Munster rugby is at home already in the greatest city in the world
Put simply, Limerick is the home of not just Munster but Irish rugby. For Mr Kenneally to suggest otherwise is fanciful nonsense.
It was the Munster players and coaches — many of them members of the Cork rugby clubs that Mr Kenneally lambasted — who pressed for Thomond Park to be established as the home of Munster rugby. They agreed it represented the best choice in terms of atmosphere, tradition and location. This conclusion was reached after the team had sampled Musgrave Park in Cork on several Heineken Cup days.
The proximity of the National Coaching and Training Centre at UL — which has few peers throughout the world, let alone in the rest Munster — also influenced the decision that Thomond Park would be the team’s headquarters.
So if Thomond Park is “a myth”, as he claims, it is one that the team, coaches and committees clearly believe in.
Mr Kenneally, of course, may know better. His assertion, though, that Thomond Park is “a perfectly good ground” is at once patronising towards Limerick city and ignorant of the fact that the stadium cannot accommodate the numbers who wish to attend there.
It may surprise him that this was the case for numerous games long before the Heineken Cup and its attendant ‘bandwagoners’ arrived on the scene.
His questioning of the merits of buying a 10-year ticket for Thomond Park because of the proposed boycott by French teams (for this World Cup year, as I understand it) would, to put it politely, not be a popular position among those who know about rugby football.
Again, Mr Kenneally may know better. In any event, the tickets are reported to be selling well.
His statement that “Limerick simply does not have the capacity and the traffic situation there is disastrous for big games” is laughable when set beside his first alternative venue, Musgrave Park, which is based in a cramped industrial estate beside the Kinsale Road roundabout.
I can only take Mr Kenneally’s word for it when he says he must set out at 11am for a 5.30 kick-off, and I commend him on his dedication.
However, the fact that he approaches Limerick city via the Dock Road suggests either an ignorance of the city’s geography or he use of the N22/N69 (Tralee road) all the way up from Model Farm Road (presumably to avoid all of those non-existent traffic jams in Cork city centre). But his assertion that there is a two-hour delay on match days at Dock Road is a gross exaggeration, according to my west Limerick/north Kerry friends. Yes, the traffic is heavy, but it is always moving. Might I suggest he try the N20? I know from personal experience it is possible to get from Charleville to Limerick city centre in under an hour on a match day, and to do so legally.
Mr Kenneally’s threat (for want of a better word) that “Cork people might stop travelling” to Thomond Park is nonsense. Take this from someone who lived for over 20 years in the shadow of Thomond Park: the Cork crowd (with a few very honourable exceptions) never travelled in great numbers or with any great frequency until Munster’s recent successful run.
It is at the end of his letter, though, that Mr Kenneally loses the run of himself entirely.
Temple Hill — a fine ground — is at the wrong side of Cork city for everybody else in Munster except, naturally, those who live on the south side of that city (like say, around Model Farm Road).
To suggest that attendances will be decimated at Thomond Park because of a possible French boycott and then, in the next breath, urge the annexing of Pairc Ui Chaoimh (not Semple Stadium or even, God forbid, Páirc na nGael) to house the masses that are bound to attend Munster’s future games is clear evidence of a flawed logic at work.
Cork city is not “set to lose millions of revenue”, as Mr Kenneally puts it, over this (non) issue. This revenue was never Cork city’s to lose!
It’s sad that he should reintroduce the long-buried Limerick/Cork rivalry that so hampered the game in Munster for years for nothing more than civic greed and an unwillingness to travel by a different road to the home of Irish rugby.
Surely the issue is not “to think clearly about what rugby in Cork needs”, as he put it, but rather to think clearly about what rugby in Munster needs?
Does this not demand that Munster play their most important matches in Thomond Park? That is to say, the ground that best suits the team, coaching staff and committees — from the points of view of tradition, location, atmosphere and, yes, marketing?
Perhaps I should apologise to Mr Kenneally because Thomond Park does not have the good grace to be in Cork? I think not, though...
For a further endorsement of Limerick as a venue, I would refer him to the appraisal of one Leicester fan, as reported by, the ever-excellent, Diarmuid O’Flynn (Irish Examiner, January 23): “This is the greatest city in the world!”
Sam Windrim
40 Hillcroft Close
Off Dublin Road
Limerick
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