Rugby statue bid doesn’t make sense

ONE must admire the endeavour of the Munster supporters who originally proposed (jokingly perhaps?) erecting statues of Ronan O’Gara and Peter Stringer near the main thoroughfare of Cork City.

However, the fact that Cork City Council have possibly been duped into supporting this ambitious move is a cause for more serious concern.

The game of rugby has developed enormously since the advance of the professional era in the mid-1990s. However, contrary to the opinions of George Hook et al, it remains a minority sport. With notable exception, rugby is still dominated by those educated in higher-middle class enclaves of Dublin, Cork and Limerick city and has a support and playing base that is marginal when compared to Gaelic football, hurling or soccer. Nobody can deny the importance of sport to the social and cultural life of Cork city. Indeed, Dr Paul McCarthy may be correct when he stated in Simon Lewis’s article on November 28 that Munster is a “byword for courage, determination, dedication and passion”. But to suggest that the coffers of the city council are best spent on erecting statues of relatively little-known rugby players in the centre of an increasingly cluttered city is bizarre and somewhat distasteful in the middle of an economic recession.