Irish Rugby Tours Reviews

Rugby: The Tour was overall a great experience. The Rugby training was excellent and the matches were good. The host clubs were outstanding and extremely welcoming. Ton of fun, food, and good rugby. Attending the Six Nations match was a fantastic experience.
Guides: Our Italian Guide Sara was great, very organized and informative. The IRT representative Kerry was great and extremely helpful. I would recommend both.
Hotels: All three hotels were nice and clean. However, while the hotels were all clean and nice, the first one outside Milan was a too far away from anything. The location of the Venice area one was a bit better and the Rome hotel was a very good location.
Tour: Only had one day in Venice to see that city and it was the same day as a match. So maybe allow for a bit more time in Venice and scale back the time in the Milan area as that city can be seen in one eve.
Flight: Only issue with the package was 1) the team and guests not being able to fly on the same flight; and 2) I would guess that those that were on the Air Maroc flight would not recommend using Air Maroc and stopping in Casablanca Airport going forward. That airport is very unorganized and a bit sketchy, especially with a multi hour layover. However the majority of the squad that used Delta/ Dutch Air had a significantly better and fine flight experience. The tour group should definitely fly together and not through Morrocco.
The flight and the lack of time in Venice were really the only negative

Our specific tour to Italy was overall a great experience. The initial few days were a drag though. We spent too long in Milan - our first location - which offers really only a day's worth of tourism. While we spent a lot of time in Milan, "free time" at other locations seemed rushed. There was a lot of driving to and from any event in and around Milan. The location of our first training session wasn't as nice as the rest of our training and match locations but at least it got the boys moving around after traveling from the U.S. and the coach was entertaining and did a good job with the session. Our tour guide was hard work throughout the week as she wasn't very engaging and tended to drone on about topics not really relevant to where we were or where we were going. Her attempts at humor either fell flat or were even offensive to the parents on the trip. While it's hard to really judge someone for their accent, she was very monotone and lacked panache. I feel like an English-speaking tour guide that had spent a lot of time in Italy would have been an improvement. There was also a tour of the Ferrari museum advertised but never materialized. The tour boat of Lake Como was small and not well-suited for viewing the exquisite properties around the lake. The tour of the lake itself, though, was very interesting and worthwhile. My final criticism is that the second match put us up against an older and very competitive side that easily overwhelmed our team to the degree that the physical mismatch was almost dangerous to our players. Our touring side had played together only a short time and several of the touring players had little or no experience. For others, they had to play out of position to complete the team sheet. It was tough to watch from a coaching perspective and especially tough for the players to get beaten up physically and by such a wide margin on the scoreboard. All of that said, the rest of the tour was brilliant and the hospitality of the rugby clubs where we trained and played was absolutely incredible. The hotels were lovely and the food, wine, and coffee sublime - especially the meals and drink provided by our host rugby clubs. It was perhaps the best eating we did on the entire trip! The coaches that trained the players were outstanding and the boys as well as the coaches on the tour learned a great deal over the week. After Milan, the club facilities - training grounds, match venues, and the club houses - blew everyone away. Venice was wonderful - plenty of free time to explore and experience the utterly unique aspects of that city and during Carnivale no less! Rome was even more tremendous. The Colosseum and ancient city tour was such a great experience for everyone in the party, even if you've visited the same sights before. The Vatican, of course, is unsurpassed in its wondrous beauty and sheer scale. The tour guide for our day of tourism in Rome was energetic, good-humored, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic throughout her time with us. What a trip! Most importantly, I can't imagine a better introduction for young players to international rugby and experience European rugby culture in ways that many U.S. players don't get the opportunity to enjoy until college or with their men's club if at all.

Not enough food in the Hotel.
Too much packed into Day 1.
Otherwise a great trip.

Great experience and did a lot of fun things. Minimal time to rest which was probably the only negative. More free time would’ve been nice

Great tour,really enjoyed it and would 100% recommend using this company.

The planning and trip were excellent.

Everything managed to perfection but the food in the hotel was a little disappointing.