For locks learning their trade, education comes in many forms

Far away from the madding crowds of the Six Nations last weekend, Tom Clifford Park, the famed home of Young Munster, hosted my own club Cork Constitution in the latest of a series of hotly contested Ulster Bank League Munster derbies.

The passionate, local interest in a rugby-mad city has waned substantially from those heady, early days of the All-Ireland League, so, fewer than 400 attended last Saturday’s game, but the intensity and excitement for those club stalwarts present was as palpable as ever, as this contest served up the type of titanic finish that has accompanied fixtures between these two great Munster clubs in recent seasons.

In the days prior to professionalism, when aspiring young players had no option but to pit their skills and, in many cases their instinct for survival, against many a hardened and grizzled Munster club pack, travelling to Greenfields (as Tom Clifford Park was known in those days), or the Killing Fields, as it was christened by many a visiting Leinster club pack, offered a whole new experience.