SIDELINE CUT: Almost didn't make it to Donnybrook yesterday, which was beset by the kind of showers that the good people at Met Eireann would classify as squally. The reasons for visiting the heart of Dublin 4 on what could loosely be described as a day off were two-fold.

Firstly, to sate a burning curiosity as to the exact nature of the fuss over Leinster Schools' Cup rugby and also to avoid the empty sensation of watching a mid-afternoon episode of Neighbours, which has never been the same since the departure of Guy Pearse.

Clongowes Wood were playing St Mary's College and a friend who made the inevitable leap from teaching in Lesotho to school-mastering at Jimmy Joyce's old school in Kildare forwarded an invitation to come and sing boisterously from the terraces. A compromise was brokered and hasty arrangements were made to meet in Kiely's, a pub adjacent to the rugby ground, where several former schoolboys, ranging in age from 20 to 70, had already gathered.

Assurances were given that the watering-hole in question was something of an establishment of Irish rugby and that all the great players had, over the years, raised their glasses in good cheer.

Buoyed by the atmosphere, which was summed up by several patrons as "convivial", a few hasty phone calls were made to acquaintances with actual lives to see if they could be pressed to skive off to cheer the 'Gowes or to at least head to Kiely's on that pretence. Several hung-up, mystified as to who the 'Gowes were and one was downright bitter, signing off with: "It's a long f***in' way from Kiely's you were reared." And as we made our way to the ground, the truth of his statement struck home. Because it was indeed a long way, about 135 miles, to a part of the world where rugby is not so much a way of life as a way of death.

The game has its practitioners in our parts but they are hardy, lonesome and unsung creatures. Almost all of them are forwards because to play full back is to risk death from frostbite. Rugby grounds in our part of the world are little more than rumour, remote and windswept fields upon which the sun would be afraid to shine.

Spectators used to huddle together, dressed not as if they were attending an Ulster Junior Cup game but as though they were readying themselves for an assault on Mount Everest. The games seemed to last for several hours and regularly did as the referee's watch would freeze or the official would become disorientated from spending minutes at a time running while watching the ball in the air.

At one game, all conversions were kicked at one end of the field as the other set of goalposts had succumbed to the ravages of time. Scrums were absolutely fascinating affairs, often lasting for up to an hour and involving every player on the field. After one particularly intricate scrum, the fire brigade had to be called to prise the teams apart. Every team always had two or three players with real potential, natural athletes, lads who would have had a good future had they been coached early enough and had they lived in an area where the game was mainstream. Had they been someone else, in essence. In short, the rugby players of our environment were doing it not for the glory but for a deep and scary love for the game.

But growing up with that vintage of rugby made yesterday's occasion at Donnybrook all the more unbelievable. The match itself was one-sided: St Mary's are, according to those in the know, formidable this season and the pressure they applied on Clongowes was relentless. However, being stuck in the middle of the youngest of the Clongowes old boys, the graduates of 2001, most of the focus was on the players in purple and white.

The losing side, Clongowes, had some serious players. Although things didn't go well for the scrumhalf, David Connellan, he still had the verve to land a penalty from the half-way line at a time when his team was reeling. Another kid, Morgan Hickey-Crowe, threw himself around selflessly, as if his life depended on it. But then, they all did. It was difficult to associate this match with schools sport in the traditional sense. Last year's television documentary, coincidentally on Clongowes rugby, examined the seriousness that informs the approach to the game in the big Leinster colleges.

And standing a few feet from these youngsters and watching their faces, there was no doubt that for many, this game would be the biggest sporting occasion of their lives. Some will go on to star at senior club and maybe international level and will recall yesterday's game as just a start, a big day out tangled up with dozens of others. But others, fringe players who maybe got in because of size or sheer work-rate, will drift from the game or play in places where there is no fanfare, no press write-ups, no backslaps, no thunderous receptions in the school hall.

These are the kids who fascinate and this is why the terraces were crammed with old boys yesterday afternoon, men who left Clongowes or St Mary's 10, 15, 50 years ago. It is a well-heeled scene of course, a bit like a Brown Thomas winter catalogue and many of the kids playing on the field are probably fortunate enough to get chances that don't befall most.

But that doesn't detract from the earnestness with which these youngsters ran in what was, for the losing Clongowes seniors, the last game they will ever play for the school.

And some of them will invariably end up back in Donnybrook in the years ahead, wearing combat jeans next year, a tailored suit in five years' time and smoking a cigar from under a pure wool hat in 2030. Trying to relive it, see. Wishing they were back.

Leaving the ground, a fragile, an expensive looking oldster, withered enough to possibly have sat beside Joyce for Latin, informed the general crowd the St Mary's full back was as good as he had seen. He also predicted Clongowes would bounce back.

"You'll never chop the Wood," I agreed lamely, borrowing a phrase I heard the friend using. The old chap glared alarmingly before a timely gust of wind sent him tottering off elsewhere.

For the outsider, Leinster Schools rugby is a strange old ritual but worth catching, at least once. It must be the only Irish example of a sporting season comparable in hype and intensity and scale to American high school sports.

There are arguments against exposing youngsters to such immense sporting occasions at a young age, especially given that some of them simply will not be able to recreate such an atmosphere again. But whatever the truth of that, it has to be better to feel the big-time, even if only for an hour. Because if you are out there playing, what an hour.