Sir, Ireland have been playing England at rugby football since 1875. It is the second oldest international fixture in the world beside it, the Five Nations Championship is a recent innovation.
That this venerable confrontation, interrupted only by World Wars, should be put at risk in a squalid dispute over television rights is quite monstrous.
It is, however, sadly typical of the maladministration of the game over the past twelve months. Last August, in an illegal and unprincipled act, the International Rugby Football Board, abandoned the amateur principles which had governed the game for more than a century and declared the game "open". This was illegal in that it contravened a fundamental objective of the board, and unprincipled in reflecting the viewpoint "the rules are being broken, let's change the rules". To the shame of Irish rugby, the IRFU representatives at the meeting in Paris acquiesced in this decision.
Three months previously on May 16th, 1995 in a statement opposing professionalism and detailing the malign effects which would follow its introduction the IRFU had stated
. Commercialisation would be an expected development which would lead to control of the game passing to persons more concerned with commercial success than the maintenance of its image and substance,
. A movement to pay winning bonuses would be inevitable,
. The cost to unions provinces, districts and clubs would be crippling and would likely lead to the bankruptcy and dissolution of some clubs.
. Profits arising from the game which should be applied largely for the advancement and development of the game as a whole would in part be paid for the benefit of individuals.
Holding these prescient views, how could the JRFU sign on to an agreement to make the game professional? One is tempted to speculate on some kind of coup at Lansdowne Road in which the "professionals" on the committee defeated the "amateurs". If so, it will be a pyrrhic victory. In a game driven by money, there will be no place for the volunteer administrator the much derided alickadoo. As we have seen, the shots will be called by the sponsors, television networks and a handful of commercial enterprises masquerading as rugby clubs.
It took 170 years of volunteer effort by players and administrators to build rugby football into a worldwide recreational leisure activity out of which over many years a way of life has derived" (IRFU statement of May 16th, 1995).
It has taken just 12 months to destroy it. Yours, etc., Glenesk, 44 Claremont Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4.