Life a little dull without frontliners

Gerry Thornley On Rugby: The domestic season in Ireland has made its usual low-key start. There's little doubt that counter attractions have compounded the absence of 25 Irish squad players, thereby overshadowing the arrival of new sponsors for the Magners League. It's just not the same without them.

While the opprobrium hasn't been as loud as when Ireland first introduced this policy two seasons ago, there have been some barks of complaint from abroad. Not that Eddie O'Sullivan or the IRFU will be inclined to take lectures from abroad, bearing in mind the ongoing club-versus-country tug-of-war and heavy early-season casualty rate in England and the apparent lack of consideration for the frontline players in Wales.

The four Welsh provinces, for example, will play rearranged Magners League games tonight and tomorrow night to accommodate the BBC-driven cash cow that is the Anglo-Welsh Cup at the end of the month. Hence, the Ospreys will play Cardiff at home tomorrow night and the Borders at home on Friday. Crazy.

Admittedly, the Welsh may emulate the French in resting frontliners from next summer's touring obligations but Ireland assuredly won't take such a view of their two-test tour in Argentina.

Scheduled for consecutive Saturdays immediately after the Heineken European Cup final, this still leaves a much reduced off-season and pre-season prior to World Cup warm-up matches from mid-August, while another Churchill Cup campaign is the last thing Ireland's slim stock of reserves needs.

Never before has an Irish head coach enjoyed such control over player availability and participation, and one wonders if it will ever happen post-O'Sullivan. Good luck to him - anyone in his position would be inclined to maximise this control.

However, this carte blanche, presumably in tandem with the IRFU's fitness expert Dr Liam Hennessy, doesn't always work to the advantage of the players.

Take the case of David Wallace two seasons ago. He was held back until round three, by which stage he was already fighting a losing battle for the Munster number seven jersey to Denis Leamy.

Viewed in that light, what good is Mick O'Driscoll's enforced absence from Munster's early-season games going to do for him, or Alan Quinlan, Anthony Foley and Anthony Horgan, none of whom were deemed worthy of playing one minute of the three summer Tests?

As for Foley, the Munster captain was excused the cryotherapy chambers in the remote woods of Spala, Poland, during pre-season, so why not let him return to his province sooner rather than later?

O'Driscoll might return this week, for the game away to Glasgow, but with Munster idle in round four and both Paul O'Connell and Donncha O'Callaghan due back the following week in round five, at home to Ulster, his chances for stating his claims have already been hindered.

In terms of pushing their Irish credentials at any rate, the same applies to the likes of Keith Gleeson, Girvan Dempsey, Denis Hickie and Tommy Bowe, even if they are all made available for their provinces this week.

After all, O'Sullivan is the first to cite a player's lack of match-time with his province as a reason for non-selection - witness the example of Wallace again last season, even though he started Munster's first four games of the season (one on the wing) and returned impressively to the Munster team for the European Cup rout of Castres before the autumn squad was picked.

If the intention is to start all of the 24 players still in cold storage (not including the injured Jerry Flannery) in at least one of the three autumn tests, then one could understand the policy, but somehow you'd feel it won't come to that.

Amid all of this, it also appears that the IRFU's sense of duty or commitment toward the provinces, the league and its new sponsors is a distant second, so distant it might as well not exist.

The eventual if belated return of their frontliners to the provinces also means another period of bedding in, of course, which means the provinces are by no means assured of hitting optimum level again.

In one sense, it's akin to starting all over again, and the provinces will still be behind their Celtic cousins in terms of match hardness.

In this context, witness Leinster's bedraggled 34-13 defeat to the Dragons when five of their Irish frontliners were made available for their first start of the campaign in round five two seasons ago.

Undoubted expert though he is, Dr Hennessy cannot have this business down to a fine art, even if the theory abroad that Irish frontliners are kept in cold storage or wrapped in cotton wool too much for their own good is purely based on opinion.

Nevertheless, two seasons ago, when there was a similarly delayed start for the frontliners, Ireland finished the Six Nations campaign anticlimactically against France and Wales, while there was no Irish interest beyond the quarter-finals of the European Cup.

By comparison, last season the frontliners made an earlier return, some as early as the first game, while the Irish Lions were eased back in over rounds three and four, but it didn't prevent Irish rugby from having its best season in the professional era: one province winning the European Cup, another reaching the semi-finals, three of them occupying the top-three positions in what was then the Celtic League, and Ireland following up a second-placed finish in the Six Nations and Triple Crown success by twice extending the All Blacks to two-score wins in the end-of-season tour before going to the well once too often, against Australia in Perth.

Against all of that, it is clear that the injury-enforced delayed starts to the season for both Paul O'Connell and Brian O'Driscoll enabled them to hit prime form and maintain it right until the final throes of the season more so than would probably have otherwise happened.

There is a balancing act in all of this, and to give them their due, the Ireland management appear to have achieved it better than most, but a little more consideration toward the needs of the provinces wouldn't go amiss.