How Irish rugby came back from the dead

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How Irish rugby came back from the dead
BRENDAN FANNING

THERE isn't an official time on it - it didn't come through on the match stats - but observers reckon it was sometime in the last quarter at Murrayfield last weekend when the Mexican Wave started. Scotland were chasing the Italians in the way a man late for a job interview pursues a disappearing bus. And the crowd had tuned out. They were already in la la land.

A couple of hours later in Dublin, another remarkable wave washed over the crowd. In the last quarter of Ireland's rout of England, many in the full house of 82,500 broke into rounds of 'Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé. That had never been heard at an Irish rugby game before. It was an impulse, a throwback to the happiest days of the Jack Charlton era when the nation was locked into the good fortunes of its football team. It was further evidence that, in this country, rugby is becoming the new soccer.

Ireland's 43-13 scoreline was the fourth successive win over the world champions. A few weeks earlier, Steve Staunton's squad were fleeing San Marino where they had come within a whisker of the most embarrassing result in Irish sporting history. If the FAI are looking across to Lansdowne Road and wondering how this minority sport has stolen their thunder, it is nothing compared to the questions being asked by our Celtic cousins north of Hadrian's Wall.

Once upon a time, there was plenty to bind the Irish and Scots rugby clans.

We paddled the same canoe. In both countries, the game was a middle class pursuit, similar in its structures and profile in the sporting hierarchy. We had Gaelic games and soccer dominating our landscape; they had soccer; and in both, rugby was comfortable in its place in the background.

Above the club game we even had the same number of representative sides. Our four provinces were mirrored by Scotland's four districts. At the committee table, our representatives spoke the same language. No two unions in world rugby were as firmly wedded on the preservation of amateurism than Ireland and Scotland.

Back in 1991, when the IRFU were prevaricating over a commercial scheme put forward by the players during the World Cup, the lads in Lansdowne Road were able to delay it further by saying that the Scots had an objection to it.

On the eve of our departure for the 1995 World Cup, the IRFU issued a statement declaring that they were opposed to the payment of players because it was a leisure activity undertaken on a voluntary basis. It was no more than what Bill Hogg of the SRU had said a few months earlier. They were blood brothers, on the same page, reading the same script.

It was in the 1990s that we began to feel inferior to them, and it was down to results on the field. Where for generations there had been little between us, between 1988 and 2000, Ireland came through 12 matches against Scotland without winning one. It was a staggering sequence, the longest in the history of competition between the two countries. It took on an eerie certainty to it. Scotland international Craig Chalmers was lucky enough to happen along when the Scots were surfing this wave.

"It's probably fair to say that, even in bad years, we'd come second last rather than last," he says of the safety net that was the Irish fixture.

"You made it relatively easy for us. I don't know why, and I asked Keith Wood once: was it the old Celtic soul brothers thing and could they not get up a head of steam to beat us? Bear in mind this was when Ireland were even beating England occasionally. He denied it completely, said he was buggered if he knew. But that if he found out he'd get back to me!"

Chalmers never got the call. And he won't be getting one anytime soon, for Wood has moved on to another planet now, one where defeats by Scotland are not something that haunt him anymore. We've all moved on. What seems to be intriguing the Scottish rugby public is how we've left you lot trailing in our wake.

There were a few key criteria on Ireland's road to redemption, and the critical one was luck. We were blessed that, when the game went open in 1995, the IRFU's stadium plans had moved no further than buying 90 acres on the outskirts of Dublin for less than £1m. It's still sitting there, appreciating in value. Not being saddled with debt going into the new era - as was the case with the SRU over Murrayfield - robbed the IRFU of the excuse that they couldn't afford to invest.

Of course that didn't account for whether or not they wanted to. They didn't. Year on year, at the union agm, the high point was the treasurer's report, where glowing figures would be flashed before the council to great applause. The very idea of spending it was alarming. So we reluctantly ventured into the new era, wondering if and when things might go back to the way they were.

Fortuitously, the vehicle that carried Ireland forth had been assembled in the previous century, and was racing competitively since 1946/47. Like Scotland's districts we had our four provinces, and while in the early 1990s they had paled when compared to our fancy national clubs' league - which started some 15 years after the Scots caught on - they were still functional. So all that was needed was to dust them down and fill them up with contracted players and away we would go. They even had their own grounds, each with its own history.

Better still, there was no battle to be fought with the clubs. Yes, there was a move by a handful to become the standard bearers in the new world, but putting them down was bloodless stuff, done and dusted by Christmas 1996.

The only issue was in filling up the provincial squads. In 1997, Brian Ashton (left) rode into town on a spectacular six-year contract, believing he would be the Ireland coach, at the top of a system which had four pro teams with full-time coaches and full-time squads. He left after 13 months of asking why it wasn't happening, and only after he had gone did the IRFU decide to resource these teams. Ashton looks on that decision as his legacy to Irish rugby.

Even when they were muddling along in the first few years of the pro game, they had a feel for Europe. We were in from the start, and mad for action, partly because, along with Marcel Martin and the late Vernon Pugh, Tommy Kiernan was driving the competition.

In 1996/97 for example, Munster were mid-table in their European Cup pool and their two wins was twice as many as the aggregate of Scotland's three districts. By 2000 Ireland's three front-line provinces had a winner, a runner-up and a semi-finalist between them.

Scotland didn't even have a qualifier from their pool.

Those seasons weren't runaway successes, but they exposed Irish teams to top-class competition, and brought the game into homes where previously GAA or football were the only visitors. It developed a whole new class of follower.

The most important development in Ireland's transition was what the IRFU committee saw as their darkest hour. It came in Lens in 1999, when Ireland lost to Argentina in the World Cup, for the first time putting us outside the elite top eight teams of the rugby world. As one of their number put it: "It was embarrassing. It came at the end of what was a very difficult transition for us. Our period from '95 up to Lens was an absolute f*** up altogether. It was a sort of catharsis point where everybody said: 'OK, we've reached it, now we can either play around with the professional game or get seriously into the professional game'."

Thereafter, investment went up year on year. The IRFU's youth development officer scheme - an important evangelical move initiated by Noel Murphy - was seen as more of a cause than a cost on the bottom line.

They were late to the party of spreading the word, but with glossy pictures of European action as a calling card, it wasn't the hardest sell. Liam Hennessy, the IRFU's fitness director, suddenly became a man to be listened to. The drive to get back the players who had fled to England in the summer of 1996 - when the IRFU were waving them off at the gangway - was stepped up. There was no going back.

Even since then however, it hasn't been plain sailing. Just as the Scots put the Borders to sleep in the early rush to rationalise, Connacht were nearly undone in 2003 by the bean counters who thought that IRFU forecast deficits of €4m and €6.9m justified cutting off a limb. By making it such a public, political issue, however, Connacht made it impossible for the union to follow through with the axe swing. Just as well. The budget forecast turned out to be wrong in any case.

So we are now at a stage where rugby is sexy. And the majority of those who play for Ireland also play in Ireland. At times it's awkward for the provinces to cope without their stars, when the national management tells them to rest, but three Celtic League titles and two European Cups would suggest they are coping. And the prospect of a third Triple Crown in four seasons reflects well on the top tier who are making those demands.

It makes you wonder though. Still Ireland haven't bridged the gap to Grand Slam status, and the road to the last four in the World Cup is pot-holed. If we had started earlier, where might we be now? There was a time, in the early nineties, when we were being milled by record scores down in New Zealand and Australia, when it was painfully obvious that we had to bridge the gap, to make some sort of accommodation for our top players so that they could compete with those who had stopped worshipping the regulations on amateurism.

The IRFU weren't interested. Had they got on board then, even modestly, we'd be a lot further down the track than we are now. Even so, the bookies won't be offering generous odds against the away team on Saturday. In which case:

All together now, stand up and raise your arms and then sit down in a continuous wave motion. Repeat.

From There to Here: Irish Rugby in the Professional Era, by Brendan Fanning, has just been published by Gill & Macmillan and is available through www.gillmacmillan.ie

THE 10-YEAR TRANSFORMATION
1997: ITALY A RECURRING NIGHTMARE

Player exodus to England continues apace. Murray Kidd fired as coach when his team are hammered by Italy in January. Brian Ashton takes over and suffers record losses to England (46-6) and to New Zealand (63-15). Scotland humiliate Irish 38-10 at Murrayfield. Leinster lose to Milan in Europe. Two hundred people turn out to watch Munster and Leinster in the Interprovincial series. The year finishes as it began, with defeat to Italy

1998: BAD BLOOD BEHIND THE SCENES

Brian Ashton resigns after Scots win 17-16 in Dublin. Warren Gatland takes over; Ireland get the wooden spoon. They lose seven Tests in a row. No joy in Europe bar the odd big win for Munster, usually followed by an even bigger defeat.

1999: THE LOWEST EBB

Ulster win the Heineken Cup but it is a false dawn. Ireland lose 30-13 at Murrayfield (above). Their international woes continue through to the World Cup where they are dumped out in the quarter-final play-off with Argentina. This cataclysmic night in Lens sparks the most wide-ranging postmortem ever. Operation Bring The Players Home begins.

2000: GREEN SHOOTS OF RECOVERY

Gatland gambles on five new caps against the Scots - and wins. Ireland then win in Paris for the first time in 27 years. A young fella called Brian O'Driscoll scores a hat-trick in victory. Munster begin to prosper. With a new team of super-confident tyros, they make the knockout stages of the Heineken. They bring thousands of supporters with them to Toulouse for the semi-final and win. Then 50,000 follow them to Twickenham for the final but they lose by a point to Northampton. The bandwagon has started rolling, though.

2001: MORE BLOOD ON THE CARPET

Ireland win four out of five in the championship for the first time in years but Gatland is sacked regardless, the horrendous 32-10 defeat at Murrayfield (above) the final nail in his coffin. In Europe, Munster make the semis. Leinster beginning to click slowly now. They beat Munster in the Celtic League final. A clash that attracted 200 a few years before sees 30,000 turn up at Lansdowne Road. Club rugby is getting sexy.

2002: PROGRESS AND HEARTBREAK

Munster reach another Heineken final but lose again, this time to Leicester. They have now become a phenomenon, punters sleeping overnight for tickets for their European games. A major brand had been born, replica jerseys selling in tens of thousands. Ireland beat Australia for the first time since 1979; the first big scalp of the Eddie O'Sullivan era.

2003: WHEELS KEEP TURNING

Ireland win at Murrayfield for the first time in 18 years and come within one point of beating Australia in the World Cup on their home patch. Keith Wood retires but a team of big-game players has formed. Munster and Leinster both make the semis of the Heineken. Both lose but Leinster attract over 40,000 to their quarter and semi-final. These are unheard of crowds for provincial rugby in a previously unsinterested Dublin.

2004: TRIPLE CROWN GLORY

Ireland win their first Triple Crown since 1985 when beating the Scots in Dublin. South Africa are defeated for the first time since the 1960s. Munster's agony in the Heineken continues when more than 40,000 home fans watch them lose a classic semi to Wasps in Dublin.

2005: A TEMPORARY DIP

Bad year on all fronts leads to fear and loathing and a flashback to the bad old days. A few excitable men call for O'Sullivan's head after the Six Nations and the autumn series goes awry. Munster and Leinster go out of Europe in quarter-finals, a veritable disaster in the bold new era.

2006: A NEW HIGH

Munster finally win the Heineken Cup (above). More than 70,000 travel to Cardiff to watch it and another 15,000 line the streets of Limerick to see it on a giant screen on O'Connell Street. In the semi-final they beat Leinster at Lansdowne Road; a 49,000 sellout but organisers say they could have filled the stadium four times over. A second Triple Crown is won with a third successive victory over England. Ireland hammer Australia and South Africa in the autumn. It's considered the best ever year in Irish rugby.

2007: GAEL FORCE

Munster and Leinster are wobbling in Europe but at least they're both in the Heineken quarter-finals again. Croke Park becomes the new, temporary, home of Irish rugby. France spoil the party on opening day but they get it spectacularly right against England in what is considered the most emotional victory in Irish rugby history. Television viewing figures shatter all previous records to smithereens.