Thank God for Munster and Michael O’Leary

I USED to be an inch over six feet,but that was before I startedplaying rugby for Charleville — now I’m an inch under.

In May 1980 I was working on a major road project in Benghazi, Libya, but packed it in to come back to Ireland for one purpose, to win an intermediate hurling county with Ballyhea, which was duly achieved.

A byproduct of my time in the Middle East, however, was that in the absence of the one true sport, a few of us hurlers took up rugby, and immediately found a second sporting home.

In autumn of 1980 I joined Charleville rugby club, where the facilities were a little different to what we enjoyed in Ballyhea. The dressing-room was a shed at the back of Ryan’s pub (and boy you had to be fast to the shower, a communal affair with a limited supply of hot water), the pitch was in the town park, the training facilities lit with a couple of less-than-daylight-strength lights.

In the far corner of that park was a hill, a small hill, but a hill which, with 19 stone of Declan O’Connell draped around your shoulders, took on Everest proportions. Thus it was that between 1980 and 1984, when I emigrated to New York at the start of the last economic valley, I gradually shrank from 6’1” to 5’11”, thanks to the mass of Mr O’Connell.

He’s a legend, is Declan, an institution among Munster rugby supporters. One of the founders of the Munster Supporters’ Club, he goes to every Munster game, home and away.

I bumped into him at Bristol Airport the weekend before last, after the Llanelli game and met him again this weekend in Clermont.

“Thank God for Michael O’Leary, he’s our saviour,” he boomed. “And so say all of us,” I replied remembering the 70s, when a flight back from London was more expensive than any Ryanair flight to Europe now.

So you have to pay a few bob if you want to check in a bag, a few bob if you want a sandwich — so what? If you take a bus or a train do you get a meal included? All the extras are clearly flagged; if want them, you pay, and it still ends up as a reasonable cost — that’s commerce. So, thank God for Michael O’Leary, I say.

Thank God also for Munster. Think back over the last 10 years, the cheer they’ve brought us on an annual basis. Coming up to Christmas every year, in the depths of mid-winter gloom, almost invariably they would do something to lift the spirit. The pool games before the end of the year are critical, the make or break games; go into the new year still in contention in the group and you had something you could look forward to, and for almost every one of the last 10 years, Munster have given us that something.

Now, we come to another critical period, and now, in the depths of not just the winter gloom but a new economic depression, we need that lift more than ever. Which brings me to the thrust of this piece.

Sunday in Clermont was the first time in recent history where the travelling Munster support was thoroughly outshouted in the stands. The hardcore of the Red Army was still there but the numbers were down, and though many of those I met on the Sunday evening were hoarse, their efforts were well and truly drowned out by the superb Clermont support.

There was no chorus of the Fields in the closing minutes to lift the team as they went in search of the winner, no chant of ‘Munster, Munster’, echoing around the ground. Would it have made a difference? Going on precedent, I think it would. Unfortunately, I think the recession is starting to bite Munster.

Traditionally, all the best-supported teams in sport come from blue-collar areas, the likes of Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sunderland in the English Premiership. And by the way, I think Roy Keane, who comes from a blue-collar background himself and thus understands their need, was thinking of those fans when he walked away from Sunderland. They say that in writing, we should all have a target audience — Keane’s target audience isn’t the media, nor the owner, it’s the ordinary fan, and once he felt he was letting that guy down, time to go.

Well, this team has never let these fans down, never. On Saturday comes a real opportunity for Munster again to put themselves in good shape over the Christmas period for another charge at qualification from their group; comes also an opportunity for the Munster support to really make itself heard.

It’s Thomond time, time to grow into the new Thomond Park. The All Black match gave us a taste of what it can be like when the new stands really rock, time now again for the Munster roar — deep, guttural, uplifting. Time for the fans to help the team lift the gloom. Again.

Finally, last week I said I would be cancelling my two Cork county board draw subscriptions if there was no effort made to end the impasse by the end of the year; what I omitted to add was that, to ensure the club doesn’t suffer, I will be investing in the Ballyhea lotto (online, and it’s a system I would recommend to any club) what would otherwise be lost to the club.

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