The IRFU and Rugby Players Ireland (RPI) have appointed Signify Group to safeguard players, coaches and officials against online abuse and threats.
Signify is a British company that uses AI and human analysis to monitor, investigate and report abusive content on social media. It has previously partnered with several other sports organisations.
It has a long-standing relationship with Fifpro, the largest players’ representative in soccer. In 2024, Arsenal announced it had banned three fans from attending games over online abuse after hiring Signify to monitor social media posts for the club.
In rugby, the group have previously been hired by World Rugby for the 2023 World Cup, with that arrangement set to continue for the Women’s Rugby World Cup which starts on August 22nd.
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Director of communications and legal affairs at RPI, Richard McElwee, said the organisation has been trying to safeguard players from online abuse for years.
“It’s always been in the ether, but we never really knew what direction to take," he explains. “We felt that now was probably the right time to start moving because we didn’t want to be left behind. I guess there were isolated incidents over the past seasons where we felt that players were in need of additional support.”
The level of abuse on social media, particularly on X, means many players now feel less inclined to post content on these platforms, according to McElwee.
“Social media offers players a huge opportunity to leverage their profile and to influence communities, but I guess over recent years some players may have felt a little less inclined to go posting.”
He hopes that the moderation provided by their new partner will allow players to be more open when interacting on social media.
“I think it gives them greater confidence to be able to go out and be more authentic online, without being afraid of the repercussions,” he said.
McElwee has seen many cases of online abuse in sports and feels that negative comments tend to attract the most attention. This means social media users behave “like moths to a flame” when abusive language is used.

Similarly, he added that conversations he had with players revealed they tend to focus more on negative comments.
“You sit around with players and you ask them to recall a negative comment that they would have received. Nine times out of 10, they’ll be able to recite that comment.
“But you ask them for a positive comment, they might not recite that so freely because it’s the negative commentary that sits with them more. And so [we are] trying to wipe away that negativity from their lives as much as possible.”
McElwee also believes the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns contributed to a greater amount of abuse, as more people sought a platform to join in with conversations remotely.
We had awareness that Signify had worked with Fifpro, the global body for footballers
— Richard McElwee
He said: “I think there was a huge spike during Covid when everybody was back home and you kind of participated in conversation online. It’s obvious to me that there is a lot of abuse that gets thrown around unnecessarily [from] people just looking to weigh in on the conversation.”
The goal is to promote players’ mental health, he added, rather than to stop fans from expressing opinions online, as the large majority of fans are not abusive.
“Personally, I don’t think it’s a huge issue that’s out of control or an epidemic,” said McElwee. “We’re not going to try and skew conversation, we’re just trying to help. There’s a player’s wellbeing at the back end, which is the ultimate priority.”
Conversations were held with players and administrators about what steps to take to help ease the problem. Signify’s high-profile clients in sports made them an obvious candidate to speak to.
“We had awareness that Signify had worked with Fifpro, the global body for footballers. But then also on the governing body side, they’d worked with the Olympics, they’d worked with World Rugby.
“We got around the table with the IRFU and the provinces and we agreed that Signify, who are, I suppose, the market leaders in this respect, [would] perhaps be worth speaking to, just to see what they could do for us.”
Signify analyses social media posts and flags potentially abusive messages. It uses a tier system to differentiate between levels of abuse in posts. Ninety per cent of the posts detected by the software are in tier zero, which is the least severe level.
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Based on the tier assigned to an individual post, Signify can report the content to the social media platform, the IRFU or, in very extreme cases, alert law enforcement.
The organisation is well connected in the tech world and can have troll accounts shut down.
“An awful lot of this stuff comes through troll accounts and avatars, and [Signify] can have those accounts shut down,” McElwee confirmed.
Signify Group state that they have flagged over 60,000 abusive messages for World Rugby since they partnered with them in 2023, 11 of which were reported to the police. Seven of these have resulted in prosecutions or official legal warnings according to the company.