Making sure Ireland call the tune on Saturday

JAMES LAST may or may not be tuning into the big match early on Saturday morning.

If he remembers what happened the last time Ireland collided with Wales in Wellington, the old boy ought to be curious to find out whether an odd piece of history is about to repeat itself.

Rugby does not play that big in Bremen and there is a fair chance the whole tournament will pass the place by because the Germans have better things to do.

Maybe so but the fact of the matter is that when New Zealand last hosted the World Cup, one of the port’s more famous sons replaced the Irish national anthem with his orchestra’s treatment of a traditional ballad.

The IRFU got their cross-border knickers in such a twist that when their team lined up at the old Athletic Park on May 25, 1987, they dropped Amhrán na bhFiann and replaced it with The Rose of Tralee — the substitution of the century.

I kid you not. I was there.

Imagine the England team lining up against France in Auckland for their quarter-final to discover that God Save The Queen has been replaced by a Geordie warbling The Blaydon Races or the Welsh trading Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau for Sissy Spacek’s A Coalminer’s Daughter.

A big band leader still touring at the age of 82, Mr Last has done many wonderful things with his music, not least selling some 70 million albums but he may be blissfully unaware that he made it to the first World Cup.

He did so because one of the Irish team, Phil Orr, had bought a copy of the cassette recorded when the Last orchestra played at Tralee in the mid-80s and just happened to take it with him to New Zealand for a little light entertainment.

How one particular track came to be played over a crackly tannoy system which sounded almost as old as the song still beggars belief. As a World Cup farce it is now in its 24th year at No. 1, having comfortably seen off such recent challengers as the tweeting Samoan and the midget-throwing competition which landed Mike Tindall in a spot of bother with the Queen’s granddaughter.

It is hard to believe now but back in 1987, the IRFU did their level best to ensure that their team came home as soon as possible, having made an abortive bid to prevent them going in the first place. They voted against the concept of a World Cup, as did the Scots, who saw its advent as a ghastly idea and thereby hangs a tale.

When Nicholas Shehadie, ex-Lord Mayor of Sydney and a driving force behind the tournament, asked the SRU committee for their support after a dinner in Edinburgh, the honorary treasurer, Gordon Masson, told him: ‘Over my dead body.’

A few years later, Shehadie found himself sitting in the committee box at Twickenham for the 1991 final between England and Australia. He looked around at those sitting behind him and saw Masson whom he promptly grabbed by the wrist. When the flustered Scot asked him what on earth was he doing, Shehadie said:

“Just making sure you’re still alive...”

The Irish union were of a like mind, an attitude which ensured that their team, led by Donal Lenihan, operated under a handicap. “They stopped us playing for five weeks before the tournament, which was ridiculous, and that meant we were off the pace,” Lenihan, said. “We’d had a good year in the Five Nations.

“We’d beaten England and Wales and we still had the majority of the championship-winning team from two years before.

“Our preparation was shambolic.”

Ireland’s coach, the late Mick Doyle, had a heart attack and that was before the issue over the anthem.

It arose 48 hours before kick-off when Lenihan, naturally enough, raised it.

“I said: ‘I presume we are playing Amhrán na bhFiann.’ I was told no, we were not. I called a meeting of four players, two of whom were from Ulster. All four agreed to a man that they had no issue whatsoever standing for the national anthem. The union said it would not be played. I made the point that this was different, that this was the World Cup. We had hours and hours debating the issue before the match and we were right to make our stand. We’d seen every other country have their national anthem played and their players clasping the badges on their jerseys.

“Then, about 12 hours before kick-off, the stupid compromise was made. Phil had this tape with him and the Rose of Tralee was about the only song we could get our hands on. From memory, the players stared down at their feet in embarrassment. As one of them said: ‘There are many songs that make you feel like laying down your life for. A scratchy Rose of Tralee ain’t one of them.”

During the second World Cup four years later, home fixtures at Lansdowne Road averted a farcical repeat.

By 1995, Phil Coulter, the celebrated Derry composer, wrote Ireland’s Call at the IRFU’s behest.

When it comes to singing along, the comparatively muted response from some in the ranks reflects the understandable dismay they feel at finding themselves the only country at the tournament denied its own national anthem.

Lenihan can only empathise and hope that history on the field is not about to be repeated.

Wales won 13-6 in 1987 and went on to reach the semi-finals. Another win on Saturday and the rejuvenated Dragons will be back in the semis for the first time since then, unless some of Ireland’s all-time greats ensure that it’s high time their rivals from across the Irish Sea face the music.