‘Tommy said nothing for 20 minutes. It was a remarkable speech’

By Charlie Mulqueen

Greg Barrett was a central figure along with his midfield partner Seamus Dennison on the Munster team that stunned the All Blacks. Forty years have elapsed since they ran up a 12-0 victory, forged by Chris Cantillon’s try, and two cheeky drop goals and a conversion by Tony Ward.

The occasion has been celebrated annually ever since and rugby people all over the province are sure to mark the occasion even more joyously on this, the 40th anniversary.

Selection on the team for such an awe-inspiring fixture was massive for Greg Barrett, then a 21-year-old Cork trainee banker. A group of other similarly inexperienced rugby players approached the game with a sense of excitement and just a little fear.

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Video technology was in its infancy, but the then Munster coach was the celebrated Ireland and Lions captain Tom Kiernan and Barrett says his use of the technology proved vital in preparing for the massive test that lay ahead.

“It was extraordinary and completely new and really did help to prepare us very well,” he says.

“You know the way three or four guys tend to group together, there was Brendan Foley, Seamus Dennison, Larry Moloney and myself. We were a kind of quartet. Having seen the video and noting that move of Stuart Wilson coming in off the wing, our minds went straight to planning. It gave us a heads up to be ready for it, gave us that half second of preparation we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t seen it. That was hugely important and, of course, Seamus’s tackle.”

Beforehand, of course, a huge amount of preparation took place, with Kiernan masterminding everything in his own quiet and efficient manner.

“We went up to Killaloe and wandered around the boats and that kind of thing, just relaxing, and I remember stopping off in The Hurlers on the way back, Wardy, Seamus, and Larry and myself, and we had one libation,” Greg recalls.

“Tommy wouldn’t have been aware of it, but in truth we weren’t misbehaving, just a quiet moment of reflection. No, we were all pretty well geared up for it.”

“While we were not confident, we felt we had a very good side. When you went through the team, there were a lot of Irish caps on it and a lot of people who were subsequently capped, so we weren’t far off an Irish team.

“The most memorable moment pre-match was when we had the team meeting in our hotel, the old Jurys. Everybody sat down and a silence came over the room. Tommy put his foot up on a chair and said absolutely nothing for about 20 minutes. He had said everything he wanted to say. There was just this momentum in the room through silence that was quite extraordinary. It was a remarkable speech — or lack of speech — just the power of the person more than anything else.”

Events on the field of play have been well documented in the intervening years, Seamus Dennison’s tackle on Stuart Wilson, Cantillon’s try, Ward’s drop goals and so many more that made for one of the greatest days in Irish sport.

“In any team, a standard is set by somebody. Nobody wants to be left behind. They all want to play at that level, and the leadership that Seamus showed in that tackle brought us all up a level,” said Barrett.

“Belief was building the further the game went on, but all the time we were waiting for when this is going to turn. After all, we are playing the All Blacks. I remember they were attacking our line at the Thomond Park entrance end when a ball squeezed out of a ruck and we were retreating, I managed to pick it up, throw in a jink and cleared the line. That was the moment for me when I grew into it, that we could deal with this, these are just humans and ordinary people, and blew past any feeling of inferiority. “Late on, when we knew we had the win, the sense was that we weren’t going to let them score. Donal Canniffe, the captain, called us into a huddle and told us we were going to win and win by 12-0. He had a good, calm head on him and it wasn’t the ‘boot, bite, and bollock’ type of approach”.

Barrett laughs heartily at the oft-expressed view that no team has lived off a result like this in the history of sport.

“Without a shadow of doubt!” he acknowledges. “In any sport, in any code, no other team had more written about them, played all over the world, celebrations everywhere and anywhere.”

On a slightly more serious note, he concludes: “It set a standard for yourself, that you have achieved something, like if you can do that, there’s loads of other stuff you can do, too. That’s always been a good motivation for me.”