David and Goliath revisited

Act I, Scene I

John Breen rolls out of bed in the winter of 1997 and a light flicks on in his head. He begins to see unconnected events fusing together. He sees Thomond Park. He sees Seamus Dennison poleaxing Stu Wilson. He sees himself as a boy nicking tyres for a bonfire on Halloween night. He sees a big adventure. He hears 12,000 Limerick voices screaming at Munster and the All Blacks. He sees David and Goliath.

Big characters drift into his mind. Wardy. Tom Kiernan. Donal Canniffe. Moss. Springer. You were there, right. You were one of the 50,000. Thomond Park was never so full. Maybe it was 100,000. Rain was forecast but stayed away. The sun came out. One of those days when a record 200,000 turned up. History. Legend. Folklore. You were part of it. We all were, 400,000 of us outside who couldn't get in.

Act II, Scene I

`First of all we'll do the ear biting," says Breen. An empty room in the National Ballroom on Parnell Square and the cast are scrumming down.

"Hold on, my knickers have gone," squeaks a body from the bottom of the pile. This doesn't happen at Thomond Park. They peel off while the knickers are adjusted and then form another heap on the mat.

"I can see an ear . . . bite it . . .

arghhh. I can see an ear . . . crunch it . . . arghhh. I can see an ear . . . chew it . . . arghhh." The bloodless ear biting scene.

Six actors, five male and one female have been charged with bringing to life Goliath's 12-0 capitulation to David. Choicely cast Moss Keane is five feet tall and could not sink ten pints. He also wears a bra. It suits him. He is called Niamh McGrath and is the smallest of the six actors in Breen's play Alone It Stands.

"When I come on stage shouting as Moss Keane I get a good audience reaction," she says. "I thought John was messing when he told me I was playing Moss . . . we met him (Moss) one night . . . he was dead chuffed.

"I just come out with this big voice, put up my shoulders real big and take a deep breath."

As a child Breen was swathed in Limerick rugby folklore. St Enda's, Garryowen RC and Myles Breen's saloon bar were his alma maters. The busiest night in the bar's history was on the night of the All Black defeat. Breen was 12 years old and already a disciple of the game.

"A colleague of mine called Mike Finn, wrote a play called Pig Town," says Breen. "He had a little piece about the game in the play. It was like a history of Limerick for a hundred years. I said to myself `Oh my God, that would be a great play.' But I wasn't married to the idea because I thought, well, how do you stage a rugby match. It was 12-0. It wasn't really that interesting.

"But when I read about Donal Canniffe's father, who died during the match, I thought to myself `that's an amazing story'. I knew that was the hook I could tie the story around. I think I've done it justice. Donal has seen it and I think he's quite pleased. I've been very conscious that these are real people we're talking about and I think I do honour his father in the play. That was what made me decide to write it."

Former Cork hurler Dan Canniffe, father of Munster's captain that day, Donal, died while listening to the match on radio. It was only after the final whistle and amid the euphoria that Donal was called from the dressing-room and informed of the news by coach Tom Kiernan.

Act III, Scene I

New Zealander and current Shannon coach, Rhys Ellison, is doing the Haka in a church building in Limerick. The cast are swinging their arms and thumping their chests. For the moment they are warriors. Moreover, it's a great party piece to pocket.

"When you meet Rhys he is so quietly spoken, a lovely man," says Breen. "He has a real dignity about him and spoke in a way that you wouldn't normally associate with rugby players. He spoke about life and death and your spirit - but Jesus when he does the Haka . . . "

Breen also asked Ellison how to stage Dennison's heroic tackle on Stu Wilson in the opening quarter. Unknown to New Zealand, Kiernan, unfashionably at the time, had the Munster players watch the All Blacks the day before the game using a cutting edge technology of the time -video. They noticed how Wilson often came from the wing and in between the two centres. Dennison was waiting.

"Still, it was a genuine collision between two guys going at top speed," says Donal Spring who played that day in the back row along side Young Munster's Colm Tucker and Cork Constitution's Christy Cantillon, who scored

Munster's try.

"The guy who acts it does well. He stands up and smiles. But Dennison did wreck himself in that tackle. He didn't play for ages after that."

In the church building Ellison explains the sweet science of how to take a winger out with a pulverising big hit. The cast watch and listen.

"We said . . . er, ok . . . we won't do that,' says Breen.

"I went to see the play in Lansdowne with Donal Canniffe and Jimmy Bowen not believing you could do a play about a game," says Spring. "But it was done cleverly. The width of it was impressive, so many things brought in. We went in slightly sceptical but everyone was impressed. The standard of acting was very high."

The last folk memory is how Breen sees the day. In his mind every other big sporting event or national occasion has been dissected and parsed by television. Munster's game was shown only in highlight form with one camera as Network 2 was being launched in Cork at the time. There is about 10 minutes of footage, the rest left on the floor of some editing suite in Montrose. The pictures and the drama are now rooted in the oral tradition and because of that medium the match has grown and achieved epic proportions.

"Some of us have thought that RTE did us a big favour," says Spring dryly. "Because now no one can see the whole match."

The set is sparse, only several mats on the floor, some Munster and All Black jerseys and lights. Far from being a cliched play about rugby jocks and legend building, it promises humour and pace. It is not the rendition an IRFU subcommittee would have commissioned.

"You gotta remember that Munster did this 21 years ago," says Breen. "This was before Jack Charlton. This was before U2. Ireland had nothing in the '70s. There was little around where we could stand up and go `yeah we're Irish.' In '78 there was nothing and this was something.

"The All Blacks were super stars. These boys were like the Rolling Stones coming to town. They'd big side burns and big hair. We won't see their like again. And you must remember the Munster team beat the best team in the world and went back to work the following day."

Final Act

They've changed into the red of Munster now. Thick columns of sunlight have come in through the Georgian windows from behind the Garden of Rememberance. The cast have limbered up and gone through their voice exercises. They are in a knot on the mats. Heads, legs, knees and arms, the usual rugby meatball. Breen is coaching.

"When you get grabbed by the balls, what do you do ?"

Clenched teeth and squinting eyes, a head cranks sideways from between a pair of woman's thighs. "You scream . . . Aghhhhhhh!"

Alone It Stands opens on Wednesday at Andrews Lane Theatre.