Writer and Director: Oisín Mistéil
While the FIFA Football World Cup 2026, with its high ticket prices and travel bans on fans and officials from certain countries, seems intent on sowing division, Oisín Mistéil’s documentary about the Mixed Ability Rugby World Cup of 2025 reminds us what sport is really about. Following the preparations of four Irish mixed-ability teams for the World Cup is Spain, Try! certainly embodies the spirit of the motto, ‘it’s not about winning, but about taking part’.
That’s not to say that viewers won’t be rooting for the teams, and Richie, from Cork’s Sunday Wells, is definitely in it to win it. Smearing his face with war paint, he’s a formidable player. On the other hand, Paul from the Vikings in Dublin is less worried about lifting the trophy. And his team has yet to win a competitive match. For him, playing rugby in a team that welcomes disabled and nondisabled players alike allows him to meet friends and to get out of his house, in which he often feels isolated.
Tommy, from Belfast’s Malone Tornadoes, seems more involved in rugby for the craic, inviting fellow players to his garden shed, decked out like a shebeen, to drink and shoot the breeze. As part of the women’s team, Ballincollig Trailblazers, Maeve never stops training when she’s at home, balancing on a bench or throwing the ball against a wall while running.
Mistéil spends little time exploring the players’ various disabilities, as this would mean that their disabilities define them. Instead, the director’s focus is on them as players in their teams. Their teammates and coaches are supportive without ever being condescending. Paul wishes that every town in Ireland had a mixed-ability rugby team, and it’s impossible not to agree.
When they arrive in Spain with its temperature of 38 °C, the four teams are certainly committed to lifting the trophy, but as the shots of singing and glasses of Guinness demonstrate, they are also there to have fun and socialise in a non-judgemental environment. Nowadays, Sport (with a capital S) only seems to be concerned with money and abstentious professionalism. Mixed-ability teams across the world, not just in Ireland, remind us that perhaps vital benefits have been forgotten in the corporatisation of sport.
Heartwarming in a way that FIFA could never deliver, Try!, receiving its world premiere at Sheffield DocFest, is nothing short of inspiring.
Try! is screening at the Sheffield DocFest 2026.
