Buccaneers Rugby Football Club is a rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 club in Athlone, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. The club's colours are Black and Gold. They compete in Division 1B of the AIB League

AIB League

The Ulster Bank All-Ireland League is the national league system for the 48 senior rugby union clubs in Ireland, covering both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It is not, however, the highest level of rugby union in Ireland, as teams representing the four provinces of Ireland play...

 for 2009/2010.

History

The team's name originates from the Shannon Buccaneers club founded by Diarmuid Murtagh from Athlone in the early 1930s. Fielding players such as British and Irish Lions captain Sammy Walker, the club later disbanded due to the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

More recently, in the 1993/94 season, the Athlone and Ballinasloe amalgamated in order to take part in the All-Ireland League. They were initially known as Athlone-Ballinasloe before changing their name to Buccaneers.

Ballinasloe withdrew from the amalgamation at the end of the 2005/06 season.

Dubarry Park

Dubarry Park is a 10,000 capacity stadium with a state of the art club house and dressing room facilities. It has hosted the U-21 and U-20 Irish home games for the 6 Nations Championship. It also hosted the AIB Cup finals last year. The stadium is sponsored by the famous Dubarry Shoes of Ballinasloe.

2009/10 Squad

• Full-backs: Brendan Carpenter, Terry Hynes, J.H. Potgeiter, John Seery
• Wings: Gerard Fallon, Mark Foyle, R. Grenham, Paul Harte, Billy Henshaw, Gavin Kelly, John O'Brien, Cormac Sheehy, Sean Stapleton
• Centres: Alex Hayman, James O'Connell, Peter Smith, Brian Tuohy, Aidan Wynne
• Out-halves: David Fagan, Sean Joyce
• Scrum-halves: Michael Donohoe, Adam Kennedy, Frank Murphy
  Frank Murphy (rugby player)
  Frank Murphy is an Irish professional rugby union player and currently plays with Connacht Rugby. He is an Ireland A International and a former Munster and Leicester Tigers player....
  
  , Conor O'Loughlin
• Front-rows: Michael Diffley, Jason East, Benny Gilligan, Conor Higgins, Mark Staunton
• Hookers: Sean Cronin
  Sean Cronin (rugby union)
  Sean Cronin is an Irish player for Leinster in the Celtic League. Cronin was educated at Ardscoil Ris in Limerick and has previously played with Shannon RFC and Munster Rugby where he had progressed through their academy to a development contract...
  
  , Adrian Flavin
  Adrian Flavin
  Adrian Flavin is a Professional Rugby Player for Connacht, having signed for them from London Irish in 2006, he had spent his entire rugby career with The Exiles up to that point....
  
  , Garreth Halligan, Marcus Madden
• Second-rows: R. Byrne, Anthony Hughes, Brendan McManus, James Tormey
• Wing-forwards: Padraig Burke, Stephen Burke, Bernard Keaney, Kolo Kiripati, Colin Watters
• Number 8s: Adrian Hughes, Colm Rigney (captain)