Big guns rolled out to derail Von Ryan's Express

FREE-TO-AIR PROPOSAL:The Minister for Communications has caused uproar among rugby's heavy hitters over his free-to-air plans, writes JOHNNY WATTERSON

THE IRFU and their revenue streams; they do so get very uptight about those. You could understand then how they heated an entire room yesterday in the Shelbourne Hotel fulminating, excoriating, upbraiding, castigating.

Minister Ryan, be thankful.

They also invented a new green energy. It’s called convulsion heating. More environmentally friendly than convection or oil but not entirely stress free.

“We met with the minister in December but it fell on deaf ears. We came out of that meeting collectively very depressed,” said IRFU CEO, Philip Browne on rugby’s most recent and unlikely bete noir, the Gonzaga boy who supports Leinster, Eamon Ryan TD.

It was one of those rare days when the ties were fiercely knotted, the eyes challenging and the frustrations almost spat out as the usually unflappable rugby heavy hitters lined up to vent their spleen on what they perceived was “the greatest threat to the game of rugby since it went professional in 1995.”

Three CEOs, Browne, the ERC’s Derek McGrath and the Six Nations CEO, John Feehan, flanked by the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the provincial CEOs, settled along the wall like generals in a war cabinet. Granite faced. Tight lipped. Language biblical. This was rugby battle prepared for the first time in 15 years.

Browne outlined the threat of Minister Ryan on the horizon. Free-to-air rugby and the dismantling with the stroke of a pen a body of IRFU work globally admired.

Minister Ryan’s green foot print, we were told, would be the biggest of any politician, the one that crushed the professional game in Ireland. For 43 minutes the sound and the fury belted out around Stephen’s Green and at the heart of it a figure of €12 million, the IRFU’s calculated annual loss.

“Misguided. Misinformed and poses a huge threat to rugby,” added Browne before flashing up an image on the screen. “Irish Rugby in Crisis” ran the banner headline.

It was the start of a serious ministerial shoeing from the former players. As they saw it Minister Ryan was deliberately on the wrong side of a ruck, offside, interfering with play and like any good pack they went into contact studs flashing all over him.

“I just think it is absolutely cracked,” added Browne exasperated but continuing along the themes of hazardous, calamitous, and ruinous.

Never before has the sober IRFU liberated their thoughts so freely.

While many will be rubbing their hands with the prospect of free Heineken Cup matches and a poke in the eye for pay channel Sky Sports, the fear in the voices of the top brass, the real belief that this would bring the rugby citadel crashing down was clear in their almost desperate pitch.

Rugby was practically losing its cool.

The baleful cry was that no one would be watching Heineken Cup on terrestrial television anyway because Ireland soon wouldn’t have a team to meet that standard as the top players flee.

“It’s simply not going to be possible to make that €12 million,” said Browne of their calculated cost to the Union of the free-to-air proposal.

“It will lead to a very quick spiral of decline. I have no doubt about that. All we need to do is lose the top 10 players from this country and we lose our competitiveness.”

McGrath, who has led the European competition to its current popular and commercial success, sat to the right of Browne and weighed in with his continental muscle.

No shrinking violet he wondered aloud why it was that the main architects of the game in the northern hemisphere, the ERC, the Six Nations and IRFU think the minister’s idea is batty, while he does not.

And what he asked of Ulster who operates within the IRFU but in a different political jurisdiction.

“We are extremely concerned,” said McGrath. “We had a meeting last week. The minister says that he likes rugby and supports Leinster. But when we left the meeting we felt concerned that he just doesn’t get it.”

And there it was unadorned, nakedly presented. A benign minister but in the IRFU’s eyes one incapable of grasping the concepts of partnerships in which Irish rugby is a net recipient, of working across different countries, of commercial imperatives and player’s motivations.

Feehan, on Browne’s left, presented a similar doleful image, one of a wind bush rolling through an empty Aviva Stadium, officially christened just last week.

“I represent five other Unions,” said the Six Nations chief. “And they will take a very dim view of this.”

Von Ryan’s Express is readying itself to move in the next six weeks. RTÉ is opportunistically hovering to pick over what the IRFU would see as political progress Green style, their bones; a Leinster without O’Driscoll, Fitzgerald and Kearney and a Munster without O’Gara, O’Callaghan and O’Connell.