Gerry Thornley: The strength of Irish rugby is a minor miracle given how few play it

Spin a globe, stop when you can locate Ireland and, while we’re a great little country for sure, we really are a relative dot on the planet.

The country certainly punches above its weight and hence generally knows how to celebrate its hard-earned sporting successes, but it’s a wonder Ireland can compete in international sport as well as it occasionally does.

At times though, as the Republic of Ireland’s recent downturn and upturn in results under Stephen Kenny demonstrated, it also seems as if some Irish people are happier when Irish international teams are losing.

Maybe the vitriol directed toward Kenny and his team is partly influenced by our footballing focus being so traditionally centred on English football, and an ensuing mistrust of anyone from a League of Ireland background.

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As for rugby, Leinster’s season is now deemed a relative failure despite only one team doing better than them in all of Europe in the Champions Cup and only two teams progressing further in the newly expanded URC.

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The expectations in this country regarding our sporting achievements internationally, and particularly in team environments, needs to be reset, because Ireland is not a big nation in any team sport.

Aside from being a relative dot on the globe, our main sports are our national games rather than any international sport. Gaelic football and hurling, each a true phenomenon in their own land, are the biggest participating and spectator team sports in Ireland, and by a distance.

It’s doubtful anywhere else on the planet has two national sports in which the participants and spectators are defined by the boundaries of 32 counties and that every year tickets for the two 82,000-plus capacity finals are prized commodities. Only American Football and Aussie Rules remotely compare.

Ireland’s playing pool is also exceeded by Argentina, and Wales, while it is rivalled by Italy, and only betters Scotland to any degree among the top 11 rugby countries

Most readily available data on sports participation dates back to 2019, pre-pandemic, and according to a Sport Ireland report from that year, the GAA accounted for 8.3 per cent (325,000) of club membership for people aged 16 or over. Golf was second, on 120,000, with soccer next on 105,000, while rugby came in sixth, behind swimming and running, on 50,000.

The good news for rugby, and this is true internationally as well as in Ireland, is that playing numbers have held up strongly and even slightly increased since the post-pandemic reopening of sport. It would seem as if the pandemic has made people more appreciative of team sports.

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Even so, rugby is dwarfed by Gaelic games, and especially football. As things stand currently, the GAA has 85,581 adult male players, over four times the estimated 21,000 adult players registered with the IRFU. In other words, Dublin probably has a greater playing pool of talent in Gaelic football with which to take on the other 32 counties than Ireland has to compete against the leading rugby playing nations.

The last report on the number of players playing rugby union conducted by World Rugby was also pre-pandemic, in 2019, with the findings of a new survey expected before long. The figures for Ireland pretty much tally with the current updated ones of 79,000 registered players (ie those registered with clubs, including the 21,000 adult players) and an overall total of 196,000, which incorporates women’ players, schools, sevens etc.

To put the URC semi-final losses for Leinster and Ulster against the Bulls and Stormers into a little perspective, not only are there no national games dwarfing rugby in South Africa, not only is rugby a better fit genetically, but as of 2019 the world champions had the largest number of registered players of any leading rugby nation in the world (a whopping 635,288).

For all the pain the country has endured since the ending of apartheid, rugby’s ever-increasing diversity has seen its playing numbers increase.

Football is undoubtedly the dominant sport in every sense in England, but even so the RFU still had 355,153 registered players (over four times the number in Ireland) not to mention a total number of over 2.1 million when incorporating development programmes, community games and the like.

Australia is akin to Ireland in that rugby union is some way down the pecking order after Aussie Rules and rugby league, yet they still had over 271,000 registered players and not far off half a million in total.

France has similar playing numbers thanks to a southern swathe of the country where rugby union is the number one sport. Further debunking the perception that rugby is a largely Anglicised game of the Commonwealth. It is also the number one sport in countries such as Georgia and Madagascar.

Ireland’s playing pool is also exceeded by Argentina, and Wales, while it is rivalled by Italy, and only betters Scotland (46,000-registered players) to any degree among the top 11 rugby countries.

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Over the course of Sunday and Monday a squad of 40 players and backup staff set off on their long-haul journey to New Zealand for the most daunting tour ever undertaken by an Irish team, certainly in the pro era.

New Zealand is an interesting comparison with Ireland as the populations of the two countries (circa 5.08m) are very similar yet of course rugby is the number one sport, the equivalent of Gaelic football, hurling and soccer, as well as rugby, rolled into one. Dan Carter’s status would be the equivalent of Bernard Brogan, Joe Canning and Roy Keane rolled into one. The All Blacks are akin to royalty.

Furthermore, among the half-dozen uncapped players in the recently-named All Blacks’ squad for their three-Test series against Ireland were the Blues’ centre Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, the Chiefs loose forward Pita Gus Sowakula and the Crusaders wing Leicester Fainga’anuku. Tuivasa-Sheck was born in Samoa, Sowakula was born in Fiji and Fainga’anuku was born in Tonga.

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One totally understands why kids in the Pacific Islands dream of becoming All Blacks, for socio-economic as well as historical reasons. But it means that New Zealand rugby and the All Blacks effectively tap into three feeder islands where there are another 160,000 or so registered players.

Yet having bucked history in the last decade or so, this Irish team will again be expected to compete strongly with the All Blacks over the next month. It’s a minor miracle really.

gerry.thornley@irishtimes.com