In the oval office
Tony Leen and Michael Moynihan spoke to Garret Fitzgerald and Mick Dawson.
LAST Sunday’s Kerry GAA Division 4 Football League match between Glenbeigh-Glencar and Keel had an honourable visitor from across the sporting divide. Not that Munster rugby chief executive Garret Fitzgerald believes in sporting partition, especially in the country’s most passionate sporting province.
“I was down there for the weekend and heard it mentioned at Mass. I knew a few of the fellas playing,” he explained. “That’s what makes Munster so special. Sport is a common conversation in every walk of life, and all the codes in the province support each other.”
Fitzgerald, aged 51, was Munster’s first professional era chief executive and, if preserving the province’s blue-collar ethos was a prerequisite for the post, the Cork man had a head start.
Not that he would ever claim to be the inventor of the heady formula that has made Munster rugby such a blue chip brand. He’s just nurtured it.
“We’ve always got to be well grounded in things we do,” he explains. “If we lose that, we lose what Munster is about. If we ever believe we can be the prawn sandwich brigade, we’ll lose everything. We were strongly encouraged by commercial interests a few years ago to become the Munster Reds or something like that, but Munster itself is a world-wide brand name. It’s a community thing, and we’ve got to work hard to ensure we never lose that.”
Defining the magic of Munster rugby is virtually a degree course in itself.
“Clubs all over Europe have asked us ‘how does this happen’. We frequently attend conferences at Celtic League level and they say ‘can we sit down for an hour with you afterwards and discuss what you do’.”
And what do you tell them? “It’s an ownership thing, I believe. Because of the geography, the players are close to their support base all the time - if we lived in one large city, the fans might never see the players. In Munster, they see them every week; the supporters nearly feel they own the team.”
Not that the Munster branch can afford to be complacent with its remarkable following.
“The bottom line for everyone involved in Munster rugby is what happens on the field. We need to maintain a high level of performance from teams representing the province, and to continue to have our own players coming through the system under (provincial development manager) Ultan O’Callaghan.
“Our work situation - from myself, the administrative staff, coaches and players - is like any other business. It’s about keeping the customer happy. Today’s supporters are demanding, they want performance and they want winners. No-one wants to hear about a cyclical phase or a dip - you’ve got to be there all the time now.”
Luckily Munster are knocking on Heaven’s door all the time. Fitzgerald is pragmatic enough to know that natural justice or a rosary beads won’t be enough for Munster to fulfil what many believe to be their Heineken Cup destiny. But there are benefits to being in the final shakedown every season.
“Our experience over the last number of years means we’ve learned how to plan for games like Sunday. Back in 1999, it was all new for us, but now the templates are all in place.”
One problem Fitzgerald can’t surmount, however, is the perennial tickets famine. The Munster branch distributed 42,000 for the Lansdowne Road quarter-final against Perpignan, and fans moaned - “and they were the people who said we shouldn’t go to Lansdowne Road at all, by the way,” he says wryly.
“Look, it’s great that people have such an interest in Munster - our job becomes immeasurably harder the day no-one is looking for tickets. But we have an agreement with the clubs in the province for pool games, quarter-finals, and semis. That template meant there would be no tickets for public sale for the Leinster game because 50% goes through the club structure. Then there’s the Supporters Club, who’ve been very good to us. Those two combined take care of 15,000 of our 21,000 allocation.
“Sponsorship commitments - that are very reasonable - account for another 2,000, and then there’s a small amount of corporate hospitality before we get to the volunteer base at committee level in the branch.”
It was that “small amount of corporate hospitality” which raised hackles before the Perpignan game. Not everybody warned to the idea of the clubs hawking their ticket allocation around corporate dinner tables in Dublin.
“What the clubs decide to do (with tickets) is their own decision,” says Fitzgerald. “We also have to recognise the clubs are inputting a lot financially into the game. Look at the number of Munster clubs in Divisions One and Two of the AIL - they all feed into our provincial system, so we must recognise how we benefit from the club structure. Remember that all the players in the system at the start of professionalism came straight out of All-Ireland League Division One - the Galweys, the Clohessys, etc. The club system is more important in Munster than in other provinces where they have a bigger population.”
Win, lose or draw on Sunday at Lansdowne Road, the respective branch chief executives will be at their desks on Monday planning for the week and years ahead.
“Broadly speaking, we’d already have a plan in place for the next five years - categorising players, looking at what’s in our academies, identifying the areas where there are obvious weaknesses.
“The short term plan is looking to next season. By the end of this month, we’ll have everybody contracted that we’re going to need for next year. So then you start working on the areas where there will be vacancies or expired contracts next season, and the specialised positions. It’s quite evident in terms of props and front rows, that the Irish provinces are struggling and it’s an area we’ve got to look at. You should produce your own and augment them with the extra three or four overseas players that will give you that extra 5% or 10%.
“For instance, (Academy prospect) Michael Essex has been identified as a good player, but there are a lot of good guys in his position in the back row, and maybe he has the qualities to be a hooker. He’d be part of the plan for the next four or five years.”
Despite some misgivings, it is also the plan to continue the dual-base approach of Limerick and Cork. Again, it’s a decision that must be made on economic and not emotional issues.
“I don’t think it’s such an issue now because Munster’s support base is across the province. We’ve made a policy decision long term that we need two bases to maximise our income. The population isn’t big enough in Cork or Limerick to stand alone and draw crowds to 15 matches in a row. Limerick is the main base, but we also need the facility in Cork because there’s a great support base.”
TWENTY years studying the market for Davy Stockbrokers seemed an apt apprenticeship for Mick Dawson, the chief executive of Leinster Rugby. After all, the value of his blue-chip charges was inclined to fall as well as rise. However, since he took over four years ago the news has been mostly good for shareholders, with Sunday’s clash with Munster the clear proof.
“It’s great,” says Dawson. “We’ve been here once before, but it was different, we weren’t as used to it and there certainly wasn’t the same demand for tickets. This is very exciting, it’s a great opportunity for everyone involved.”
Leinster had a lot of people involved supporting them in Toulouse for the quarter-final win. Dawson hopes the province has turned a corner in that regard.
“Obviously the win in Toulouse was a watershed for us. A lot of people travelled and had a good day out, and it shouldn’t be difficult to keep them involved in future years. The family days we’ve been running have been very good in getting kids involved, so the hype has been very good for us, and we hope it’ll continue to be good for us going forward as a brand.
“We’d have been watching Munster for years in that regard, and I think they reached their watershed when they had a big win - that kind of result makes people who aren’t involved in club rugby think the Heineken Cup weekends are good outings in different parts of the world. We hope the fans we’ve gathered in that way will stay with us.”
With that in mind, were the Leinster hordes hoping their Munster counterparts came through against Perpignan in the other quarter-final?
“Realistically we probably hoped Perpignan would win, that we’d have had a better chance against them,” says Dawson. “Local derbies are 50-50. Having said that, we slipped on a banana skin against Perpignan before and Munster found it hard to beat them.
“From an event point of view, Munster was the dream draw, and maybe for the team to keep focused, Munster was probably the best draw. If we were up against Perpignan people would be saying ‘ah, you beat Toulouse, you’ll beat Perpignan’. That doesn’t necessarily follow.”
With the buzz surrounding the provinces it’s easy to forget the clubs, many of which have been suffering since the advent of professionalism. Dawson addresses that issue, and others, head-on.
“For a start, the clubs - and I was involved with a club for years - took a while to buy into professional rugby. There was a perception that provincial teams were ‘taking our players’, and people were slow to support the professional game. I think that’s changed and that an economic reality has entered the clubs, that they can’t fund the professional game. This is the first time we’ve had an issue where clubs didn’t get enough tickets, though that’s been an issue in Munster for some time.
“In the domestic game we all know the inherent problems - the fall-off in playing numbers between 16 and 22, and the fall-off in the volunteer base. I think that’s plateaued to a certain extent. The professional game caught everyone by surprise in 1995 but club rugby is getting its act together again now in terms of the economic reality I mentioned earlier. Those are the issues going forward - we’re always trying to address the qualitative and quantitative issues in terms of the numbers playing the game - and getting the good guys to come through as well.”
Talking of good guys, Leinster Rugby must be pleased with the appointment of Messrs Cheika and Knox. The two Australians weren’t household names outside the rugby world, but now Leinster may suffer because of their judicious selection.
“We’ve had a bit of a turbulent history with coaches in recent years, but you need a bit of luck as well. We’re delighted with Michael (Cheika) and David (Knox), they’ve done fantastically well making a good squad of players better and more competitive. They’re hot properties at the moment, but we’d hope to hold onto them for a few years yet.
“The players look to the coaching staff, they get their confidence from the staff, and we hope Michael and David will be able to help develop coaches in the province, so it’s a double-edged sword - they’re good for the players on the pitch, while they’re also developing coaches off the field.”
A forecast for Sunday? “I think it’ll be very tight. These big matches never seem to end with anybody running away with them, but I’ll go for Leinster to shade it.”
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