All Blacks tours not what they used to be

On Rugby: Rarely can a tour be as resonant with history as the centenary tour being undertaken by the All Blacks. Their trek to Letterkenny on Wednesday to commemorate the memory of their Irish-born captain Dave Gallaher on the 1905 "Originals" tour is proof of that. That five-month, 32-match tour established the identity of the All Blacks and perhaps even New Zealand rugby, and became the yardstick by which the game itself and all tours were to be judged for some time to come. There will never, remotely, be another tour like it.

It's hard to credit that a mere 26 players undertook that 42-day voyage. They played their first match in September 1905 against Devon County - winning 55-4, and five months later completed their 35th match with a 65-6 victory over British Columbia in San Francisco, having stopped off in France to beat Les Bleus on New Year's Day; ultimately winning all but a 3-0 defeat to Wales, scoring 976 points and conceding 59.

It's equally hard to credit that the New Zealanders were fearful of their team's chances, that the selection of Jim Duncan as coach provoked an outcry, and Gallaher himself was an unpopular choice as captain.

The noted New Zealand rugby historian Ron Palenski recalls how strategies, fitness (running around the deck and shovelling coal into the ship's boilers) and practice on the journey were the preserve of a group of players encompassing Gallaher, vice-captain Billy Stead, fullback/winger Billy Wallace and forward Bill Cunningham, a late addition, largely to the exclusion of Duncan.

It redefined rugby into a 15-man game, with Gallaher reinventing the role of a flanker - it even prompted comments about the physical decline of the British male, it regenerated attendances at rugby matches, and upon their return, the team were greeted by prime minister Richard Seddon and 20,000 jubilant onlookers.

"The All Blacks had returned triumphant and the rugby world's greatest legend was born," recalls Palenski.

Now of course, commercial imperatives decree that the All Blacks, no less than other major Test squads, dip in and out of host countries for a week at a time, stopping off only to play a Test or, sometimes, two.

The last connection with such tours remains the Lions. Bad and all as the 2005 version was, lamentably one-sided though the series itself was, Clive Woodward and his squad warmly embraced the concept of reaching out to as many parts of New Zealand as they could in their seven weeks there.

It was the last of the great tours, and it was quite an eye-opener, even for the All Blacks players.

Flanker Jerry Collins remarked upon this in an interview with this reporter and readily admitted it was a shame he and his generation would never experience a tour like it, embracing matches against provincial or club opposition as well as Tests.

The Irish Test team will, of course, be endeavouring to boldly go where no Irish team before them has ever gone and beat the All Blacks. But at least we have Munster in 1978, or at any rate Munster have Thomond Park in 1978, for they're not of a mind to share it.

Rarely can one team have dined out on one match as much as the heroes of October 31st, 1978, have done in the intervening years. Only last Friday, Crosshaven RFC hosted a fund-raiser in the Carrigaline Court Hotel which reunited the Munster team of 1978 - "our 55th reunion", as Moss Keane noted.

Milking it for all it's worth, that famous 12-3 victory also gave rise to John Breen's brilliantly innovate play Alone It Stands and Alan English's wonderfully researched and evocative book Stand Up and Fight.

How does one make one match pan out into a whole 268-page book? English justifiably puts the match in context by quoting Donal Spring in a manner that echoes the current Munster generation's pursuit of their holy grail in the Heineken European Cup:

"Munster were always going to beat the All Blacks; it was just a matter of when. People think 1978 was the shock of the century, that it just happened out of the blue, but it was a long time coming. The single biggest reason was Munster's tradition. We believed we could do it because our predecessors had convinced us it was possible. All you had to do was look at the results. We were the lucky ones because it was Munster's time, but those guys made it happen."

Unlike in this age of mass communication, when a few well-wishers and autograph hunters might happen upon the All Blacks at Dublin airport, there was a greater mystique about the All Blacks on their previous visits to Limerick in 1905 and 1963 which English captures, for this book is as much a celebration of the All Blacks' legend and a discourse on Limerick's socio-economic and rugby background as anything else.

Most of all though, it is a tribute to Munster, the 1978 vintage and especially one man, Tom Kiernan, coach and mastermind of that famous victory.

English managed to make people talk very naturally about the events surrounding that win, and of course the victory itself was relived by those involved.

Perhaps the many near misses of the Irish team over the years have made it feasible for Saturday's team to believe they can make history, but there'll never be history quite like that of 1905, or 1978 for that matter.