IRFU controversies:From Bloody Sunday to apartheid to TV rights, the Six Nations has been dogged by many controversies over the years. Johnny Wattersonon the moments when politics and money sullied the sport.
THE OVAL ball has been thrown around in Ireland since 1874. Unsurprisingly, throughout that time many issues have come and gone and exercised the best minds in the game of rugby. Some of the occasions were troubled, others historical or divisive.
But each time Irish rugby has emerged on the far side and now heading towards a 2011 Six Nations Championship the game appears bigger, stronger and better supported than it has ever been.
From governmental interference in Irish rugby’s tour to South Africa in the apartheid years to Wales and Scotland fearing for their safety in the wake of the 1972 killings in Derry and the opening of Croke Park, rugby has always bounced back. On occasion the IRFU have also had to fight their corner on their own to maintain their independence. Occasionally the disputes were taken without public support and often there was the butting of heads with government ministers.
Bloody Sunday
ON JANUARY 30th, 1972, the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment of the British army shot 26 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside area of Derry city. Fourteen of those died on the day or a short time later. Reaction throughout Ireland was one of fury and three days later a crowd estimated at 20,000 marched on the British Embassy in Merrion Square in Dublin and burned it down, which alarmed many people in Britain.
In that year’s Five Nations Championship Ireland had already beaten France at Stade Colombes and Scotland were due at Lansdowne Road on February 26th. Because of the unrest in Dublin, a meeting of the Home Unions two days before Ireland met England in Twickenham on February 12th decided there was no reason for Scotland not to honour the fixture.
However, after the England match, which Ireland also won 16-12, the SRU informed Dublin the Scottish team would not be travelling. The IRFU sent a delegation of six over to Scotland in an effort to allay fears and while Scotland appeared to soften their stance, a few days later they released a statement saying they would not travel.
In the context of what transpired to be unjustified and unlawful killings in Derry, the rugby was an irrelevance. But in Dublin, life was relatively normal and when Wales followed Scotland and withdrew their team from Dublin, there was a great degree of resentment. Ireland had won their first two matches away from home for the first time since 1948 and a Grand Slam was a possibility.
The following year England was due to travel to Dublin, which raised similar security concerns. But the RFU took a more trenchant view and said there was no question of withdrawal. Four England players declined to travel: lock Nigel Horton, a serving policeman, scrumhalf Jan Webster, fullback Sam Doble and lock Peter Larter, who was a serving RAF officer.
When the England team stepped onto Lansdowne Road they were greeted with the most extraordinary round of applause that lasted for five minutes.
“You didn’t want to spend too much time standing still, you felt very vulnerable,” said captain John Pullin afterwards. Pullin had been aware of the death threats to the England team, reputedly issued by the IRA. Ireland won the game, after which Pullin added the now immortal post-match quip.
“We may not be any good but at least we turn up.”
Croke Park Opens
NOT SO much a crisis or controversy as a delicate tiptoeing around the storied history of Croke Park. But the GAA’s relaxing of their Rule 42 to facilitate the Ireland rugby team during the rebuilding of Lansdowne Road was one of the greatest political sports successes in modern times.
That an England rugby team would arrive to the site of the original Bloody Sunday massacre and that the obedient rugby fans would stand to attention as the English national anthem was played seemed in the end to be as much an expression of national maturity and confidence as it was of neighbourly respect.
The first match, against France in February 2007, was in itself historical but England’s arrival for Ireland’s second home match had been in the making almost two years previously when the prospect of playing God Save The Queen would have exercised the minds of many GAA delegates, particularly those from the Ulster counties.
It was on April 16th, 2005, the motion to temporarily relax Rule 42 was passed at the GAA annual congress. That gave the GAA Central Council the power to authorise the renting or leasing of Croke Park for events other than those controlled by the association, during a period when Lansdowne Road was closed for redevelopment.
The final result of the voting was 227 in favour of the motion to 97 against, 11 votes more than the required two-thirds majority.
In January 2006, it was announced the GAA had reached agreement with the IRFU to stage the two Six Nations games as well as four soccer internationals at Croke Park the following year.
The doors had opened.
While the agreement was temporary, Croke Park hosted Six Nations rugby matches up to the end of the 2010 season, by which time the newest stadium in town at Lansdowne Road was nearing completion.
While the IRFU had no direct role in the historical decision taken by the GAA, indirect, external pressures were exerted.
Not only were the GAA likely to net a windfall of cash for the rental, which could be used to strengthen their own bases but a more general pressure was brought when the notion of playing “home” international matches in Britain was aired. The image of an Ireland rugby team flying to London while Croke Park lay empty seemed at best horribly unattractive and exclusive.
France and England came that first year. Ronan O’Gara scored Ireland’s first try on the hallowed turf as Croke Park added another chapter to its rich history.
Television RIghts
THE IRFU will remember April 30th, 2010, as the day they placed their members on a war footing. That day Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan (far right), a self-professed rugby fan and Old Gonzaga boy, declared his intentions to move Ireland’s games in the Six Nations Championship and Irish club matches in the European Cup to terrestrial television.In one stroke of his ministerial pen he would make watching rugby a money-free experience on RTÉ television.
Theoretically Ryan had many supporters. What better than free rugby from the national broadcaster? What better than no more subscriptions to Sky Sports?
What the Minister failed to see, and what the IRFU subsequently explained in a series of occasionally fraught press conferences, was his false economy. It was argued that having free rugby but significantly diminished revenue streams would lead to the destruction of the game itself.
“A very quick spiral of decline,” was how the urbane IRFU chief executive Philip Browne (left) described the effect of the proposals, also adding Ryan was gambling with rugby’s future and that the plan was “absolutely cracked”.
Aside from vested interests from Montrose, the IRFU curiously found they were being widely supported. The sums didn’t add up and Minister Ryan remained unconvincing on how the lost revenue could be found elsewhere. Such interference would lose rugby up to €12 million a year countered the IRFU, while the Minister’s suggestion that alternative sponsorship could fill the hole in a crumbling economy were, explained Browne, “nonsense”.
With the biggest threat to the game since it turned professional, the IRFU went head to head with the Minister, Browne more agitated and bullish than ever seen before.
He saw everything the IRFU had built up falling apart. He saw an exodus of elite players, a relegation of the national team to one that would struggle to compete at the top level and uncompetitive provinces in the Heineken Cup.
The IRFU found an ally in former Minister for Sport John O’Donoghue, who dryly noted that the national broadcaster “have shown time and again that they will use a monopoly position to their commercial advantage and drive down revenue”. Minister Ryan put a consultancy firm into gear.
That’s where his musings are at present, somewhere out in the ether with the Green Party’s position of influence looking considerably more flaky than the IRFU’s control of the game of rugby.
Professionalism
RUPERT MURDOCH’S News Corporation were eagerly hovering. Billionaire Kerry Packer wanted to fund a worldwide rugby competition. In Australia, amateur rugby union was coming under continuous attack from professional rugby league, which was cherry picking the top players by offering large salaries to convert.
The Southern Hemisphere teams reacted by forming SANZAR in 1995 as the New Zealand, Australian and South African Rugby Unions tried to counter the Super League threat. The game was at war.
In other countries with enough money, rugby players were being encouraged to break the amateur codes and “shamateurism” was rife. For a game whose basic tenets were that players should not be paid to play, there was more money than ever before sloshing around in the amateur world of rugby union.
It was to that backdrop on a Sunday afternoon in Paris on August 26th, 1995, the International Rugby Board declared rugby union an “open” game, removing all restrictions on payments or benefits to those connected with the sport. That momentous decision arrived after an IRB committee concluded it was the only way to end the hypocrisy of “shamateurism” and to keep control of the game.
The announcement was met by many in the IRFU with dismay and disbelief but greeted by the top tiers of players, who could now openly earn money. The rugby amateur ethic, so passionately held by the IRFU, who had not supported the move to professionalism, was dead. No one knew what direction the game would take.
In the Home Nations, it had a traumatic effect on the traditional structure of the sport, which had been based around local clubs. Now contracts were offered to a number of players, while others played abroad, largely in England, where club owners soon tried to take over the game.
The issue of match fee, insurance for players, contracts, laws, salaries were the live issues of the day. The IRFU Amateur Status Committee became the Game Participation Committee. The amateur citadel had truly come crashing down.
In time the IRFU would take control in Ireland and centrally contract provincial players. The European Cup would emerge as the most exciting tournament in the Northern Hemisphere and amateurism, an elite concept to start with, a forgotten anachronism.
Apartheid
IN FEBRUARY 1981 the South African president PW Botha declared that Soviet threats would not prevent South Africa from attacking ANC bases in Mozambique. Bombs were exploding in all of the major cities. That year the issue of race in South Africa was alive.
There were few in the IRFU who didn’t realise that by declaring they would honour their commitment to tour South Africa that year would cause significant controversy. But the union didn’t back away and the Irish government were outraged.
The governing party, Fianna Fáil, had no ethical issue but saw the tour as potentially damaging Ireland’s chances of becoming a member of the United Nations Security Council.
In addition there were a number of anti-apartheid groups in Ireland, the most articulate being the movement led by Kader Asmal, who would later become a government cabinet minister in the new ANC regime. The anti-apartheid movement opposed the tour on moral grounds and significant pressure was applied to Irish companies not to release their employees to play in the tour.
The previous year in 1980 the Department of Foreign Affairs had recommended that army man and Irish hooker Ciarán Fitzgerald should not be granted special leave from the Defence Forces to go on the controversial Lions tour of South Africa. There was little doubt about the government’s strong view.
The Irish tour was scheduled for the summer of 1981 and at least nine players informed the IRFU that they would not be available. Some were not released by their employers because they worked for government agencies or multinational companies such as Guinness, who had significant business concerns in Africa.
As a result three players including Freddie McLennan, Ginger McLoughlin and John Robbie gave up their jobs to travel. Both McLennan and Robbie settled in South Africa after the tour.
The depleted party assembled in London, their departure shrouded in secrecy to avoid demonstrations at the airport as the IRFU continued to argue there should be no interference from the government, who they accused of being hypocritical. There was also widespread disapproval in Ireland and ultimately consequences for rugby.
Following the Lions Tour the previous year in which Irish players participated, the Department of Foreign Affairs took the view that until there was clear evidence of the IRFU revising its policy with regard to sporting contacts with the apartheid state, then grant aid should not be approved. The divisive tour of 1981 poured gasoline on the fire as the union faced considerable public opprobrium. Not for the only time, rugby stood its ground.
