Nick Popplewell:They say you shouldn't look back in anger but Nick Popplewell hardly looked back at all when he left the Irish set-up. Keith Duggancatches up with Ireland's premier prop of the 1990s.
IT WAS not the showiest of exits from the rugby stage but it was unforgettable all the same. Flash back to London on the last Saturday of the 1998 Five Nations, rugby still churning from the brandy-and-old-school-tie century of amateurism to professionalism. Saturday morning and Ireland are playing England at Twickenham.
The Range Rover set arrive early for what should be a laudatory afternoon of home tries and bleating choruses of Swing Low. When the Irish bus parks at the stadium, Nick Popplewell makes a quick decision. He is 34 and one of the pioneers of the new money era; powering through the declining years of amateurism and accepting an offer from Rob Andrew to come and join him in making Newcastle a force in more than brown ale and football. Sir John Hall, the Ashington property tycoon, had bought struggling Gosforth as a stable mate for the Magpies. It's rich up north!
And it was: rich in fun and friendships and an unexpectedly cushioned conclusion to a rugby life that had cast him on teams accustomed to moral rather than actual victories. But on this day in London, Popplewell felt knackered, his appearances for Ireland against Wales and France limited to replacement minutes and the weeks in between spent in recuperation. Now he was there as cover for the three props in the match-day 22.
A muscle in his heel kept plaguing him. "Like walking on broken glass," he says now, wincing at the memory. He had met up with his Irish comrades out of habit but against his better instinct. He knew he couldn't play. Popplewell was always decisive and pragmatic. So he hung back when the players made their way towards the training room. The Irish backroom staff was setting up the physiotherapist's room for the boys. The English were big: those benches and straps would be needed. Popplewell's final act for Ireland was to lug a few bags and benches and help to set them up.
"Have a good one," he said but instead of wandering back to the dressingroom, he walked straight out of Twickenham, leaving his international rugby career behind with no goodbyes. He found a payphone, got in touch with his brothers and watched the match in a pub up in Kilburn. There were Irish jerseys all about him but his was still folded in the dressingroom of the great stadium. And that was it. Nine years would pass before Popplewell would see Ireland play in the flesh – and that was on the grim night in Paris against the hosts in the last World Cup. Funnily, he never went back to Lansdowne Road to see Ireland play again. In fact the first time he saw Ireland play in Dublin was when he took up an IRFU invitation to Ireland's opening game in the new Aviva Stadium against South Africa last year.
There are no golf outings with the players from that period. He has never once gone to see Leinster play since he finished up. He has never once been to the new Thomond Park. And he raises an eyebrow at the notion of a reunion of those Irish teams he used to play on.
"We never had a whole lot to celebrate," he says with black humour. "Did we?" And then Nick Popplewell roars laughing.
Poppy: the abiding memory for many of those who kept an eye (often from behind the sofa) on Irish rugby circa '88-'98 was of the Wexford man bawling openly after Ireland managed – against universal expectation – to beat Wales in the Cardiff Arms in 1993. Fred Cogley, calling the game for RTÉ, noticed Popplewell's sobbing on the field and it became emblematic of just how rarely Irish rugby had anything to cheer about. Popplewell had been warring for Ireland at loosehead prop for two full years without a sniff off a win. His first came out of the blue and in a way, that win over Wales marked the beginning of an oddly compelling period in Irish rugby, where the state of the Irish game seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, the seasons coloured with occasional bravura performances by the team and displays of stubborn brilliance by unquenchable talents like Popplewell and Simon Geoghegan.
"Jaysus, when you think of it," Popplewell sighs now on a glorious morning in Wexford. He has changed little from his playing days: hair still black and cherubic grin in place. He throws his eyes to heaven. "I'm probably lighter now than when I was playing. That's the funny thing. But, yeah, we were battered week in and week out. Granted, we were playing rubbish and weren't a great side. Noisy Murphy was manager and every time we went out, it was backs to the wall. Suddenly we got a glimmer that afternoon against Wales. But I never despaired. I still enjoyed it or else I wouldn't have kept up with it. And look, we had great fun. Let's be honest. It was fun. Simon Geoghegan was frustrated. I was in the action in the front row and he was stuck behind a pack of forwards who weren't giving him ball and centres who then couldn't get it to him. He was our only world class player. He was like a coiled spring. He spoke his mind and that cost him a Lions place in 1993. Without question. It was savage.
To see him not getting a Lions place was one of the great disappointments of my career. There were injuries on that tour and he still wasn't brought out. And it was pointed."
Popplewell and Mick Galwey were the only Irish men selected on the 1993 tour of New Zealand (Vinny Cunningham and Richard Wallace went as replacements). Popplewell became the first Irish man since Philip Orr in 1977 to start in the frontrow for the Lions and he was one of the outstanding successes of the tour.
Popplewell was taken aback at the news he had made the cut for the 1993 Lions because Ken Reid, Ireland's man on the selection committee, had tipped him off that it was basically going to be a team filled with Englishmen. But Ireland's outrageous performance at Lansdowne Road that year – when Mick Galwey crashed over the line to seal a 17-3 victory over Carling and co – had changed that. It was a win that nobody saw coming.
They repeated the feat at Twickenham the following year (13-12) and Popplewell grins when asked what he remembers about the latter weekend. “We stayed in a lovely spot in Chelsea in those years. The night before the game, a few of us couldn’t sleep. So we went out for a few scoops. Not many. A few. And we came back not too late and got into the lift. And then the selectors came along and they got in the lift with us.”
They ascended to their chambers that night and to a sort of heaven the next afternoon. Those sporadic hours of heroism went against the general culture of Irish rugby. In the 1990s, the famous quip of the difference between the state of English rugby – always serious, never fatal – and Irish rugby – always fatal, never serious – had rarely seemed more apt.
Popplewell emerged from a talented Greystones team that perfected the art of playing and living hard. “We trained hard but it was our social life too. We used to hire trains – entire trains – for fans to go to games down in Munster. We had good alickadoos about us too: Seánie Fitzpatrick and Anglo was one of the sponsors. You’d play; go on the pop Saturday night, sometimes on Sunday, then back to work on Monday.”
His talents were spotted early. In his first game for the club, he came up against Des Fitzgerald and Lansdowne. “I could hardly move afterwards. He gave me a real hosing, shook my hand and then put me in touch with Roly Meates.” Those coaching sessions with Meates transformed him into international potential but Popplewell is adamant some of it was down to luck: Phil Orr was retiring: there was a vacancy in the Leinster frontrow. He was in the right place at the right time.
“Getting in is hard. But then once you are in, it is difficult to get out.” So he learned his trade when frontrow was considered by everyone – even the referee – as a nefarious practice best left to the practitioners themselves.
“If you had a problem, you sorted it out. They were different days. No cameras. So you could drop a scrum if something was going on and someone got thumped. Next scrum. If it happened again, drop it again. I can’t remember anyone dying. Nobody could see what was going on. God knows how many whiplashes you got through. I got gouged against Scotland a few times. I broke a rib in my first Test. That was probably trying to do too much on my own. But it is the little f***er who plays in the club side who would cause you most trouble. Bective had Cathal Redmond and he wasn’t the biggest but God, he would twist and turn and like Claw (Peter Clohessy) make it so uncomfortable. Good club players caused me more trouble than internationals.”
Not that the big afternoons were a walk in the park. He remembers – or rather doesn’t – being knocked out cold in the opening minutes of Ireland’s 1991 World Cup quarter-final against Australia and recovering to play on. He can still hear Peter Clohessy in some Five Nations game or other frantically shouting “Súicre, Súicre” so the Irish pack, under ferocious pressure would collapse and then marauding on in confusion because the agreed code was, in fact, “Síos, Síos.”
But for all the chicanery, they placed great seriousness on the technique and the purpose of the scrum. Popplewell is among those who believe the modern laws are destroying the point of the scrum and feels that rules are particularly punishing on Irish teams.
“Our scrum is in disarray. There have been problems there for years, even in my time. How many Irish-based guys are scrimmaging for the provincial sides now? Do we put a lot of time and effort into an Irish guy or pay a 33-year-old a couple of hundred grand to do a job for a season. England is having a similar problem with the clubs. We can’t suddenly have no tighthead props. It is just ridiculous. My mind boggles when I think of it. Maybe I should start a business. An academy of tighthead props!”
The player from the current generation who frequently bears comparison to Popplewell is the Irish loosehead, Cian Healy. Popplewell stood out for being adventuresome in an age when frontrows rarely were and Healy’s dynamism is redolent of his best days.
“Well, Cian enjoys carrying the ball,” Popplewell says. “As they used to say about me, you need to get your nuts and bolts (sorted). You are there for scrum and lineouts. And you get no slaps on the back for that. You get the crowd going when you have a dash, have a go. Cian is a very, very exciting player and he is going to be there for a long time. But our scrum is not functioning at the moment. And I am not saying that is Cian’s problem! It is an eight-man problem. Tighthead is the main anchor unit and we need to get it sorted. The new laws do us no favours. In the days of Willie Anderson, you got in quick and low and didn’t give them a chance to settle. This new system and keeping high: I don’t see the point of it.”
Still, he will be cheering from the sofa this year. He rarely misses Ireland on the television but, stunned as he was by his return to the new stadium, he has no plans to return soon. He still enjoys the friendships he made from rugby but shrugs at the idea that for some ex-sportsmen, getting the nods of recognition and acclamation as they walk through the crowd is one of the consolations of the afterlife.
“Well, brilliant. Not for me. I dunno! Maybe it is just old age. I had so much rugby in my life that I can think of better things to do. I don’t play golf. I run the roads and do a lot of fishing. A little bit more in the good times and a bit less now.”
When he finished with Newcastle at the end of the 1998 season Popplewell and his family returned to Wexford. He joined Sherry Fitzgerald just in time for the white-knuckle ride through the property boom.
“Nobody has much time for auctioneers right now,” he smiles. “We are just trying to keep going, do what we can to keep the lights on.”
Talk drifts back to that last day in Twickenham. It seemed like a peculiar way to go: almost stubbornly low key. But for Popplewell, it seemed natural and his recollection of the day is genuinely hazy because he has not thought about it much.
“It wasn’t difficult because the entire year was a frustration. I knew it would be my last match. And I was thinking: there is a lot at stake here and better players about. Kills me to say it, but Reggie Corrigan was coming through. You like to think you can go on forever but you can’t. So I just thought: Listen, f***ing move on. If they are trying to be polite and not get rid of you, do the job for them. So I called it.”
And he walked, with no tears.
