'Getting close counts only in lawn bowling'

MUNSTER OPINION:WRITING A column in a newspaper, someone once said, is like being married to a nymphomaniac. Great for the first week, writes NIALL KIELY

When I wrote a scene-setter to the Munster-Leinster semi-final early this month, my honeymoon didn’t even last that first week. You can always tell a certain kind of Leinster supporter – he’s either depressed or crowing – but you can’t tell him much, especially on the home-truth front.

Still, the response was gratifying in part: at least some offence was taken. There’s a chirring Blue pulse out there, however nascent and feeble. And I’m at one with Oscar Wilde in believing that a gentleman should never hurt anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

So to resile, redact and recant (and secure in the knowledge that there’s nothing wrong with Leinster supporters that reasoning with them won’t aggravate) here goes . . .

I apologise with all the sincerity at my disposal for upsetting some Leinster-supporting readers by writing an article that has somehow been perceived as supercilious in tone, sciolist in content and rebarbatively intended.

As I eat crow, chew humble pie and munch what’s left of my headgear – my Larne ferry seat and Edinburgh ticket are long since gone to decent Leinster stock, at face value – I do, however, find myself musing about why my little contribution got so deeply up the nasal canals of so many. Perhaps I simply didn’t realise how many sensitive little Leinster blossoms are Out There.

Was it the phone-text jokes? Surely not. As Goethe said, people show their character most clearly in what they find laugh-worthy. Or as Anthony Burgess put it: laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you snore alone.

One of the best post-semi-final jokes I’ve heard was re-told by the always excellent-value Neil Francis on Setanta. Question: What’s red and goes beep-beep-beep? Answer: The Munster open-top bus, reversing into its garage in Limerick.

Was it the suggestion that honest Leinster fans realistically hoped to escape from Croke Park with honour intact – at best – and were in extremis dreading the distinct possibility that Munster might really click, and the fissiparous Leinsterites would once again fall divided in the teeth of that storm? Hardly.

To quote the estimable Francis, a true Blue by lineage and inclination but rigorous in his evidence-based Sunday Tribune opinions: “I never saw it coming”.

Was it my implication that because Leinster has failed to deliver the goods over a pattern of years (one Celtic League final, ditto in the Magner’s, seven FTQ blanks in 14 Heineken pools), much of its natural hinterland has been colonised by high-achieving Munster? That cohort of value-for-effort followers was derided by Reggie Corrigan and others as “Lunsters”.

The defence, m’lud, calls Geordan Murphy, recently of Naas parish and now a Leicester jewel. “I went to school in Newbridge, which was outside the Pale,” he told Ciarán Cronin of the Tribune. “I know a lot of people from Naas, Carlow, Wexford who would fall into the Munster catchment area because they don’t feel Leinster is all-inclusive.”

Or as he told Peter O’Reilly of the Sunday Times: “When I was growing up, Leinster rugby was all about Dublin, and things haven’t changed. A lot of my friends and people from my area have never felt a part of Leinster rugby.

“A lot of people from places like Carlow, Kilkenny, Kildare and Wexford align themselves with Munster. That’s because it’s like the ‘country’ team, whereas Leinster are the city boys.”

Now, now, Geordan, that’s quite enough about Munster. Let’s use hindsight to look forward to this evening’s game, in which the team that makes the second-last mistake may be the winner. Rugby at this level is akin to organised religion: many attend the great cathedrals, but few truly understand. The Magners game a week before the semi-final was seminal to the Heineken knock-out. Leinster were a lot closer than the scoreline implied, they did well in contact and fell behind mainly because the gaucho’s head went walkabout. The match in Croker was a lot closer than most understood, and that scoreline hinged on some very close calls.

So, positive gleanings from Leinster’s comprehensive pipping of Munster on May 2nd:

• The Leinster pack has, finally, grown bone.
• Brian O'Driscoll is the best Irish rugby player I've seen in 50 years.
• Luke Fitzgerald should become even better than Drico.
• Rocky Elsom's the best-quality Southern-hemi import to date.
• Gordon D'Arcy's is close to his awkward, sticky best.
• Misgivings that niggle:
• The Leinster pack must get it up one more time.
• Bernard Jackman is doughty, but dire at throwing in.
• He and his props will find scrum-time less than fun.
• Nigel Owens is the referee.
• "Working the officials" is in the Leicester DNA.

The latter two points could easily be crucial. Our Nigel is one of the better whistlers, but can vacillate from schoolmasterly fussy to laissez faire. Leinster will need to play the ref as cleverly as they did in Croker. Leicester have been doing it for decades, and take shameless pride in it. They say if you played golf with certain Leicester stalwarts of the recent past and one of them had a hole-in-one, it’d go on the scorecard as a zero.

Remember, getting close counts only in lawn bowling and close dancing.

Do it, Leinster, for us all!

(A word of market advice for those folk who contacted me in their anonymous ways. I read your doubtless heartfelt but largely sub-literate opinions with a deep sense of depression about school standards. When your collective IQ reaches double figures, goys, sell!)