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Oisin Misteil's debut feature follows four Irish players from different teams as they prepare for the 2025 International Mixed Ability Rugby Tournament in Pamplona. The film highlights their personalities, the challenges they overcome, and the sense of equality found on the pitch, offering a charming and moving portrait of inclusive sport.
Even the biggest wiseacre will happily forgive the on-the-nose pun in the title of this charming Irish documentary from Oisín Mistéil. Try! is, you see, about mixed-ability rugby .
The title references how teams gain advantage and also the effort players expend. How could you call it anything else? Mistéil’s debut as feature director goes among four Irish players as they prepare for the 2025 International Mixed Ability Rugby Tournament, in Pamplona. Richie Philpott, of the Sundays Well Rebels, is an intense young man with a strong line in sporting banter.
“When I step out on that pitch, only one thing crosses my mind: ruthless aggression! ” he says. Maeve Owens, of the Ballincollig Trailblazers, is delighted to be appointed captain in the run-up to the tournament. Paul Deacon, from DLSP Vikings, is impressively blase about the 220km round trip he must take from his rural home to training in Dublin.
Tommy Crawford, of Malone Tornadoes , talks us through his extensive collection of whiskies. The film is careful to introduce its characters as personalities rather than define them by their disabilities, but testimony from parents, particularly Maeve’s, on challenges met and overcome proves deeply moving. Try! gets across the sense that this sport is, for some, one of the few places they experience something like equality.
Try! is not much interested in explaining the tweaked conventions that allow able-bodied and disabled players to compete on the same pitch. We learn that scrums are uncontested, but we are otherwise just invited to enjoy the glorious inclusivity of it all. Beginning 250 days before the tournament, the film takes us through the pressures and excitements as our four players train, plan and speculate.
One charming sequence sees Maeve and her pal clattering through a department store in search of holiday gear. Elsewhere, we meet Richie with his colleagues re-enacting second World War battles.
“You committed treason,” he says casually of a colleague who looks to have accidentally shot one of their own allies. The contest matters a great deal, but, unlike Murderball, the 2005 documentary on wheelchair rugby, Try! does not dwell in a cauldron of ruthless rivalry. Here is an enormously generous film that believes everyone on the pitch is a winner. In cinemas from Friday, October 2nd
Mixed-Ability Rugby Irish Documentary Oisin Misteil Inclusive Sports 2025 Tournament
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