The key Munster-Leinster meeting at Croke Park brought to book
Munster and Leinster fans filled Croke Park in May 2009. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie
It is literally the most storied game in club rugby history.
Seven of the Munster team that started that Heinken Cup semi-final in Croker went on to write books.
Six Leinster players who saw action that day have also committed their story to book form, the latest just out this week in the shape of Johnny Sexton’s Obsessed. Throw in the autobiography of Rob Kearney, who injury confined to being a water-carrier on the day, and Leinster’s bibliography is just as lengthy as Munster’s.
Rugby autobiographies can get a bad rap for being bland, but they can also provide real insights and nuggets as to what a day like May 2, 2009, was really like in that team hotel, dressing room, scrum, battle.
These are not routine soundbites or top-of-head musings straight after the event; nor are they as hazy or as embellished as what can be served up decades later on a podcast or taking a call from the paper. When a player sits down in front of a laptop or in most cases a ghostwriter to produce a book, they’ve to be duly reflective and rigorous before offering their definitive word.
And so, when they were suitably both close to and removed from 2009, this is how those 14 players looked on it.
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: We didn’t see it coming. Everything looked on track. Tony McGahan had taken over from Deccie [Kidney] as head coach in the summer of 2008. He’d been with us for the three previous years as backs and defence coach so the transition had gone smoothly. We were looking good to defend our title.
We had won 10 games in a row. The best of them was the 43-9 win over Ospreys in the European quarter-final. Under Deccie, there was never a time when you could have said, ‘This is the brand of rugby we’ve been working towards.’ That day in Thomond it felt like we had really kicked on. We produced probably the best rugby I was ever part of in my time at Munster.
: Leinster meanwhile survived a siege at the Stoop to beat Harlequins, 6-5. In hindsight it stood to them more than our cushy win over the Ospreys did to us.
: The whole countdown was in our favour.
: I was on edge all that week. The hype was overwhelming. Croke Park was a sellout and this was going to be my first game in the famous stadium. Everywhere you went, there was no escaping it. It started weighing down on me. I had serious anxiety in the days leading up.
: Imagine being Paul O’Connell. He gets up in the morning and decides to buy a newspaper or carton of milk. Three of the people he meets on the way probably tell him he’s a legend. All that starts to get inside a man’s head. Munster players were also being told we were ladyboys.
: One of the things that drove us forwards in 2009 was the desire to disprove Neil Francis who had called us ladyboys. Franno didn’t seem to realise what had happened at Leinster. Cheika had cleaned house. You look at the picture of the squad he had inherited in 2005 and what he had in 2009.
: When I took over the captaincy from Brian for the start of 2008-9, I felt Cheika had pretty much the squad of players he wanted.
: They [had] brought in good, hard players and got rid of the ones who didn’t have what it takes.
: If players couldn’t be paid off, [Cheika] just told them not to come to training because he didn’t want their attitude around the place.
: People were still questioning Leinster’s bottle. Leinster had a lot of proud players and they weren’t going to put up with it forever.
I genuinely disliked [Munster] at that stage because of what they, but more so the media, had been saying about Leinster.
: We were categorised as Fancy Dans, mercenaries, underachievers. It was cartoon stuff. As though Leinster players cared only about money and a good life, whereas Munster players only cared about winning for their supporters.
We listened to guys with southside Dublin accents justify their allegiance to Munster on the basis of a mother born in Limerick or a handful of childhood summers in Skibbereen. On match days we [would] drive past pubs in our own city with Munster flags flying, unchallenged.
We were never losing that game. We had stuff pinned up on the walls in the meeting rooms and around the gym and changing rooms in Riverview. Newspaper articles with what everyone had been saying about us, alongside words that expressed where we were as a group now, as opposed to how we were perceived. One way or another the game was going to define us for the next 10 years.
: Deep down we all figured this was Leinster’s last chance. And we knew that they would be doubly-dangerous because of it. The senior players discussed that a lot with Tony. There was no danger of underestimating them. But we still expected to win.
The morning of the game, I thought back to the text I sent ROG three years [earlier]: Let’s go hard! It was different this time. Friendly-friendly was out the window. My head was in a different place: We’ll be going hard – he just won’t know about it until it happens.
With hindsight I think we were missing that bit of nervous tension in our build-up. Travelling back from Croker after our captain’s run, we were stuck in traffic for ages so we had time to think about [it]. The stadium was fabulous and the pitch was great. I wonder if we paid too much attention to the idea that the match was going to be a great occasion. Maybe we got a little too comfortable with our own star billing.
: People said we have might allowed ourselves to get complacent. I didn’t agree back then and I haven’t changed my mind.
: In ’09 we thought we could simply turn up and beat them. Unless your attitude is spot on, in this [sport] you can hammered.
: Nicky English [former Tipperary hurler and manager] would drop over to the hotel the day of a game to see ROG and myself for a cup of tea. I remember him commenting to me from being in the Radisson that day that he felt there was something not right about the team, that we looked a bit too calm.
: In the tunnel I was second in line, just behind Leo, and the Sky guys told us to wait for 90 seconds. Marcus Horan was directly beside me and though I knew Marcus well, there was no question of a word or even a glance being shared. The stadium screen caught sight of us waiting and the place went ballistic.
[In 2006] I’ll never forget the colour of Lansdowne Road. Red everywhere. I don’t know how our fans got their hands on those tickets. And that was probably the last time Leinster allowed it to happen.
: This time it was 50-50. Coming out onto the field provided a rare Wow! factor. It remains one of the coolest moments from my career. The sight of the blue and red chequered around the stadium, the ear-splitting level of noise.
: A lot of Leinster players will have that Munster game down as one of their top three occasions to have been involved in.
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Felipe [Contepomi] set the tone.
: For him it was personal.
: Something about [Contepomi] always loosened my tongue. In a New Year’s Day game against us in 2006 he ran out after one of his two tries and flaked me with a shoulder and after the other one he cupped his ear to the Munster fans. In the [2006 Heineken] semi-final we got after him from the start and he cracked quickly. His kicking went to pot and he got into a fight with [Denis] Leamy.
: [In 2009] Cheika came up with a phrase for the attitude he wanted from us: Pokerface. He drove it home in training. ‘If they push you, stand on you, cheap-shot you, don’t react! Stare back at them! Pokerface – every fucking time!’
: Felipe charged into Ronan O’Gara a few times.
: Knocked him back three metres and onto the turf.
: Then he kicked a drop goal to put us ahead. And then he twisted his knee.
: When [Johnny Sexton] took to the pitch, I knew very little about him. At the time I was delighted to see Contepomi going off because I thought it would weaken the team. It became the making of them. It gave them a general with balls at 10.
: Even the way he [Sexton] ran on to replace Felipe. As if he was saying, ‘Right, this is my time now.’
: You definitely don’t imagine that your first act will be to kick at goal. Or that you’ll be kept waiting two minutes to take that kick.
: Our bagman, Johnny O’Hagan, had brought out the wrong kicking tee for him. How [Sexton] had the courage, never mind the patience and presence of mind, to tell the bagman to go back for the right tee – not once, but twice – was absolutely incredible. Afterwards he admitted to us that his knees were rattling.
: Johnny rifled the kick through the middle. A star was born.
: I can still picture Johnny standing over me screaming when [Gordon D’Arcy] scored a try – clearly a release of frustration. I couldn’t recall what I’d said [in a previous game] to him to fire him up but as we’d come to know, it wouldn’t take much. But that scream was him announcing to the world ‘I’m here, and I’m here to stay.’
: The really telling moment was turning to the stands after Drico’s intercept try and seeing the Munster fans streaming out and lots of Leinster fans singing ‘Cheerio’. Having been there in 2006, it was great for the boot to be on the other foot.
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I went over to Rog after the game and offered my hand. He told me to fuck off. I probably would have done the same in the heat of the moment. Later he came into the Leinster dressing room to congratulate Drico and Shaggy [Shane Horgan]. He gave me a dirty look on the way out.
: It was the first time in my life I wanted to drink so I could forget about a game. I had a load of cans on the train and then a load more drinks in the Curragower on Clancy Strand that night. Didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want anyone coming near me.
: They turned up and we didn’t. And that was very hard to swallow. We were beaten lots of times over the years but we always turned up.
: Leinster were a team hurting. They had a huge point to prove and we didn’t. You can’t manufacture an edge like that.
: We were hungry. Once you’ve experienced the feeling of winning something like the Heineken Cup you want more of it. But Leinster were hungrier. We were out-wanted, if you can call it that.
: They out-Munstered us.
: I remember Wally [David Wallace] saying to me afterwards, ‘Every time we carried the ball we were hit by three fellas.’
: Brian has since confirmed to me, they’d simply had enough. Leinster always had cracking players and by 2009 they’d had nearly a decade of listening to us.
: With a couple of minutes left when they were camped on our line, there was a short break in play, allowing me to talk to my teammates. ‘They get nothing!’ I told them, as loudly as I could, so that some of the Munster players could hear me. Because it was no longer about this game [the score was 25-6]. It was about putting down a marker for the thereafter.
: People have described that game as pivotal. There’s obviously a lot of truth in that but I don’t think what happened that day led to us falling apart and them going to another level.
The truth is by then they had good plans in place to be better and we didn’t. That summer they signed Nathan Hines who was exactly the kind of player they needed to drive on. They already had the massive advantage of being based in the capital where most of the money in the country is. Success brought them new sponsors, supporters, better training facilities.
Had we won in Croke Park, we might have retained our title and made it three in four years, but our lack of planning would still have hurt us down the line.
: It took Leinster a long time to get their organisation right. Given the quality of their players it should have happened much sooner. But once they all bought in they were always going to be lethal. And that’s exactly what they are.
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