Home Comforts
LAST YEAR Niall Woods was rooting through some old cuttings when he came across a match report. Munster v Leinster, 1993, Donnybrook. Attendance: 2,000.
Tomorrow there will be 40 times more supporters in Croke Park for Munster v Leinster in the Heineken Cup semi-final. The fact that so many Irish-based professionals can drive the two provinces to the last four of Europe can be seen as a vindication of the Irish Rugby Football Union’s (IRFU) bold decision to keep their top players in Ireland rather than lose them to the Premiership, which happened wholesale in the early days of professionalism.
And it was a bold decision. Ask Philip Browne, chief executive of the IRFU, who can recall the wild early days of professionalism.
“When the game went open in 1995 it’s fair to say that some countries were better prepared than others,” he says.
“The southern hemisphere countries were better prepared than European countries, for instance, though France was ready to a certain extent. The other thing to remember is that if the game hadn’t gone open in 1995, there was a chance that other structures could have been put in place. But we were lucky to have able administrators such as Noel Murphy, Syd Millar and Tom Kiernan at the time, to help steer it through.”
Browne isn’t just handing out compliments. The trio made points that proved very prescient.
“Early on Tom Kiernan said people would have to be aware of individuals buying rugby clubs, and at first the reaction to that was as if people were going to fall around laughing, but that happened within a couple of months – John Hall bought Newcastle rugby club.
“Then I think Syd Millar made another point, that you’d see an exodus of players from the southern hemisphere to play in Europe, because that was where the main economic powerhouse of the game was, and people didn’t believe that either.
“Now that didn’t happen as immediately as John Hall’s purchase of Newcastle, it happened later, but it still happened.”
Browne says that for Ireland there were two options – to have an indigenous professional game and to draw on those players for the international team, or to have them travel to play professionally in England and then to draw on them for the international team.
“But while that might work for soccer, where you have a much bigger game,” he says, “We didn’t feel it would work in rugby. There are crucial differences. The obvious comparison is soccer, but professional soccer in England, for instance, works in a totally different way to rugby here, where the international team is the main driver of the game.
“And early on in the professional era, for one international game we had 17 players out of the 21 Irish players based in England. We knew that wasn’t going to work.”
Browne concedes they were lucky to have a “ready-made structure in the provinces” that could be used. They started off by contracting five players and it built up from there.
Wearing his player welfare hat as CEO of IRUPA, the Irish professional rugby players’ body, Niall Woods says the IRFU’s decision to bring players home has been a success.
“The benefit of playing fewer games is something people recognise, and even the RFU is trying to bring that in over in England now as well with their elite player squad, whose members playing time is capped at 32 games.
“Our guys benefit from being here – they’re managed very well, and yes, it’s worked out very well. In the first five years of professionalism the teams weren’t that competitive, but now they are. There are exceptional cases where guys still go to England, cases where players haven’t made it here but made it in England – the likes of Eoin Reddan and Johnny O’Connor, obviously, who broke through there.”
“I know people have pooh-poohed it a little, but the Magners League is hugely important for us, because you couldn’t run a professional team on just having three home games in the Heineken Cup.
“The professional structure depends on the Magners League and that’s improved hugely in the last couple of years, it’s settled down really well.
“That’s clear in the standard of play, which isn’t dependent on promotion like the English Premiership, and in turn that has lead to a different style of play. There’s also an indication of the quality of play in the Magners League when you look at this year’s Heineken Cup, where three of the semi-finalists are Magners League teams.”
Woods echoes Browne on the Magners League: “It’s vital for the provinces. Having home games every two weeks is perfect, though it doesn’t always happen, but it helps to build the brand, the supporters get used to going to the games – and that all helps to build the following.
“Leinster had 9,000 season ticket holders last year. Take the money they put up and that’s a huge amount of cash that Leinster have in the bank at the start of the season, before anything happens. If you maintain that, or grow it, you have funding to develop what you’re doing off the field and on.
It may have been an obvious structure to use, but the incredible success of the provinces wasn’t as obvious. Looking back, could anyone have anticipated the explosion in support?
“I don’t think so,” says Woods. “I remember the AIL was three or four years in existence when the game went pro, and the success of the provinces has been at the expense of the club game, unfortunately, but the game this weekend – it mightn’t be the pinnacle of players’ careers but it’ll be close to it. Playing in front of 82,000 people will be an unbelievable experience.
“Munster and Leinster have also done well to retain some of the core values of rugby, which is something, say, that some clubs in England have struggled with.”
Browne also pays tribute to the trailblazers in professional rugby.
“People talk about the Munster phenomenon, and it is a phenomenon, but they shouldn’t forget the influence Ulster had early on. They filled Lansdowne Road for the Heineken Cup final in 1999, and at the time the fact that Lansdowne was filled for a club game was incredible.
“I suppose the Heineken Cup final Munster played against Northampton was another turning point. We could see at that stage that it was going onto another level altogether then.”
Obviously the professional sporting environment is a constantly changing one, but Browne says they’re happy with how professionalism has gone so far.
“Remember, rugby has only been professional for 12 or so years, and we’ve had to get to a stage which other professional sports have reached over 600 or 100 years.”
Woods agrees: “When I found that cutting last year about the game in Donnybrook, and 2,000 people, and you compare that to 82,000 people this weekend . . . well, you can’t compare them. Who’d have imagined that?”
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