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Research dossier · General Reference

Ballina R.F.C.

rugby team

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ55604779 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ballina R.F.C. is a rugby union club in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland. The club is affiliated to the Connacht Branch of the Irish Rugby Football Union and plays in the Connacht J1A League since being relegated from the All-Ireland League at the end of the 2023-24 season.

The name of Heffernan Park, where the club plays its games, is taken from the grandfather of Dave Heffernan.

Prominent figures

Seán Murphy was the club's first president, and he served 25 years for the club. He helped the club get its own grounds and a clubhouse back in 1978.

Gerry O’Donnell served a season as president of Connacht rugby (in that season Connacht won the pro 12.) and was a president of Ballina as well. O'Donnell died in 2023.

Editorial summary

“Ballina R.F.C.” enters the record as rugby team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ballina, rugby and team can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2023, 1978—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Ballina, rugby and team.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Ballina R.F.C.” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Ballina, rugby and team provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55604779. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2023 and 1978.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ballina R.F.C.”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ballina R.F.C. primary sources, Ballina R.F.C. archive and Ballina research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ballina R.F.C.”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ballina R.F.C.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.