The Christmas holiday interprovincial series is a relatively new part of the festive calendar. My first taste of seasonal rugby was in 2004, a full five seasons into my professional career. We had a home match against Ulster where we squeezed a 9-8 win before losing to Munster in Musgrave Park on New Year’s Day.
Up to that point there were long breaks in the provincial calendar with the All-Ireland League taking up the slack. As the Celtic League grew in stature so did the fixture list, with derby matches an easy sell to fans as well as an opportunity for the national coach to see all the frontline players going toe-to-toe ahead of the Six Nations.
There was great energy around these games, but professional rugby was still largely finding its feet in Ireland. It was still deemed a sacrifice to give up Christmas or travel to away matches when everyone else was enjoying themselves.
There was still some learning required for players about what being professional meant, something that today’s generation take for granted.
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I had a head start on most of my team-mates in this regard, as I had my make-or-break moment just after the 1999 World Cup where a friend and team-mate said something to me during a feedback session organised by Matt Williams.
He explained that I needed to understand that being a professional was more than just getting paid, it was about the decisions I made in and around the rugby environment and when nobody was watching, away from our peer group.
At that time, what I was doing would have been classified as counterproductive. But the message landed and slowly over time I embraced the idea that you are what you do every day.

There was such a focus on the Christmas period that it would be the sliding door moment for the rest of the season. Your form also fed into Irish selection, while the team’s form decided whether you would get out of your group in Europe. You could be done and dusted by the end of January with a couple of Celtic League matches to finish out before the season could wind down.
The rugby calendar then expanded, which placed demands on a small pool of players in Ireland. There was the old joke that it was harder to get out of the Irish team that it was to get into it, with the same players playing week-in week-out regardless of form for club and province.
This gave rise to the player management system and the need to protect frontline players from too much rugby ahead of the international windows. The way the European Cup was structured at that time was two matches before the November internationals and two in December and January. Something had to give.
Frontline internationals would be rested for one of the interprovincial games, usually the away fixture, with scorelines usually reflecting exactly that. Away wins, at that time of year, were few and far between.
That has not been the case over the recent two rounds of interprovincial games, with three of the four matches won away from home. Results and points aside, there was very little to get excited about other than the helter-skelter finish to the Ulster game with Munster, where Tom Farrell scored in the dying moments to secure a Munster win when moments before Ulster felt they had it.
Leinster maintained their “boring brilliance” against Munster, where a Jamie Osborne-Luke McGrath interplay created the best moment of the match, where the final pass from Robbie Henshaw drifted forward. But it had little effect on the result with Leinster again relying on defence and power.
Munster seem to drift from match to match. There is a feeling that we have been here before with so many things going well, but simple things undoing any progress.

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Take McGrath’s try, which was preventable. Tadhg Beirne’s frustration was evident as the pillar defenders hurried around the ruck without checking to see who was defending the near corner and McGrath accepted the invitation.
Munster created four genuine try-scoring opportunities, converting only one with Tom Ahern, who was superb throughout the match, finally crossing the whitewash. He was one of the players that Leinster struggled to manage.
The Munster game plan was to kick for space and play position as Leinster usually play the averages and kick back and off the field. That plan worked to put Munster into scoring positions. But the final piece just wasn’t there. They manufactured a one-on-one for Gavin Coombes with a well-constructed crossfield kick, while Shane Daly will be wondering how he couldn’t gather Billy Burns’s grubber over the line.
However, teams that do not win the gainline quickly and efficiently off a strong set piece and then try to play patterns behind the tackle line will struggle against dominant defences and Leinster first-up tackling was very effective.
In the other interprovincial game, Connacht were spooked by Ulster’s Nathan Doak sprinting out of the line at first receiver and they like Munster never made the visiting team put numbers into rucks or compress the defensive line enough to build an effective attack shape.
That said, there are questions around Jack Crowley not playing at 10 with the injuries around the Munster scrumhalf position suggesting an exemption should have been made, especially with no match this week and an opportunity to see both Irish outhalves, Crowley and Prendergast, going head-to-head. While there is no guarantee that Crowley would have changed the result, Munster are a more organised team when he starts.
The URC is doing everything right to promote the best matches and the Irish player management system is envied around the world. However, it was designed 20 years ago, when I was playing, and hasn’t evolved much since then.
No doubt, the festive fixtures still have great energy and are arguably becoming more important than some of the Champions Cup fixtures. Because of that, we deserve to see the best players like Crowley playing.
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