Reality bites: time for club rugby to wake up and stop dreaming

IT WAS a tricky proposition. With my rugby career firmly consigned to history, I needed an activity that would provide me with some form of (gentle) exercise and pose no threat to my physical well-being.

I tried five-a-side soccer, the traditional route for over-30s wishing to stay in shape, but found the gravelly nature of all-weather surfaces really painful on the knees.

Plus, I was unable to master that peculiar abbreviated language of five-a-side, all that “man-on” and “house” stuff is very confusing.

Swimming, so enjoyable on holiday, proved considerably less so at home. Length-after-length in an indoor pool quickly became an exercise in unbearable monotony. Ditto cycling.

There was golf, but I had endured too many torturous evenings listening to golfers recount their rounds, hole-by-hole, shot-by-shot, to have any wish to join that fraternity.

So I took up cricket.

The sport once described by the Archbishop of Canterbury as “organised loafing” seemed ideally suited to my requirements and, last May, I reported for duty at Cork County Cricket Club’s beautifully appointed grounds on the Mardyke.

This quaint English game of white slacks and willow bats is much reviled in Ireland, a fact I discovered early on when our play was rudely interrupted by a souped-up Volkswagen Golf which sped by the ground with teenagers in Celtic jerseys screaming “Benders!” out its lowered tinted windows.

So, do not play cricket in Ireland if you offend easily.

Another word of advice for any prospective cricketers out there - buy a box.

The box is a peculiar plastic contraption designed to protect the most delicate area of a man’s anatomy.

I went out to bat ‘commando style’ in the first few matches as it did not seem polite, or hygienic, to borrow someone else’s.

The folly of this approach was emphasised in my third game when the rock-hard leather ball zipped past my forward defensive stroke and cannoned into my box-less unit.

Indescribable agony.

However, once I had become impervious to shouted insults and had purchased a box over the internet, I found cricket to be a thoroughly enjoyable pastime.

Seeing my name once more on a team-sheet was tremendously gratifying, while the instruction for the team to meet “at 12-ish” gave an indication of the relaxed nature of a game where enjoyment is viewed as more important than the relentless pursuit of success.

Players are expected to do their best but if they cock-up they are encouraged rather than harangued (thankfully) and individual success is celebrated collectively.

Afterwards, teams mingle in the clubhouse, while dewey-eyed alickadoos mime shots and recall matches lost in the mists of time.

It occurred to me that cricket, as it is played in this remote outpost, recalls the simple pleasures of amateur club rugby in its heyday.

There was a time when rugby teams, after knocking lumps out of each other on the pitch, would sit down together and enjoy a meal before swapping ties and speeches, an enjoyable ritual long-since abandoned.

It did manage to survive into the early years of the All-Ireland League, heady days when the club was the core of the Irish game and a springboard to the national side - how long ago that seems now.

Tomorrow, the AlL limps into action again, a pale shadow of what it once represented to players and fans.

The demise of club rugby has been well-charted and can be traced back to rugby turning professional in 1995, which saw the emphasis gradually switch from club to province with predictable results.

The clubs now find themselves vainly trying to emulate the standards and practices demanded by our fully professional provinces.

There are arduous summer training programmes, thrice-weekly sessions, strict diets, video analysis, ear-pieces and many clubs have even adopted the latest trend of players plunging into plastic containers full of ice straight after matches. And yet, as player preparation and work-rate has increased, exposure has decreased in equal measure.

Our top professionals enjoy substantial salaries, lucrative product endorsements and extensive TV coverage, while the humble AIL player combines the rigours of a 9-5 existence with an increasingly intense training regime and for what? A few die-hard supporters watching them on a Saturday and negligible media interest.

Even the club blazer, once the most desirable garment at Saturday night discos, seems to have lost its allure.

However, I am not advocating giving up on the clubs altogether. They have a proud tradition which must be recognised and still have a vital role to play as feeders to professional rugby.

Rather, I am suggesting that it is time for the clubs to rein back. The IRFU has substantially reduced its funding, yet many clubs continue to pay players and employ foreign coaches on hefty salaries they can ill afford.

The fun seems to have gone out of the club game, standards have dropped and play has become inhibited as grim demeanours and ‘win at all costs’ attitudes are the order of the day.

Given club rugby’s lowly position in the Irish rugby hierarchy, trying to ape the professionals is futile.

When you hear about Ballymena undertaking British Army training and Trinity’s nine-day camp in Penn State University, you wonder if they’ve lost the plot. It’s time for reality to set in, there has never been a better time for clubs to return to the ethos of the old amateur days.

Club cricket in Ireland has no pretensions or pipe dreams, just good old-fashioned effort and enjoyment.

Club rugby, on the other hand, has delusions of grandeur and would do well to heed the advice given by Polonius to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

“To thine own self be true.”