18/08/2026
✅ FACT CHECK
NEW STYLE, FAMILIAR HAND
We’ll give Barry this much…
This morning’s post is a remarkable upgrade from the usual stream-of-consciousness Facebook rant.
📚 Structured strategy.
📈 Development pathways.
🧭 Long-term planning.
🏉 Commercial opportunities.
Quite the literary transformation. 👀
And, yes, we’re going to say it.
The sudden change in style, the timing, and the Australia-heavy strategic framing all point in one very obvious direction:
this reads far more like Rory O’Hara than Barry Coade.
That’s an inference, not a forensic authorship test — but anyone familiar with both of them can draw their own conclusions.
Once you get past the polish, though, the substance is very familiar.
📌 A 3–5 year plan to restore Ireland’s position and target the 2030 World Cup.
Sounds strategic.
🤦🏻 The problem is that the important decisions affecting Ireland’s route towards 2030 come far sooner than that.
That’s exactly why the hard development work has to be happening now, not promised somewhere across the next five years.
📌 Then there’s Wigan v Warrington in Dublin.
Apparently this is a “huge opportunity for IRLXIII” to show how Rugby League should be developed in Ireland.
😂 That takes some brass neck.
This event hasn’t appeared from nowhere.
A huge amount of work has already gone on between Wigan, Warrington, Sport Ireland, the Irish Government and Rugby League Ireland, with RLI centrally involved in getting it this far and how it will impact the sport here going forward.
So after years of telling everyone that RLI does nothing, the alternative plan is now to point at an opportunity RLI helped create and announce:
“Look what we could do with this.” 👏
And what exactly is the revolutionary strategy?
🏫 Schools.
🏉 Youth development.
👩 Women’s development.
🎓 Coaches.
🟨 Match officials.
☘️ International fixtures.
📈 Stronger domestic pathways.
Erm…
That’s not an alternative strategy.
That’s a list of things already being worked on.
And eventually we get to the real point:
“Replace RLI board with IRLXIII.”
🎯 There it is.
So the plan appears to be:
Take the work already happening.
Take the opportunities others have created.
Tell everyone nothing is being done.
Then present yourself as the solution.
🥷 New style. Familiar hand. Same old plot. They’ll all need to get up a bit earlier/later cause…
🦸 We’re always watching
