The sky won't fall in if Ronan O'Gara goes to Leinster as provincial lines are being blurred 

We have come a long, long way when someone like Peter O’Mahony, another Munster legend, can ponder the possibility in unemotional tones.

Ronan O'Gara, La Rochelle head coach. Pic: Xavier Leoty, AFP via Getty Images

Ambitions and reality don’t always coalesce. David Humphreys was very much of the view that players born in a province should play for that province when he took on the role as the IRFU’s performance director just over two years ago.

The realpolitik persuaded him otherwise.

Humphreys, speaking in Sydney this week, admitted that he had “pivoted” to the latter view over the course of the last 12 to 18 months. What became clear is that the fluid state of play on the ground was a tide that he could not turn.

“There is no doubt that we have some players in provinces who, if given game time, will develop much quicker,” he said in a wide-ranging interview.

Humphreys name-checked Billy Bohan and Sam Illo, two Leinster men who have earned prospective Ireland debuts against Japan this week on the back of moves to Connacht, as just the latest examples of how this open-minded, no borders attitude can pay off.

The Ulsterman’s thoughts on this were way down the list of topics he discussed with the media Down Under. More notable was the info he shared on a recent sitdown with Ronan O’Gara who he described as a contender for all coaching roles in Irish rugby.

The possibility of O’Gara, a man of pure Cork and steeped in Munster red, a legend of the southern province and a totemic figure from their glory days, taking over from Leo Cullen at Leinster has already been debated ad nauseum.

Forget for a minute the likelihood or not of that happening given O’Gara’s current employment and possible extension of same with La Rochelle. What’s fascinating here is the fact that this is being debated in such a normalised manner.

True, the online message boards contain the usual fire, brimstone and bile but we have clearly come a long, long way when someone like Peter O’Mahony, another Munster legend, can ponder the possibility in distinctly unemotional tones.

O’Mahony did chuckle on Thursday when asked what he would make of his old club and country teammate in a Leinster tracksuit. “It would be a weird one, to be fair,” he said while promoting Virgin’s coverage of the Nations Championship.

But that was it. The rest of his answer zeroed in on how “logical” it would be for the IRFU to see O’Gara as a candidate for the job of claiming the head coach’s office in UCD. This is all a part of the same trend: less personal, more business.

The lines are being blurred between the four provinces, red and blue is mixing.

Munster players, from left to right, Donncha Ryan, Niall Ronan, Peter O'Mahony, Ronan O'Gara, and Paul O'Connell. Picture credit: Diarmuid Greene / SPORTSFILE

Munster-Leinster has been centre stage in this four-ring circus through the modern era. It gave us Eric Miller kicking Anthony Foley where the sun don’t shine, Johnny Sexton roaring in O’Gara’s face and John Hayes losing his cool and shoeing Cian Healy.

The sparks still fly at times.

Think of Johnny Sexton going at it with Fineen Wycherley and Joey Carbery in Thomond Park in 2019. Don’t forget how tempers flared at the end of last October’s Munster’s win at Croke Park. This stuff still matters, but the terms of engagement have tweaked.

If player movement around the provinces is ingrained then an O’Gara move to Leinster would just be the most box office coaching appointment yet in terms of men who have declared ‘have clipboard, will travel to rival’.

Mark Sexton has swapped Galway for Ulster in recent years, and Mossy Lawler and Jimmy Duffy have left the west for life in Limerick. Richie Murphy cut his teeth as an attack and skills coach with Leinster is the boss man up in Belfast now.

Denis Leamy raised eyebrows when becoming a development coach and then skills coach with Leinster before migrating back homewards. And that’s not even accounting for Jacques Nienaber, Stuart Lancaster and Dan McFarland who have moved around the island too.

And the sky has yet to fall in.

Humphreys wasn’t alone in struggling to accept all this. The worry has always been that it would upset the delicate biodiversity, blunt the razor-edged rivalries, that gave provincial rugby such an important and cherished stake in the wider game.

There’s no doubt that it has to dilute something from the tribal element but so has the unavoidable slog of a professional season and the IRFU’s understandable desire to limit game time for its top players and their resultant absence from too many interpros.

The other danger, the main danger, to the provincial balance is Leinster’s hegemony.

Munster have been beaten in 22 of their last 27 meetings with Leinster going back a decade, Ulster 20 in 26 and Connacht all bar two in 22 over the same period. Addressing those ratios would go a long way to repriming the rivalries.

Humphreys has made that sort of recalibration a core policy goal and the decision to up Leinster’s share of their centrally contracted players’ salaries to 40% of the total, something already impacting the province’s roster, is designed to do just that.

Already being dubbed the ‘Leinster tax’, the money taken in by the IRFU from this is being redirected the other three provinces, into schools in Munster and Ulster, and clubs and the academy system west of the Shannon.

O’Gara at Leinster would be gold and, given his status, groundbreaking, but the provincial game is changing regardless.