Delaney reciting Eva Gore-Booth's poem "Comrades" across the playground. Franklin drops his bags and Delaney runs towards Franklin and jumps up to hug him while all the other boys gather round in love and affection for their saviour. Production The film took over four years to make because of difficulties getting it started; some were casting problems, others to do with raising finance. One casting problem was finding the ideal boy to play Liam Mercier, who the director felt was vital to cast well. Eventually they auditioned John Travers, a boy from an Irish boxing club with no previous acting experience. Aidan Quinn had been attached to the script for two and a half years before production. It was filmed on location in County Cork and County Kerry in Ireland. The school scenes were filmed at Coláiste Iosagán, a former De La Salle college in Ballyvourney. It was an Irish/Danish/UK/Spanish co-production, and was produced with the support of investment incentives for the Irish film industry provided by the Government of Ireland. Main cast Aidan Quinn ... William Franklin Iain Glen ... Brother John Marc Warren ... Brother Mac Dudley Sutton ... Brother Tom Alan Devlin ... Father Damian Stuart Graham ... Brother Whelan John Travers ... Liam Mercier 636 Chris Newman ... Patrick Delaney 743 Andrew Simpson ... Gerard Peters 458 The Boys Robert Sheehan ...O'Reilly 58 Caoimhin 'Tojo' Barra Doherty ...Murphy 388 Samuel Bright ...Ryan 126 Mark Butler...Downey 913 Bernard Manning ...Rodgers 855 Michael McGee ...Lynch 76 John Collins ...O Connor 252 Michael Scott ...Flynn 144 Robert White ...Galvin 544 Michael Sloan ...Sean Peters 568 Reception On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, which categorizes reviews as positive or negative only, the film has an approval rating of 67% calculated based on 6 critics comments. By comparison, with the same opinions being calculated using a weighted arithmetic mean, the rating is 5,80/10. In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw rated it 2/5 stars saying, "it's a formula beloved since Nicholas Nickleby and Dotheboys Hall, but here given a new miserabilist anti-clerical spin and imbued with Hollywood-ised cliche of goodies and baddies. And the sugar-rush happy ending is just a joke." In his review for Variety, David Rooney said that "director Aisling Walsh for the most part brings an admirably even-handed approach to brutal material in Song For a Raggy Boy (...) While the screenplay judiciously avoids blanket accusations by confining the truly sadistic