Wednesday, March 30, 2011
WITH the likelihood of another passionate full house at Thomond Park on Saturday night, it promises to be another great Munster-Leinster occasion, even if there is every possibility that the two sides will meet again in the knockout stages of the Magners League.
But let’s take a step back from that game and occasion for a moment. Paul O’Connell’s heartfelt plea to the Irish players before the England game to match their technical ability with the traditional virtues of heart and passion was highlighted by many of the players as key to the outcome of that contest.
While some of the Munster and Irish sides I was part of may have been lacking on the technical front, heart and passion were central to all the good days and notable achievements. It was something we learned and inherited from our club structure.
While competing for honours in the Munster Senior League, and especially the cup, tradition and identity played a central part.
I would suggest that O’Connell’s appetite for battle was honed in the black and yellow of Young Munster long before he became a fixture on the Munster scene.
I was fortunate to compete for two clubs, UCC and Cork Con, that were consistently in the shake up for silverware. We were continuously reminded of the achievements of those who went before; from the great UCC cup-winning teams in the 1960s to the Cork Constitution sides that won a remarkable nine Munster Senior League finals in a row between 1964 and 1972.
It defined who we were and what was expected of us. When the likes of New Zealand and Australia arrived in town there was no shortage of reminders either of the responsibility you carried when wearing the red jersey of Munster against a major touring nation.
Beating Australia with Munster in 1981 remains a cherished memory to this day. I am sure the class of 2010 will recall their great win over the Wallabies last November with equal relish, regardless of what else they achieve in their careers.
That’s why I fear for the future of Munster rugby if we are forced down the road taken by Leinster and Ulster over the last few years where they have been content to build their success without any significant reliance or input from their clubs.
It was well known that Michael Cheika, despite doing an excellent job for the province, had little or no interest in the All-Ireland League and the potential role it played in the development of his players. Thankfully, the Munster management held a different view over the years.
Likewise Ulster have little meas in the development role of the league and their clubs have suffered accordingly. It must be a source of embarrassment to the IRFU that no Ulster club currently competes in Division 1A of the league while Dungannon is the only club in Division 1B.
That represents a serious fall from grace for the likes of Ballymena, Queen’s University, Instonians and Malone while one of the provinces’s finest, Bangor, which produced several internationals over the years, no longer feature in any of the four national divisions.
Next season, club rugby in this country will be downgraded even further with tighter restrictions placed on the number of contracted players permitted to advertise their wares in the league. It was a case of the turkeys voting for Christmas when the AIL Review Group, made up of representatives of clubs from all four divisions, decided to reduce the number of eligible players with full contracts from three to two, with a maximum of one forward. Players on Academy or Development contracts remain eligible to play.
Given it was also decided that no contracted player can now perform outside of Division 1A and 1B, I’m not sure why clubs in Divisions 2 and 3 had any input into how many contracted players can appear in the top two divisions. With players now confined to the top two divisions, I would have gone the other way and increased from three to four with the proviso that only one could play in the front row.
OF greater concern to southern clubs is the possibility that Munster alone were considering dropping the category of Development Contract, removing automatic eligibility to a whole category of player (the likes of Scott Deasy, Danny Barnes, Declan Cusack, Stephen Archer, Paddy Butler, Peter O’Mahony, Dave Foley and Ian Nagle) to play in the All-Ireland league, and also placing Munster clubs at a competitive disadvantage against other provinces. Thankfully, that is not the case. Munster recognised the need to fast-track the development of all those last season, the majority of whom had been in the academy.
Indeed all eight have been offered full contracts for next season. In addition Munster will be promoting some other players from Academy to Development contracts next season.
Having such young players available has created an interest in club games as the general public can map the progress of the next generation of potential Munster stars such as Mike Sherry, Simon Zebo, Conor Murray, Nagle, Barnes, Butler and others in a competitive club arena. I don’t subscribe to the view that ‘A’ games in the British and Irish Cup alone will prepare players for the professional game. There are other important attributes that need to be acquired.
I’m convinced what Duncan Williams, Nagle, Archer, Zebo and Scott Deasy learned in Cork Con’s double-winning achievement last season will contribute to Munster’s drive for success in the future, just as Shannon’s league successes in the 1990s laid the foundations for many of Munster’s achievements in the last decade. The ability to close out tight games and win trophies is not something you can learn in an academy.
The work being done in the Munster academy by a number of excellent coaches is top quality and is invaluable in shaping the future of the individual. However, it’s the additional work by a whole host of club coaches in the province like Mike Prendergast, Paul Cunningham, Colm Tucker, Ian Costelloe, Steve Ford, Conor Twomey, Brian Walsh, Brian Hickey and Terry Kingston (amongst others) that ensure individual talent is being honed and enhanced in a team environment.
No doubt, I will be accused of taking an elitist view on this subject given my long association with Con, but my concerns are much broader than that. We must continue to offer a meaningful role for the clubs in producing and developing talent, so that late developers like James Coughlan have a chance to make it in the professional game.
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