," says the former Wales sedate scene is worlds away from the pulsating energy of the moment in 2013 when North entered British and Irish Lions not the finger-wagging 60-metre solo try in the first Test - as jaw-droppingly brilliant as it the 60th minute of the second Test in Melbourne. North has just collected a through-the-legs pass from Brian O'Driscoll and is faced by his opposite number Israel Folau, a winger of similar 6ft 4in and 17-stone stature, with nowhere to wrapped up by Folau's tackle, North decides to pump his legs and, ball in hand, scoops up his opposite number before using the Australia winger - now upside down on North's back - as an improvised human battering ram. Wallabies were being knocked over like skittles."A bit silly to be honest," is the way North remembers it. "Not my best idea," he moments have come to define the 137-year history of the Lions. JPR or Jeremy Guscott's drop-goals, Robert Jones squaring up to Nick Farr-Jones, Sir Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer's team talk, Matt Dawson's dummy, O'Driscoll's knife-through-butter try, the list goes North's moment occurred in the second Test, the one the Lions lost by a single point, is almost forgotten. It came to define the 2-1 series victory over Australia in reveals that when he meets Lions fans, as he did on his recent 10-day working holiday in Australia, there is one thing they want to talk about."It's probably the Izzy Folau carry," he says. "And then it gets on to the try and the excitement and drama the Test series brought. Going to the decider [in 2013] was incredibly special as a player, but as a fan it was also as incredible."I never thought I'd be able to play for the Lions, playing for your country for me is the biggest honour anyone can award you and I never thought I'd be in the conversation to be a Lion, let alone tour two times."But to then say you've had an impact that people remember, an iconic moment, it doesn't half put a smile on my face." 'Lions history is so unique, so special' Despite already being a Six Nations winner, life "got busy" for North after that tour."I'd just joined Northampton, so 2013 put me into a different bracket when I came home and it was amazing to be recognised for what you do," he what does he think about when it comes to the British and Irish Lions? Is it that 2013 tour, or the 2017 tour to New Zealand, which for him ended in injury before the Test matches began?"I think about the history of the Lions. It's something that's so unique, so special, that when you're in that environment you can't help but feel it and carry it and that's something I think is incredible," he says."That honour you have and the responsibility you have for that jersey certainly kept me fighting hard every day and at my best."From a personal point of view 2013 was probably the best rugby I've ever played. It was certainly a tour that for me was an incredible experience, on the field, the players I got to play with, what we did and the ability to tour an amazing country like Australia."North, who went on to win 121 caps for Wales, is still only 33 and now playing for Provence in the French second division, from where he will watch the Lions as a fan. Does he miss it?"Do you know what, when I was [in Australia] I was going 'maybe I can still go', like most ex-players," he reveals."I absolutely loved my tour, what I was able to achieve and do, but it's time for these boys now to find their feet."Does he have a prediction for 2025?"I was thinking about this. Controversially I'm going to go Australia win the first one, Lions win the second, and it goes down to the third and Lions win 2-1."That's what happened against Australia in 1989, I say."Do you know what, I was a 1992 baby," he chuckles. "I'll have to take your word for it."
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
Spear and loathing: The reckless New Zealand tackle that ended Brian O'Driscoll's Lions tour and changed rugby
Brian O'Driscoll is sick of talking about it. Tana Umaga says anyone still asking needs to put it behind them. But here we are, 20 years on from the tackle that ties them together – and people do still want to talk about it. That moment – in the first minute of the first Test of the Lions series against New Zealand on June 25th, 2005 – still pops up on TikTok and YouTube feeds, still sparks arguments on Reddit threads, still leads hour-long podcasts when players reminisce about how they saw it. And it still inspires articles like this one, long after the men involved have made up and moved on. It all happened on the edge of shot. You see O'Driscoll throw himself into a ruck, then play moves on one phase. The camera follows Richie McCaw as he carries the ball into contact and by the time O'Driscoll reappears, he is face down on the ground, rolling around in agony. Exactly what went on in the few seconds in between would not become clear for a few months, when O'Driscoll found a camcorder video in his cubby hole at Leinster . It had been shot, and sent on, by an Irish fan who had been in the stands. By then, rugby was already working on redrafting the laws around the contact area, the reputations of both teams had taken a beating and O'Driscoll was dealing with the aftermath of an injury that meant he would never be quite the same player again. READ MORE But that is beginning with the ending. To understand why the tackle blew up the way it did, you have to put it in the context of everything around it. The 2005 Lions tour was one of the most eagerly anticipated in history. Between them, the four home nations had beaten the All Blacks in New Zealand twice in 100 years of trying. Combined as the Lions, they had won a solitary series out of 10, in 1971. In 2005, Ireland were still waiting for their first victory against them, home or away (whisper it, but 20 years later, Scotland are waiting still). A New Zealand tour might be the hardest task in the sport today, but back then there was no doubt about it. This one was supposed to be different, however. For the first time, one of the four home nations had won the World Cup. The man who coached England to that World Cup success , Clive Woodward, was now leading the Lions. Neither of which, as it turned out, would do them any good. For one thing, the game had changed so much in the two years since the 2003 World Cup that the England squad, who had been flogged into playing for their clubs the week after their victory, had started to fall apart. They had been overtaken by Ireland, who finished above them in the Six Nations both years, and Wales, who had just won a grand slam. Woodward, in what felt like a midlife crisis, had quit rugby and gone into football with Southampton. His imaginative approach to coaching had been exactly what a gnarly England team needed. His relationship with the older players meant they felt able to cherrypick the best of it and reject everything else. But the Lions did not know any better and the tour was launched with plastic wristbands branded with the slogan Woodward had commissioned, personalised iPods loaded with a selection of his favourite motivational music and sheet music with the words and score of the anthem he had written for the tour. Keen to deal with every last detail, Woodward consulted a Maori elder about how his team ought to meet the haka, which was how his captain, O'Driscoll, ended up kneeling down and yanking up a fistful of grass from the pitch to throw at the All Blacks before the start of the match. There must have been Maori scholars watching who understood the significance of the gesture, but everyone else was baffled and the All Blacks they were playing against looked enraged. O'Driscoll's pre-game speech had been about how he wanted every player to win his battle with the man opposite him. ('I know one thing,' he said, 'Tana Umaga is not going to have the upper hand on me'.) In their very first contact on the pitch, O'Driscoll went into that ruck, Keven Mealamu grabbed him around one leg, Umaga took the other, and the two of them tipped him up like a bottle of ketchup and dropped him down on the ground. Lions coach Clive Woodward shows journalists a frame-by-frame breakdown of the 2005 spear tackle on Brian O'Driscoll by New Zealand's Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu. Photograph: Getty Images O'Driscoll stretched out his right arm to break the fall and reduce the risk of a broken neck but ended up dislocating his shoulder instead. He knew straight away that his tour was over. On one wing, Gareth Thomas set off chasing the linesman 'who had walked on to the pitch during the preceding passage of play and simply ordered the pair to 'leave him alone'. I screamed at him to get involved, but there was panic in his eyes.' The referee, Joel Jutge, missed it too, so neither Mealamu nor Umaga were punished for it during the match. Years later, Jutge would admit he had the decision wrong. It is harder to understand how the citing commissioner, Willem Venter, decided that there was nothing to see. Two minutes into the biggest Test they had played since 1997, the Lions had lost their captain. They played dismally without him and ended up losing 21-3. As much pain as he was in, O'Driscoll noticed that, unlike his All Black teammate Justin Marshall, Umaga did not approach to ask after him as he left the field for treatment. Which annoyed him because it felt like an insult on top of an injury. Umaga won an award for his sportsmanship when he gave first aid to Wales's Colin Charvis in a Test a couple of years earlier, but on this occasion he was preoccupied with leading his team. Umaga was almost as standoffish after the game. 'It's too late for explanations now,' he said a few days later. 'I could try to explain it but what would that achieve?' Woodward, meanwhile, decided to hold a press conference where he went over the tackle, frame by frame. He had hired Alastair Campbell to run his media team and he made a total balls-up of the job (Campbell may 'disagree agreeably' about this). 'I understood the frustration,' Paul O'Connell wrote later, 'but I didn't think putting the incident up on a big screen in slow motion, in front of a roomful of journalists, was going to help our cause. You can maybe do that when you've won the game, but not when you've been absolutely hockeyed.' The Lions came off like sore losers and the All Blacks were disarmed to find that they were the bad guys. It did not help that their head coach, Graham Henry, did not seem to understand exactly why the Lions and their supporters were so upset. If anything, he felt they were being unfairly criticised. 'The sustained personal attack they launched against me was hard to believe and even harder to stomach,' Umaga wrote in his autobiography. O'Driscoll called the tackle deliberate and there was, and still is, a lot of conjecture that the tackle was calculated to knock him out of the series, something the All Blacks denied. Fans turned up at a New Zealand training session in Wellington, in June, 2005, to let Tana Umaga know what they thought of his part in the spear tackle that ended Brian O'Driscoll's Lions tour. Photograph:The fairest explanation comes from Thomas: 'They were hard men who saw their chance to do what we all do if the opportunity arises – play fast and loose with the laws.' Looking back, these were the wild-west years of the sport, when men trained and played like professionals, but were treated and cared for like amateurs. The administration, coaching and medical support had barely begun to catch up to how punishing rugby had become and a lot of people were hurt as a result. [ Gordon D'Arcy: Lions made lots of errors against Argentina - now is the time to eradicate those mistakes Opens in new window ] O'Driscoll was one of them. World Rugby stood by Venter, claiming that on the basis of the footage available the incident did not necessarily meet what they called the 'red-card test' of 'would the player have been sent off had the match official seen the offence?'. It was only when the amateur footage came out that they realised how wrong they had got it. By the end of the year, they had changed the guidance around spear tackles and referees were instructed to start with a red card, and work backwards from that if there was any mitigation. So, the game changed in those few seconds. While O'Driscoll, and everyone else, hates to think it, the truth, as he wrote in his autobiography, is that 'sometimes in sport you don't get to choose all of the things they remember you for'. - Guardian
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Spear and loathing: 20 years since tackle on Brian O'Driscoll that changed rugby
Brian O'Driscoll is sick of talking about it. Tana Umaga says anyone still asking needs to put it behind them. But here we are, 20 years to the day since the tackle that ties them together – and people do still want to talk about it. That moment – in the first minute of the first Test of the Lions series against New Zealand – still pops up on TikTok and YouTube feeds, still sparks arguments on Reddit threads, still leads hour-long podcasts when players reminisce about how they saw it. And it still inspires articles like this one, long after the men involved have made up and moved on. It all happened on the edge of shot. You see O'Driscoll throw himself into a ruck, then play moves on one phase; the camera follows Richie McCaw as he carries the ball into contact and by the time O'Driscoll reappears he is face down on the ground, rolling around in agony. Exactly what went on in the few seconds in between would not become clear for a few months, when O'Driscoll found a camcorder video in his cubby hole at Leinster. It had been shot, and sent on, by an Irish fan who had been in the stands. By then, rugby was already working on redrafting the laws around the contact area, the reputations of both teams had taken a beating and O'Driscoll was dealing with the aftermath of an injury that meant he would never be quite the same player again. But that is beginning with the ending. To understand why the tackle blew up the way it did, you have to put it in the context of everything around it. The 2005 Lions tour was one of the most eagerly anticipated in history. Between them, the four home nations had beaten the All Blacks in New Zealand twice in 100 years of trying. Combined as the Lions, they had won a solitary series out of 10, in 1971. In 2005, Ireland were still waiting for their first victory against them, home or away (whisper it, but 20 years later, Scotland are waiting still). A New Zealand tour might be the hardest task in the sport today, but back then there was no doubt about it. This one was supposed to be different, however. For the first time, one of the four home nations had won the World Cup and the man who had coached them, Clive Woodward, was leading the Lions. Neither of which, as it turned out, would do them any good. For one thing, the game had changed so much in the two years since the World Cup that the England squad, who had been flogged into playing for their clubs the week after their victory, had started to fall apart. They had been overtaken by Ireland, who had finished above them in the Six Nations both years, and Wales, who had just won a grand slam. Woodward, in what felt like a midlife crisis, had quit rugby and gone into football with Southampton. His imaginative approach to coaching had been exactly what a gnarly England team needed. His relationship with the older players meant they felt able to cherrypick the best of it and reject everything else. But the Lions did not know any better and the tour was launched with plastic wristbands branded with the slogan Woodward had commissioned, personalised iPods loaded with a selection of his favourite motivational music and sheet music with the words and score of the anthem he had written for the tour. Keen to deal with every last detail, Woodward consulted a Māori elder about how his team ought to meet the haka, which was how his captain, O'Driscoll, ended up kneeling down and yanking up a fistful of grass from the pitch to throw at the All Blacks before the start of the match. There must have been Māori scholars watching who understood the significance of the gesture, but everyone else was baffled and the All Blacks they were playing against looked genuinely enraged. O'Driscoll's pre-game speech had been about how he wanted every player to win his battle with the man opposite him ('I know one thing,' he said, 'Tana Umaga is not going to have the upper hand on me'). In their very first contact on the pitch, O'Driscoll went into that ruck, Keven Mealamu grabbed him around one leg, Umaga took the other, and the two of them tipped him up like a bottle of ketchup and dropped him down on the ground. O'Driscoll stretched out his right arm to break the fall and reduce the risk of a broken neck but ended up dislocating his shoulder instead. He knew straight away that his tour was over. On one wing, Gareth Thomas set off chasing the linesman 'who had walked on to the pitch during the preceding passage of play and simply ordered the pair to: 'Leave him alone.' I screamed at him to get involved, but there was panic in his eyes.' The referee, Joël Jutge, missed it too, so neither Mealamu nor Umaga were punished for it during the match. Years later, Jutge would admit he had got the decision wrong. It is harder to understand how the citing commissioner, Willem Venter, decided that there was nothing to see. Two minutes into the biggest Test they had played since 1997, the Lions had lost their captain. They played dismally without him and ended up losing 21-3. As much pain as he was in, O'Driscoll noticed that, unlike his All Black teammate Justin Marshall, Umaga did not approach to ask after him as he left the field for treatment. Which annoyed him because it felt like an insult on top of an injury. Umaga won an award for his sportsmanship when he gave first aid to Wales's Colin Charvis in a Test a couple of years earlier, but on this occasion he was preoccupied with leading his team. Umaga was almost as standoffish after the game. 'It's too late for explanations now,' he said a few days later. 'I could try to explain it but what would that achieve?' Woodward, meanwhile, decided to hold a press conference when he went over the tackle, frame by frame. He had hired Alastair Campbell to run his media team and he made a total balls-up of the job (Campbell may 'disagree agreeably' about this). 'I understood the frustration,' Paul O'Connell wrote later, 'but I didn't think putting the incident up on a big screen in slow motion, in front of a roomful of journalists, was going to help our cause. You can maybe do that when you've won the game, but not when you've been absolutely hockeyed.' The Lions came off like sore losers and the All Blacks were disarmed to find that they were the bad guys. It did not help that their head coach, Graham Henry, did not seem to understand exactly why the Lions and their supporters were so upset. If anything, he felt they were being unfairly criticised. 'The sustained personal attack they launched against me was hard to believe and even harder to stomach,' Umaga wrote in his autobiography. O'Driscoll called the tackle deliberate and there was, and still is, a lot of conjecture that the tackle was calculated to knock him out of the series, something the All Blacks denied. The fairest explanation comes from Thomas: 'They were hard men who saw their chance to do what we all do if the opportunity arises – play fast and loose with the laws.' Looking back, these were the wild-west years of the sport, when men trained and played like professionals, but were treated and cared for like amateurs. The administration, coaching and medical support had barely begun to catch up to how punishing rugby had become and a lot of people were hurt as a result. O'Driscoll was one of them. World Rugby stood by Venter, claiming that on the basis of the footage available the incident did not necessarily meet what they called the 'red-card test' of 'would the player have been sent off had the match official seen the offence?' It was only when the amateur footage came out that they realised how wrong they had got it. By the end of the year, they had changed the guidance around spear tackles and referees were instructed to start with a red card, and work backwards from that if there was any mitigation. So, the game changed in those few seconds. While O'Driscoll, and everyone else, hates to think it, the truth, as he wrote in his autobiography, is that 'sometimes in sport you don't get to choose all of the things they remember you for'.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Leaving Cert grinds industry: ‘Salaries scales for the top teachers can be 100 to 250 grand'
The final Leaving Cert exams are over – but another competition has been raging among grind schools where top teachers have been snapped for eye-watering salaries. The race is for a slice of a grinds industry estimated to be worth up to €60-80 million. Grinds360 is the newest competitor on the market, which raised more than €3 million from investors who include former and present rugby players such as Brian O'Driscoll , Caelan Doris and Jordan Larmour . It describes itself as a 'hybrid' service, combining an app which streams weekly grinds across 20 subjects, a Netflix-style catalogue of video lessons as well as in-person workshops at certain times of year. The cost, which has varied since its launch almost a year ago, is currently €1,399 a year. The company started out by poaching several teachers from rivals such as the Institute of Education and the smaller Dublin Academy of Education on huge salaries for the sector. READ MORE The circumstances of one those cases – maths teacher Rob Browne, who left the Dublin Academy of Education to work for Grinds360 – was at the centre of a High Court row last September, which was subsequently struck out. Brendan Kavanagh, chairman and co-founder of Grinds360, says the firm started out hiring about teachers from its competitors for key subjects like maths, English, Irish, sciences and business. The going rate to attract some of the top teachers from its rivals initially was, he says, 'anywhere from 100 to 250 grand'. 'Are they worth 200 grand or 250 grand? For the hours they had to work – they were working six, seven days a week in day school and night school – I'd want that kind of money – especially for teaching!' Kavanagh laughs. At the online platform, he says, they are able to work fewer hours but play key roles in the developing the future of the company. 'It's not really apples for apples. The more experienced grinds teachers are able to add a lot of value as we train other teachers throughout the country [who are now working for the company].' Some, he says, were also attracted by the idea of becoming involved in ownership of the firm. 'If you earn that kind of money, you pay a lot of tax. So I think the opportunity for them to become stakeholders in the business ... created a new sort of environment there.' Subsequent teachers have been hired part-time, on different contracts, from schools in Limerick, Cork, Galway, Waterford and Roscommon. The result, he maintains, is they are making grinds 'accessible and affordable' for students, while disrupting the 'superstar teacher' narrative which he says has been pushed by some grind schools. 'I'm off a few Christmas Card lists and I've been referred to as the Michael O'Leary of grinds. I'll take it if making overpriced, over-glorified education finally compete on fairness, access, and transparency earns me that comparison,' he says. Nearly one year on from launch, Kavanagh says Grinds360 has seen 'explosive growth' with more than 3,000 paying members and 18,000 app users. Backed by a €3.2 million seed round, he says the company is set to 'double revenue' in 2025-2026 and claims the company has established itself as the 'go-to alternative to traditional grind schools'. 'The numbers speak for themselves – there's a real hunger for a new model of academic support,' he says. Yet, business is also booming at the Institute of Education on Dublin's Leeson Street, which itself was a disruptive force in the education sector 57 years ago when it started the trend for exam-focused tuition. Yvonne O'Toole, principal of the Institute of Education, Leeson Street, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill The institute was sold to a UK-based schools group, Dukes Education, in 2023 for just under €135 million. This year, the institute is forecasting a record enrolment of 1,700 full-time students in September across fourth, fifth and sixth year, with students paying annual fees of up to €11,000 a year. It also runs grinds, crash courses and online learning for up to 10,000 students attending other schools. Yvonne O'Toole says demand is growing not just for exam results but because students have 'moved on' from single-sex, religious schools and uniforms by the time they are in senior cycle. While it lost some teachers to Grinds360, she says 'crazy salaries' are not the norm, but that teachers are paid well on the basis that they are 'expected to go above and beyond'. 'They do a lot more hours ... there are extra classes – morning, evening – and they're expected to be available. They put their heart and soul into it.' The institute's main competitor, the Dublin Academy of Education in Stillorgan, south Dublin, is also running at capacity. It had about 350 full-time fifth- and sixth-year students last year and says it is on course to grow to 400 when it moves to a larger premises in Blackrock in September. It expects numbers to grow to 500 in 2027 when it launches a fourth year offering. Chris Lauder, founder of the Dublin Academy of Education (left) with Dawn McCarron and Padraig Hourigan at the new location for the grind school. Photograph: Maxwells Founder Chris Lauder says while it also lost some teachers to Grinds360, it has 'a deep squad' and was able to 'march on'. The academy, he says, is always looking for top teaching talent. 'What we used to do was ask our students if they knew of great teachers and surveyed them. Teachers also know other great teachers. And, these days, you also find them on social media,' he says. He questions whether some of the top salaries being mentioned are sustainable for the sector and insists the best teachers ultimately want to teach students in-person rather than online. 'We pay more than what the public sector has to offer, and in some cases a lot more – maybe 50 per cent more,' he says. 'Our teachers want to work for not just for remuneration; they like teaching students who are serious about academics. This is senior cycle only. They're young adults, not children. They are driven – and they are a joy to teach.'
