Judy Goulet joins the scrum for her review of TRY!
A 220 km round trip, in the dark, lashings of rain, to train with your rugby team would be enough to send most of us under our duvets. For Paul, a poet and flanker, it's a journey of endurance forged by a lifetime of pushing through. Most weeks, he travels from his Wexford home to Kilternan to train with his DLSP Vikings Mixed Ability Team. For Paul, and the other players we meet in TRY!, rugby offers something that goes well beyond the score or the win. It’s about friendship, fight, and rugged determination.
Mixed Ability Rugby is an inclusive, competitive form of full-contact rugby played by people with and without disabilities. In 2025, Ireland sent four teams to the World Cup in Pamplona: Sunday’s Well Rebels, Ballincollig Trailblazers, DLSP Vikings, and the Malone Tornadoes. TRY! follows four of these whirlwinds, Richie, Maeve, Tommy, and Paul, from their rain-soaked Irish training grounds to the 38-degree heat of Spain. This on-the-pitch and behind-the-scenes documentary shows what the sport, and the opportunity to participate in it, means to each of the players.
Cinematographers Carl Best and Colin Morrison, led by Director of Photography Esme Pum McNamee, take us along for the banter on the team bus and a freezing fundraising dip into the Irish Sea. We share the chats and laughs in Tommy’s Monkey Claw Cavern and accompany Richie when he takes part in his other passion, historical re-enactments. Beneath his replica World War battle gear and helmet, Richie admits, “I can’t see shit, sir.”
These cutaway scenes reveal as much about the players as the matches themselves. There is a gentle ease to the filming, allowing humour and vulnerability to emerge naturally. We hear about the fierceness of spirit it takes to persevere when you grow up on the sidelines, excluded from the games everyone else gets to play. As Paul explains, “You’re left out of everything growing up. You just want to be part of it. To have the mick taken out of you too.”
TRY! is filmmaker Oisín Mistéil’s debut feature documentary and won Best Irish Feature Documentary at the 38th Galway Film Fleadh. This production involved more than 250 days of filming in four counties and two countries. That commitment is evident in the film’s breadth, giving us a 360-degree view of the players’ lives.
Over 88 minutes (roughly the length of a competitive Mixed Ability World Cup game with water and cursing breaks), editor Keith Walsh brings the many story strands together at an assured pace. Childhood memories and personal interviews are interwoven with the observations of parents, coaches, supporters, teammates, and friends. Together, they reveal just how much life has changed for the players since discovering Mixed Ability Rugby. Richie’s proud Mum tells us, “He would not be the man he is without the Rebels.”
Unlike many sports documentaries, where the drama builds towards a decisive victory or defeat, TRY!'s focus is on the players behind the scoreboard. The World Cup might be their ultimate destination, but the emotional stakes lie in their personal journeys and their commitment to their team. When the final whistle blows, we're left with a sense of what it means to be included, to belong, and, most importantly, to be given the opportunity to try.
“Without purpose, I didn’t belong,” Paul says at one point to camera. “This sport allows us to grow into the people we’re able to be.”
TRY! is in Irish cinemas on 2nd October 2026.
