Presidents Address

Message From The President 

Dear LRR members

I am honoured to be elected President of Leinster Rugby Referees for 2026/27 and address you today

I would like to start by thanking a few people for helping me get to this point. Our outgoing president Brendan Conroy who has been a good friend since this journey began. It feels I have come full circle since Brendan approached me to take over from him as the Area Representative in the North Midlands over 10 years ago. Also a big thank you to the other former presidents especially those who I’ve worked with in recent years on the Executive (Dave,Gordon,Tom and Martin) and not forgetting the Chairs of our Rugby Committee during this period Dave McDonald and Mark Gargin

I take over the Presidency of a club which to be honest is in a very healthy place at present. The reason for this is simple, hard work,endeavour and commitment, not only by the Executive Committees over the years, but also the excellent work done through the Sub and Standing Committees, including Management, Rugby, Finance, Administration,Selection as well as the Panel Managers and our Educators which include Evaluators,Mentors and Coaches and not forgetting the total commitment of the Area Representatives plus the referees administrator who keeps everything ticking over but most importantly, you the core membership.

To say it has been a learning curve for me over the last decade is an understatement. And as your incoming president and the custodian of this office my job is to simply keep everything moving in a positive and proactive direction and try to stay humble where possible but in saying that we must NOT rest on our laurels we need to future proof the LRR. We need to keep our core values and focus on our principals. We need to have succession plans in place for the future.

To paraphrase Tom Tuohy ‘we play a vital role in upholding the integrity of our sport, ensuring fair play, inclusivity and keeping the spirit of rugby alive’. One of the most important goals of Leinster Rugby Referees is to ‘Recruit and Retain’.New blood is vital for the continued growth of our club.This season alone we have or are approaching 7000 appointments and for the first time youth appointments have surpassed adults. That's a lot of assignments we have filled as referees, so well done all and take a bow.

Now I want to take you back eleven years where we convened a ‘think thank’ with the objective of discussing how we could continue to improve as an Association, and as a club. Out of those conversations at the time we produced a 5 year strategy plan. This is something I am very passionate about because it’s important we have a plan of action to implement to help with the continued growth of the LRR. I feel now the timing is right to address this again, so during my tenure over the next twelve months this is one of the actions I want to revisit and in turn hopefully create a new document and pathway for us, that we can all be proud of.

Finally I look forward to working with you over the 2026/27 season and hopefully when it’s my turn to pass on the baton to our Vice President Mark Jenkinson we will be in a slightly better place.

Yours In Rugby

John Dunne

President 2026/27

Leinster Rugby Referees