Thomond Park my true theatre

FROM THE ARCHIVE JANUARY 5th, 1991:The late actor Richard Harriswrote about his medal-winning days playing rugby for Crescent College and how a boy from a Garryowen house fell for Young Munster

“My father rejected any ambition I might have had of playing for Young Munsters: ‘Don’t set foot in this house again if you wear that black and amber shirt’. Discretion gave way to valour and, although I never wore those legendary colours, there were occasions, having played against them, that my body was indelibly tattooed with black and amber

SUNDAY. THE bells rang out. The congregation, the faithful, gathered outside the fortified walls of the Augustinian Church. The 11 o’clock Mass was about to start. Four hours later, the same faithful gathered inside the fortified walls of another place of worship, Thomond Park.

Two cathedrals, both sanctified grounds, one celebrating the martyrdom of the past; the other where the martyrdom was itself a weekly occurrence.

More prayers were said from the terraces of Thomond Park than from the pews of the Augustinian Church.

Memories . . . Paddy Reid side-stepping the rain, red-jerseyed in pursuit of glory for CBS Limerick; Donough O’Malley red-jerseyed, though from a different club, in pursuit of air, lungs askew, prostrate on the changing-room floor.

“Jasus, I’ll never smoke again.”

The resolution lasted until the shower.

Dickie Harris perched on the bar of O’Malley’s bike, carrying his hero’s boots, muddied in defeat. The trip home was executed less energetically. Maybe my sister Audrey was responsible for his lack of condition.

It all began in short trousers and, as I grew into long ones, it persisted. The lane of Overdale was overcrowded, the stands full; Harris, with a home-made rag ball held together with twine, side-stepped Kyle, outpaced McKay, outjumped Rees Stephens, outkicked Norton and was the hero of every Triple Crown success his imagination could muster.

The game over, the crowds filed past our house. My father standing at the railings.

“Who won, lads?”

“We lost, Mr Harris,” was the response that meant we won.

Our house was a Garryowen one. Strangely, it was the Young Munster fans who paused to speak to him.

“The referee was blind, they should give him a dog and a white stick. Reid dropped a goal.”

Again.

As I grew into longer pants (my brother’s hand-me-downs) I grew into the confraternity. One day I would play in Thomond Park. One day I did. But I had to wait. My sister Audrey died days before my scheduled debut against Mungret in the first round of the Munster Schools’ Junior Cup. I had to cry off. But crying was habitual that week.

I hadn’t to wait long. That year Crescent, having beaten Rockwell by a Paddy Berkery penalty goal to nil, got to the final of the Munster Schools’ Senior Cup. We had a squad of 16. The team and me. And “me” got into the team for the final against PBC Cork.

It was to become a day greater than any day I have yet lived in my long, controversial life.

Eleven o’clock Mass at the Augustinians, Thomond Park at three. We won. I won my first of two Munster Senior Schools’ medals. I scored a try. It was disallowed. They said I was offside. Impossible. I was never offside in our lane.

The friendships grew as the body bruised. “Dickie,” said my mother, who wandered into the bathroom while I was taking a bath and viewed my bruised and battered body, “they will kill you one day.” “They killed me today, mum”.

I was living through instinct. Joker Plunkett, Mini Griffin, John Joe Hourigan rail-roaded my body. I had made the mistake of kicking Alexie Clancy on the ground. The nightmare lasted 60 minutes. As my bloodied face was washed in a nearby stream by those who bloodied it, the wasp would buzz in my heart forever. That day tradition gave way to friendship.

My father rejected any ambition I might have had of playing for Young Munsters: “Don’t set foot in this house again if you wear that black and amber shirt.” Discretion gave way to valour and, although I never wore those legendary colours, there were occasions, having played against them, that my body was indelibly tattooed with black and amber.

Parental control lost its authority in Limerick off the field. Charlie St George’s pub became not only my haunt but in some ways the lecture hall for my future. Here at nights, sitting, after hours, before a burning stove I got my initial education in the theatre.

Shaw, O’Casey, Wilde, Shakespeare, Johnson, Yeats were discussed at length and the seeds of nationalism were also sown and eventually Michael Collins joined the hero ranks of Clifford, Reid and Kyle. Reid was a foreigner from Garryowen but his ability was recognised .

In those days you needed a passport to travel from parish to parish, not to mention from pub to pub. Off-season, the borders were dismantled and foreigners mingled with foreigners. But as the season began they bade their farewells, donned their armour, and migrated back to the fever of their own territory, though they courteously nodded their recognition if they happened to pass each other in the street. Emigration restrictions were mutually abolished on match day as borders were crossed and pints were devoured.

Recently, back in Limerick, a journey to bury past demons, I visited our lane. I still heard the cries of “Dickie, Dickie”.

Greenfields was transformed from a cabbage patch into a facsimile of Lord’s but my mates, like the congregation who stood outside the Augustinian Church on a Sunday, huddled in the windswept rain, terrace bound, viewing the new clubhouse with some suspicion, happier with the way things were.

Habit, or at least tradition, was hard to kill. I stood in Thomond Park recalling that I scored 19 tries there, two drop goals, three conversions and noted that my try tally could have been 21 had my try in the 1947 Schools final not been disallowed and had the goalpost been a foot to the left.

I remember in a moment of directional madness, bursting from a maul, ball in hand and running directly into the goalpost. I have been stopped by lesser objects.

Disgruntled, I note that a crystal ball will be passed through Limerick, Cork and Galway in honour of the forthcoming World Cup to stimulate the game in those areas.

Limerick needs about as much stimulation as the Pope needs to pray. What it needs is recognition from a union bogged down in self-centred elitism. It would hardly have been questioned had the IRFU scheduled a World Cup match in Thomond Park in honour of Limerick’s Treaty 300.

In my tubercular days the wheat was separated from the chaff; my bedroom, a place of depression and rejection, became a place of rejoicing when one by one the tormentors of my flesh came to visit me complete with smuggled Guinness and the odd story of misadventure.

Here, friendship bonded on the playing fields carried me through the ups and downs of Hollywood. Here, while all else failed, as it does occasionally, the thud of the boot, meant for the face, glided into the heart.

Here was the testing ground, the examination room, the giver of diplomas. Here, in the mud, the rain, the competitiveness invested in rivalry placed its hand on your shoulder and together we graduated with honours.

Last year was a great one for me, winning the Evening Standard award for the best performance in the English theatre for Pirandello’s Henry IV, getting a Golden Globe nomination for Jim Sheridan’s The Field and above and beyond all of that, finally being made a lifetime member of Young Munster Rugby Club.