Out of the ordinary
YOU NEVER quite grasp the value of experience until you get to put it to good use. Last Saturday afternoon, walking the pitch with Ian Dowling, I suggested he prepare to have his senses violated to such an extent that it could leave him disorientated. The noise at the Millennium Stadium would be so loud, that he would lose the ability to communicate verbally with the player next to him.
How’s your lip reading, Ian? Six years ago at Twickenham, I buck-leapt onto the pitch and into a maelstrom ahead of the Heineken Cup final. I had the game plan but it was nowhere I could find for the first 10 minutes. I was in a daze, unable to hear, to steady myself, to grasp the enormity of what was happening.
Eight months earlier at the University of Limerick, Dave Mahedy was setting us goals. Woody, who’d only joined us that season from Harlequins, raised a murmur when he said “to win the European Cup”.
A surreal moment. Cue embarrassed giggles. It was the first time most of us had contemplated such a preposterous notion.
Or maybe that was just me. “Rags” (as they’ve labelled me) never had much in terms of rugby ambition. Didn’t go to a rugby school, you see. Rochestown College turned out Richard and Paul Wallace, Darragh O’Mahony too, but it wasn’t PBC or CBC. (One aside: the man who started rugby in Rochestown College, Brother Edward, called out to Musgrave Park this week to congratulate us. The bigger the occasion, the more the small things seem to matter). When I graduated from the Cork Con Under-18’s to the Under-20’s, it was regarded as a big deal. Bigger again when I made Con seconds.
Then onto UCC, the senior team. Soon I was jogging alongside Gaillimh and the Claw at training. At a safe distance, mind. Was I ready for the step-up? Don’t think so; the notion of playing alongside them, competitively in Europe was still an abstract concept.
You think Woody was serious back then? I do. Now. He was just a little further advanced in terms of The Big Picture. I began to understand the puzzle the following Christmas, at home with parents, two sisters and (girlfriend, now wife) Grace. Wasn’t it great to have made the final, and nearly beat Northampton? That knot in my stomach said otherwise. Was that life’s opportunity that flashed before me at Twickenham? Please come back, one more chance.
We are the best-supported rugby side in the world. I believe that 100%. You won’t ever again see what we witnessed last Saturday in Cardiff. There have been comparisons to 1978, that October day in Thomond Park, but what those Munster boys did will never be eclipsed. The only Irish side ever to defeat New Zealand. They left a legacy, but I don’t think back in 1978, they realised what would become of them. Alone it stands, doesn’t it? This is a completely different thing at a completely different time. I don’t know how we’ll be perceived in years to come but the European Cup is different to a scalp like the All Blacks. It will be won by some team every year. Axel (Anthony Foley) spoke on Sunday and said he’d like the Munster thing to go on, that it wouldn’t finish here. Me? My dream is to see Munster bring it on now, so that in 50 years time the Heineken Cup is like the Champions League and Munster are a team in contention every year.
What I’d hate is in 30 years’ time that fellas are still talking about that one European Cup back in 2006.
THE MORNING stole up on us Sunday back in Limerick. I didn’t watch all the game in the dead of night, preferring to dip in and out. Savour it later. Axel did.
Pulled up a seat, front-centre. I think he just wanted to enjoy it, to soak up the enormity of the whole thing.
Then it was bright, and thoughts turned to Gaillimh (Mick Galwey). On the same Sunday morning six years ago outside the Limerick Inn (now the Radisson).
Gaillimh was outside pacing about. Said he felt like rolling over and dying. 9-8. Maybe never again. It all funnelled into last Saturday in Cardiff.
This Sunday would be different. Saturday night finished with us “college lads” — Leamy, Keogh, Frank Murphy and myself — having the craic. Keogh did the jig thing again, the one caught on camera in the dressing room afterwards. It may haunt him forever, but sadly, he’ll haunt us in a different way. He’s onto Leinster now. Great player, great fella.
It’s sinking in now. Day by day, it seeps through, but can you have a real sense of how much it means to so many people, not just ourselves? We’re cocooned in our own little world most of the time. I’ve been there since 1997, trying to win the thing, though not always believing.
My first three games were all in Europe — we lost the first two and then defeated Harlequins at home. Life was about taking a few scalps, not being the best in Europe.
The following year, we were more competitive and got to the quarter final in France. Against Colomiers. That was it, then. There was no belief that we’d go there and win. Nobody admitted it, but it was tacitly accepted.
That was before John Langford. He texted me after the semi-final victory over Leinster, but he had left a calling card on this squad. A few years back, in a hotel in Belfast, he sat among us and said we were going to beat Ulster at Queens University (Ravenhill was being resurfaced) after two decades of trying, because we were as good, if not better, than any side he had lined out with. I believed the Super 12 was some kind of rugby nirvana at the other end of the world, and Langford was an ex-Brumbie.
Now that it’s done, what lies ahead? We trained Tuesday, and it was great. It’s like you’ve done something really good at work — you don’t go back in the following day depressed, thinking “this is boring now”. You savour going back with the people you enjoyed and achieved this special thing.
This Saturday? We’ll be very careful about Cardiff. You don’t want to go out in front of that support and be embarrassed. Cardiff are a quality team. It’s undoubtedly harder after a great high, but we have to be professional.
YOU always get The Feeling. It’s nerves. Myself and Paul O’Connell were discussing it the day before the final, joking about running away, packing it in, hiding on a beach in Australia. There are times you want to sit in your time machine and be on the plane home.
But the actual memories you look back on are the things on the pitch; being able to achieve gives you great enjoyment. If something matters that much, you are bound to be nervous to have those fears and worries. What’s the song? Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You. That’s living to me, it’s putting yourself on the line.
You don’t look for reassurance, you get over things by talking about the game, about situations.
Going through scenarios - what will I do here? A ball with a line break. Look to put on a side-step or to offload? That helps the nerves.
I WASN’T minding the shoulder at all, but it was a worry. A direct hit in the wrong (right?) area will take you out, irrespective of how good it feels. I had taken contact in training, but nothing replicates a match. Truthfully? Sometimes, contact in training is hard when you’re 32, hard to get your head around.
That’s when you get hurt.
Earlier this season, there was one session where I wasn’t expecting contact — there was no game at the weekend — and suddenly my nose was broken and halfway across my face. You have to go in with your head screwed on, and if can’t do that for the Heineken Cup final, then you have a problem.
But I’d have liked a game. Since the 10 minutes against Leinster, I had nothing, and I’m the kind who plays a game, is better in the next, and by the third, I’m flying. Four weeks without a game is difficult.
Missed tackle, Biarritz try.
Hugely disappointing for me.
Bidabe put a hand on me, you see it coming at you, and the instinct is to knock it down. But I had not put in a lot of tackles during the week.
Except this was my good side.
Forget it, 77 minutes to go.
It hadn’t been an easy four weeks between semi and final. I had exams (accountancy, by night) the week after the Leinster game. Left shoulder, right hand for writing, no problem. In fact, the exam focus helped take my mind off things.
Week Two, back on the cross trainer, ice and anti-inflammatories. On the Monday of the second week, things were getting better. Now lifting the arm out in front of me. By Friday, I could move it around, relatively pain free. Reading a lot about the A/C joint, where the collarbone and the shoulder blade attach.
Only in the last week, did I start worrying about making it in time. Having our own gym in Cork was a huge help this season. The Munster Supporters Club helped us out big time.
Christian and Frankie are slogging with me. I had the option to go to Wales, but might have gone mad.
While one squad were in Wales, another was giving me every chance of making Cardiff. Take a bow Martin O’Sullivan and the radiographers at the Mercy Hospital. Nick and Kirstie, Eanna, Tadgh, and Mick Shinkwin.
Aidan and “Chopper” (Damien Medness). Acupuncturist, Pat Lee. Even the Irish physio, Cameron Steele, sent down rehab programmes.
SNAPSHOTS jump in and out. One of the best passages of play was when Stringer took the quick lineout, and fed Donncha. It set the tone, there were great offloads, great hands. It was a statement of intent. We had conceded a try, now it was straight for the jugular. The first half was just a ferocious pace.
Understandably, the pace dropped in the second half. We began to stiffen in our attitude. Hold what we have.
We knew how to; there was belief. European champions. Thanks Claw, Langford, Gaillimh, ye all. Experience told.
Afterwards, all the lads who were injured or not in the 22, came running down.
Initial carnage had subsided, now the cavalry arrived and it’s off again. It’s all pictures, no words necessary. Frank Murphy, Frankie Sheahan. Barry Murphy had been doing radio commentary high up in the stand, and started to get agitated when he saw everything going on below him.
“You look like someone who should be elsewhere,” said radio veteran Len Dineen. Barry got down to the pitch. I know that much because I put the Cup in his grateful arms.
HAD to laugh at Freddie Puciarello on the stage last Tuesday night in Cork. A beauty. Two days after coming to Munster, he was one of the most popular guys in the squad.
What is it with the foreign legion in Munster? Trevor Halstead’s not the biggest talker, but he’s very funny. And liked by everybody. I was going to ask him what he thought of the scene in Cardiff, but there was hardly a point. I don’t think there’s any player who wasn’t blown away. Could it happen again, so many people supporting the one team, and another 15,000 back in Limerick? Unique.
I thought Trevor was superb against Biarritz, but he’s unbelievably strong and powerful. Watch his try. Two men hit him, and he blew them both back. Their winger, Gobelet is a big man, but when Trevor ploughed in, watch Gobelet’s head just jerk back.
GAILLIMH said on the paper last Monday he can now get on with his life. He’s been huge for Munster, for our belief, our play, our values.
Myself, Rog, Hoggy, Stringer and Mick O’Driscoll all came through around the time Gaillimh was taking Munster by the collar. He was like a father figure, an older brother. The Claw wasn’t as big a talker, but you’d have huge respect for him. That first training session with them keeps resurfacing. Keeping to the side, away from them, looking at them.
STRINGER and myself went back to school Wednesday. Our old primary school.
St Anthony’s in Ballinough meant a lot to me, and means even more today. Bart Whooley’s school was good fun. Loads of PE. We had a new gym, they’ve another new one now. An hour’s swimming every week too, and teachers used to organise an hour’s soccer after school. I don’t think they can do that these days.
Grace’s two nephews are there, looking forward to meeting them. A lot of kids from St Anthony’s live in my park and they’re coming up to me now: “Did you go to my school?”
We went back there with the Celtic League in 2003, myself, Peter and Jim Williams.
The old structure remains, I recognised my old classroom, but everything has been built around it.
The principal, Flor O’Sullivan was my sixth class teacher. He’ll remember us winning the Sciath na Scoil, with J Kelly as captain and centre half-back. That’s the right term, isn’t it? It was Roinn B and had only been won once before in my time. There was a picture in the Examiner the day after. It was of Ken O’Connell, one of the stars, on our team. Twelve years old and you get a picture of someone you know in the paper. It’s bananas.
Small world, by the way. At the Cork Parade right in front was Ken O’Connell the guard. A first cousin of Paul O’Connell. The ties that bind.
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