Cian to keep it going

Well, in defiance of all predictions, in defiance of another invasion by the massive Munster Red Army, it was a blue, blue world in Dublin on Saturday.

Brilliant blue for the tens of thousands of Leinster supporters who themselves defied predictions and turned up in impressive numbers to support their team on a magnificent occasion for Irish sport.

Baleful blue though for the thousands in the Red Army who couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. And black and blue for the Leinster players who tackled themselves to the point of absolute exhaustion, then bounced back to their feet to do it all over again.

Blue on blue for a Munster side that simply had no answer to the precision of the two incisions that opened them up for the tries of D’Arcy and Fitzgerald, and that on this afternoon at least had no unanswerable questions of their own to ask of a Leinster defence fast gaining a reputation as the best in Europe.

Could it be that, within Irish rugby, this was the day the world turned, this was the day that Leinster, for so long proclaimed – mostly self-proclaimed, admittedly – as the elite oval-ball province, has finally found its feet? Initially it was the AIL, with the likes of Shannon, Garryowen, Cork Con, Young Munster, giving the lie to their claims, then, with the advent of the professional game, it was Munster carrying on that dominance. On Saturday, however, with a side in which five of the starters (mercurial Nacewa and Contepomi, solid Whitaker, even more solid Wright and barnstorming Elsom), were drawn from the southern hemisphere, there was a not a one from that semi-mythical area derided nationwide as D4.

Emphatically, and finally, it was the fact that this was an ultra blue-collar performance from, yes, an ultra blue-collar team, that led to this long overdue triumph for Leinster.

One of those new breed for Leinster is a most unlikely individual; prop-forward at senior level is meant to be a position of experience, a place where hoary grizzled veterans bore into each other using tricks and tactics practiced then perfected in the trenches over years of hard schooling. An injury earlier this season to Leinster’s own such tried and tested individual, South African World Cup winner CJ Van Der Linde, opened the door for young Cian Healy – and how he has taken advantage.

Fearless and fresh-faced, Cian was to the fore again on Saturday, a cameo near the end when Munster’s Alan Quinlan, the wiliest man in rugby, was man-handled on the Leinster line in an act typical of Cian’s devil-may-care attitude. Cian, and others like him – Jackman, Cullen, Heaslip, Jennings, O’Brien, Toner, Kearney, Fitzgerald – these are the new faces of Leinster rugby.

“That’s all just a bit of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly,” said Clontarf native Cian, of the still-persisting D4 label. “We’re just a team, lots of different personalities in there, you can’t tar us all with the one brush. We’re the Leinster team.”

No longer the Ladyboys then? “I think that was a ridiculous tag to put on us anyway,” he scoffed. It was, Cian, always was, but then cutting and all as they are, there’s always a little truth in those tags also and in too many big games in former years, games in which they seemed to believe that prior good form and favouritism somehow entitled them to win without having to put in the work, the perception was there – even among their own, and especially in the rural Leinster constituency – that they were preening prima donnas.

This is the third big Heineken Cup game in succession, however, in which Leinster have quarried out a win, displayed the kinds of sleeves-up work ethic that has long been the Munster hallmark; the kind of display, in fact, that might even tempt those from within the province who turned their backs on Leinster – the Lunsters, as former Leinster prop Reggie Corrigan so disparagingly christened them – to come back to the fold.

“I hope so,” said Healy.

It’s a realistic hope, a hope, perhaps, already being fulfilled, given the numbers in blue who added to a superb atmosphere in Croke Park on Saturday, a new world record attendance for a rugby union club match of 82,208.

“Incredible,” Healy added. “Couldn’t describe it really, more than I’ve ever dreamed of. We’d heard so much about ‘This time (as opposed to the semi-final of 2006, when Munster supporters completely dominated in Lansdowne Road), will it be even or not, will Munster fill the place?’, and on the way to the ground we were seeing loads of people in red and we were thinking, ‘Yeah, that could be the way.’ But walking out even for the warm-up, it was just big patches of blue all over the place, gave you that little lift that you needed. Even in the dying minutes of the game both sets of supporters were kind of riling each other up and that picked us up as well.”

The main point about Munster and that now famous win in 2006, however, and the major reason it’s remembered so fondly by Munster supporters, is that the southern province went on to win its first Heineken Cup. This win, celebrated and all as it will be for the next few weeks, will mean absolutely nothing unless Leinster go on to do what they’ve been threatening to do for several years – replace Munster as Heineken Cup champions. To do so, they will have to deliver another big performance – “Bigger,” says Cian, “and better. Heineken Cup final, doesn’t matter who it’s going to be against it’s going to be an incredible game, going to be very tough. I think we have a lot of work to do ahead of that. We’re fighting for Leinster, what we can achieve, and if honours come from that, they come.”