National focus shouldn’t take players out of provincial clashes

The year ended fittingly. Munster against Leinster was a clash normally pitched into the week before the European pool stages began or before the quarter-finals. This was to fast track both teams’ preparations for the league’s annual stand-out fixture since they met in the inaugural final of 2002. Not any more.

Their Thomond Park clash was moved to St Stephen’s Day, which also came at the end of a week in which they had both been the bulk suppliers to a three-day Irish camp.

Accordingly the vast majority of their Irish frontliners were excused duty as part of the IRFU's player welfare programme. Hence, Peter O'Mahony, Paul O'Connell, Conor Murray and Simon Zebo were sitting in the stands, the symbolism of which seemed particularly apt.

Meanwhile, the likes of Jack McGrath, Seán Cronin, Mike Ross, Devin Toner, Jamie Heaslip and Rob Kearney were spared the Christmas trip, as were the injured Cian Healy, Marty Moore, Seán O'Brien, Rhys Ruddock, Eoin Reddan, Fergus McFadden and Ben Te'o.

A sold-out stadium is testimony to this great rivalry, a rivalry that can be compared to any other in the world game. However – no disrespect to any of those players who did play – it was also assuredly on the premise that many of those aforementioned big names would be taking part.

IRFU’s poor

record Munster coach Anthony Foley was entirely justified in his passionate defence of a fixture that ought not have left those who attended short-changed. This was

definitely truer of the vast majority in Limerick, given the outcome, although one doubts Leinster fans felt quite so satisfied after making the trip.

If the IRFU devalue this fixture in similar fashion in the future, it’s hard to imagine spectators making it a 25,000-plus sell-out at Thomond Park in the future, nor maintaining its presence in the Aviva.

It’s worth noting the union has a poor record here. Despite that inaugural 2002 Celtic League final, when an estimated 30,000 attended the final at Lansdowne Road two seasons after their interpro meetings were held in Musgrave Park and Donnybrook, it took years for all parties concerned to realise the potential magnitude of this rivalry.

Instead, with primacy afforded to the national team, the fixture was deliberately run off in “windows”, such as the first weekend or so of the league in August or early September when the Irish frontliners were still in pre-season or in Irish camp.

Eventually, with the help of other run-ins such as the 2006 and 2009 Heineken Cup semi-finals, the rivalry outgrew not only Musgrave Park and Donnybrook, but even the old Thomond Park and the RDS as well. There could also be no more wrapping up of Irish front-liners.

The genie was out of the bottle, and the Leinster-Munster rivalry assumed an importance entirely of its own making. Allowing for the advent of the Heineken Cup, no other seasonal fixture below Test level did more to drag Irish rugby kicking and screaming into the professional era than Leinster v Munster. It was Munster’s advancement in the early 2000s and eventually reaching their Holy Grail in 2006 and 2008 which drove Leinster on to their trio of Heineken Cups in 2009, 2010 and 2012.

It was the threat of Leinster reaching the Promised Land ahead of them that drove Munster to that semi-final win over their great rivals at Lansdowne Road in 2006. Similarly, it was the prospect of yet another beating and watching Munster in a fifth final three weeks later which ensured Leinster could simply not take another loss in the 2009 semi-final. That marked the end of Munster’s hegemony and the start of Leinster’s. Those semi-finals are landmarks in the history of Irish rugby in the professional era.

Leinster wouldn’t be where they are today without Munster and vice versa. Even the regular league meetings, be they in a packed Aviva or Thomond Park, drove up playing standards because it was the one fixture which compared favourably with Heineken Cup standards. Hence their recognition as the most important, pre-European fixtures in the domestic calendar.

Joe Schmidt’s

impact Crucially, they also helped finance the provinces’

coffers so they could afford to keep leading players here or import quality overseas players.

Understandably, the balance in importance has shifted more towards the Ireland team and away from the provinces. This is all the more so given Joe Schmidt’s impact in a year which saw Ireland add to its second championship since 1985 with a November clean sweep. The only provincial success was Leinster winning the Pro12, and while Connacht are on the rise, European prospects haven’t looked so forlorn for some time. However, it still has to be viewed as a wonderful year.

As a result, the same supporters who are giddy about Ireland's prospects in next year's Six Nations and World Cup are relatively uninspired about their provinces' hopes (particularly in Leinster).

However, Leinster v Munster deserves its leading lights. Without the top players – and with the best will in the world – it will no longer command full houses or be played to the same standard, which is perhaps already happening. This fixture feeds those two provinces who in turn helped to feed the Irish team.

In a World Cup year, it stands to reason that the primacy of the Irish squad over their provincial “feeders” is even more pronounced, all the more so given seven previous failures to reach even one semi-final. Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that Irish rugby needs a first semi-final, or better, more than a seventh European Cup for one of the provinces.

Yet Irish rugby bites the hand that feeds it at its peril.

gthornley@irishtimes.com