McLaren’s spirit dances on streets of Dooradoyle

AN INEVITABLE result? The Greeks thought only tragedy was inevitable, and they invented the idea.

Munster beat Northampton last night but it wasn’t a comfortable procession. The game was even closer than a 12-9 scoreline suggests, and as the home supporters filed out of a frosty Thomond Park, the clouds of breath visible over the knots of fans in red might have been speech bubbles in a cartoon, all saying much the same thing: phew.

The game was a live issue to the very end, and the English visitors will rue the chances missed when Paul O’Connell was sin-binned in the third quarter; at the time the second row took the long walk, the Saints had their noses on the Munster line and must have been able to taste the opportunity but they couldn’t get over. By the time Munster worked the ball up field, the script came together: Northampton conceded a kickable penalty to Ronan O’Gara and O’Connell returned to the action.

Not quite game over, but a clear indication that the credits were ready to roll.

Northampton came to Thomond Park bullish. In Dylan Hartley and Courtney Lawes they have a pair of forwards earmarked to star for England in the near future, but Hartley, the combative hooker, came off second best in an off-the-ball disagreement with one of the Munster backs. While Lawes confirmed his reputation as an awesome athlete, he understandably lacked the nous shown by his opposite number, Alan Quinlan.

Understandable because it would take a lifetime to accumulate Alan Quinlan’s know-how.

We shouldn’t be too harsh on the quaint 12-9 scoreline – in the week that commentator Bill McLaren died, the contest last night in Thomond Park seemed, at times, a throwback.

We might have lacked piratical figures, not to mention shenanigans in the scrum, to use some of McLaren’s terms, but Munster-Northampton would have been familiar to him by any unit of measurement.

Traditional strongholds in direct confrontation, up and coming names versus established stars of the game – even the conditions had a touch of the Scottish borders.

Certainly the half-time score would have seemed familiar to McLaren: 6-3 at the break was a far cry from the all-singing, all-dancing tryfests that Munster have engaged in recently, but maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was clear early on that Northampton weren’t interested in a basketball-type shoot-out. In the first half they didn’t take many chances and were rewarded with that three-point deficit at the break. At least they obliged with a pantomime villain in Shane Geraghty after his dangerous tackle on Paul Warwick.

Ironically, a palpable unease in the ground stemming from Northampton’s refusal to roll over was only eased when, in the second half, O’Connell went to the bin. This galvanised his teammates, with David Wallace leading the break-out from the Munster line (in the siege they had in Limerick a few centuries back, he would have come in handy...).

The forward effort was augmented by Doug Howlett’s selfless running, the elegant strike runner turning two lost causes into Munster gains by blocking a Bruce Reihana kick and hauling down Geraghty. When the artist brought in to score tries – you could call him the cutting edge on the cutting edge – knuckles down to the pick and shovel work, then you know you’re on the right track.

Mission accomplished for Munster: last night’s crowd will be grateful for the home quarter-final, given the economic gloom. It’s been a week for hard-nosed calculation – bonus points, quarter-final options, that kind of thing – but in time to come it may still be remembered as the week that Bill McLaren said goodbye.

You’d like to think that maybe even a veteran like Ronan O’Gara, in some sentimental alcove of his professional heart, heard a distant echo of that Scottish voice, drifting back from a Saturday afternoon in front of the television long ago and decided to put up a high one early on in his memory.

The man who would have said there’ll be snow on that one when it comes down is gone.

But Munster’s chances of getting people dancing in the streets of Dooradoyle remain.