The tiny steps that have led to monumental strides

Keith Duggan profiles a small Tipperary club that has played its part in creating the phenomenon that is Munster rugby

IN SEPTEMBER 1997, Munster played Harlequins at The Stoop in the opening match of the European Cup. It was a strange occasion at the quaint London ground, postponed for a week because of the death of Lady Diana and adhering to respectful protocol before the kick-off.

The Irish team had travelled to England with modest expectations not least because, as Edmund Van Esbeck pointed out in his match report, Harlequins had in their ranks “an array of multi-national talent from seven countries”.

It turned out to have been a half-forgotten classic: 11 tries, a final score line of 48-40 in favour of the English team and – just a week after Tony Blair had called for more compassion and understanding – a tough exchange between Munster’s Mick Galwey and his best friend Keith Wood, then wearing the jester’s colours of the home team.

Galwey morosely claimed afterwards that the punch that forced Wood to retire in the 38th minute had been accidental. Wood gently protested, arguing that as the recipient, he couldn’t see how it was. But there was no harm done: Wood readily accepted Galwey’s apology. “And I will get him back in the return game in a few weeks’ time,” he added cheerfully.

“Wood’s introduction into the representative scene was in the red jersey of Munster,” Van Esbeck wrote in the Monday edition of this newspaper.

“His presence in the Harlequins team and the wide area from which players were drawn illustrates as well as anything will the nature of the difficulties facing Irish teams in the competition.”

Afterwards, it was observed that of the 50 or so Munster fans shouting to be heard in the ground, at least half of that congregation were from a small Tipperary club called Clanwilliam. The reason for that was that that two local boys, Alan Quinlan and Johnny Lacey, were making debuts in the competition that weekend. It was well worth the trip: both played well and scored a try each.

“I suppose it has all come full circle,” says Lacey, now Rugby Development Officer with Munster.

That it has. Nobody then could imagine the speed and conviction with which Munster would become arguably the most phenomenal success story in rugby’s transition from the amateur to the professional era.

Munster has managed to become a highly professional and ambitious professional sports franchise and a commercial brand while also appealing to the values and belief system of the vast red army of fans who will fill Croke Park this afternoon.

The team that will take on Leinster in a match that may, some day, come to symbolise the apotheosis of Irish rugby, is the ultimate point of it all: the inspiration and the glory centres around their achievements. But running parallel to their celebrated heroics in the European competition over the last decade has been the brilliant reddening of the province: where once Munster rugby was represented in pockets of the that land, it now seems safe to suggest there is scarcely a corner of it that does not seem red tinted.

What started out as a cult has become a mainstream religion and Munster now commands an appeal that is above county loyalty, supersedes sporting tradition and that is, most importantly, classless.

“In five years’ time, the guys coming up will have so much better skills than I would have had an equivalent age,” says Tommy O’Donnell, who has just been named the Munster Academy player of the year.

When we met, his cheekbone was grazed and an eye reddened from a recent training session and he is in the middle of preparing for final exams in the University of Limerick. O’Donnell is 22 and has just accepted a development contract with the province.

Already, his sporting glossary seems blue-chip. He has crossed all the right stepping stones, starting with East Munster Youths, then spending a year with Munster Youths, Irish Youths and through the international underage squads culminating in a Grand Slam season with the Irish under-20s. He progressed into the Munster Academy at level one, where he spent two years and then a season honing his skills at level two.

But O’Donnell only took up the game at 15 years of age and, like Quinlan and Lacey, he is a product of the Clanwilliam club. He still goes back to coach youngsters at weekends and that is why he can judge close-up the work that the Munster coaching system has put into the game.

“Kids coming up now can do things that that we couldn’t. Just off-loading and their ability to see gaps and go through – we didn’t have that – we didn’t know how to naturally turn and look for the off-load. It is shocking how fast and strongly these guys are coming through. It will just keep getting better. And I definitely think that the ambition of one day playing for Munster is attainable for any young player in Munster.”

Clanwilliam is as good an example of any of how the Munster tentacles have infiltrated every county in the province. The club has heritage – founded in 1878, it is the third oldest rugby club in Ireland – but it was a junior club modest in scale and outside the traditional rugby strongholds. Yet it has produced a member of the summer Lions touring party in Quinlan and the Munster Academy player of the year in O’Donnell.

When Lacey and Quinlan went to school together, they started playing at under-8 level on a Saturday morning but had no real opportunity to play the game at Abbey CBS in Tipperary Town.

“I remember I met an old man after I made my debut for Munster. We were playing a South African team down in Musgrave Park,” says Lacey.

“He asked me where I was from and when I told him Tipperary, he said: ‘You went to school in Rockwell.’ And when I told him that I hadn’t, the guy said I had no rugby pedigree; that I hadn’t gone to a rugby school. All that has changed. This was a very old man – he meant no offence, he was just reflecting the way people used to think. But he did stop me in my tracks on the most important day of my sporting career. It has gone from that situation to 36 development officers looking for players in every corner of the province and no matter what school you go to, you won’t be allowed slip through the net and no matter what school you go to, you will have an equal chance.”

As Alan Quinlan says, he admired Rockwell as a rugby school but going there never really played on his mind.

“To be honest, it was never really on the agenda for me. Maybe it if had been a few years later, then there might have been different opportunities but it was never anything I gave much consideration to.

“There wasn’t really any rugby in Abbey at the time but that has changed a lot (Billy Cronin, the former Munster number eight coaches at the school). And I was happy to play away with Clanwilliam.

“There had always been a strong family connection there – my father and uncle played there and I just followed in their footsteps – without ever having an inkling that I would go on an become a professional rugby player or get to play for Ireland.”

Quinlan’s selection for the Lions squad has been the high point – so far – of an unforgettable season for the 34-year-old and it represents another feather for the Clanwilliam club.

Lacey jokes that people are already sick of seeing posters of his friend in the shop windows at home. Quinlan, from near Limerick Junction, has managed to visit his parents since the celebratory Lions announcement but has not yet seen the posters and signs in Tipperary.

“But the messages of support and congratulations that I got from people has been overwhelming. Maybe after this game, I will have a chance to get down there. We have all been just trying to concentrate on this match.”

Quinlan made it into the professional era through a combination of ability and determination: he hitched rides and made it to Munster training sessions when others might have quit and had the patience to persevere until he earned game time.

Since then, the culture has changed. It’s not a question of waiting outside the pub for Mick Galwey to pick you up on the way anymore. When O’Donnell started, he knew one thing about rugby. “That you couldn’t pass forward, basically.”

As Lacey points out, O’Donnell’s athleticism and natural aptitude for sport meant he could make up lost ground. But once he started playing the game, he was carried through a system and quickly identified as a youngster with real potential.

Now, O’Donnell is at the stage where he is learning from Paul O’Connell or Denis Leamy and can sit down and have a conversation with Doug Howlett. “They are totally approachable,” he says of the senior squad.

“You know that these are first team, that they are class players and everything else. They might slag you but it is not to knock you down, it is to build you up.”

And the search for those to follow in the footsteps of emerging players like O’Donnell is relentless and thorough, with grades based on birth years and a screening programme devised to spot the best athletes.

Next week, Tony McGahan will meet the regional coaches in Charleville and run through the drills and programmes used by the Munster senior squad so that they can be replicated at juvenile level.

The success of Munster – and the allure and theatre of the televised Heineken Cup – has had a stunning impact on the number of kids eager to play rugby – and on parents who are equally eager that they do.

“I’ll be honest about it: we are all looking for the athletes and the euphoria of Munster is attracting them,” Lacey says.

“Every second kid wants to be Stringer or O’Gara. Tipp kids want to be Alan Quinlan or Paul O’Connell. And I think as well that people have responded to the whole Munster ethos – the honesty and the work ethic and the sense of community, how the players present themselves.”

When Johnny Lacey recalls the fly-by-night nature of Munster’s fledgling European adventures, he has to marvel at how quickly it has all developed. He is only 35 but can clearly remember when a Leinster-Munster game might attract a crowd of 3,000. “Then you would go back and play for Shannon and 10,000 would show up.”

He admits it took time for club members to be convinced that the Munster monster would not suck the life out of the club game, but almost all rugby people now see the benefits of Munster’s metamorphosis. The Munster map is continually lighting with new clubs and young recruits.

“There are players coming all the time,” predicts O’Donnell, already aware of the new wave coming up behind him. “Just within a 10-mile radius of where I live, there is Dave Foley and Eoin Grace, Clonmel lads about a year younger than myself.”

In the meantime, Munster Mania has gripped the province. After the general harmonised pride created by the Grand Slam season, Irish rugby happily divides into two vast factions for the purpose of this semi-final. Together, Munster and Leinster will fill Croke Park and one imagines that Munster’s youngest fans, nursed mainly on super-saturated success, will expect their team to extend the Indian Sign over their old rivals.

Keith Wood and Mick Galwey have probably forgotten that sparring at the Stoop but as they survey the scenes in Croke Park today, they will, like many old Munster men, probably wonder how their team – and their game – got here.

Quinlan cannot really pinpoint a match or season when he felt that Munster had become this beast of modern rugby.

Each year, it kept on growing until one day – perhaps on that famous afternoon in the Heineken Cup final of 2006 when the team, during a break in play saw pictures of the thousands of people lining O’Connell street on the big screen in the stadium – they realised that Munster meant just that: the backing of an entire province.

“It just seemed to get bigger each season,” the Clanwilliam man says.

“All of these Heineken Cup games seem like huge occasions now. But this match against Leinster is particularly special. No matter what the result, we are going to have an Irish team in the final. And both teams know each other well and we will be going for it from the start. So it is going to be quite a day.”