There are no tickets available for next Saturday’s Heineken Cup game between Munster and Castres at Thomond Park. This is the norm for the Heineken Cup. It has been so since Munster’s first run to the final in the 1999/2000 season, but it was not always like that.
The season before the May 2000 final, it was possible to buy a ticket that entitled the bearer to admission at any one of the three homes fixtures in the competition. I bought one, and chose to go to the Musgrave Park fixture against Perpignan.
In July of 1997, two years after the game of Rugby became a professional sport, Munster issued 15 professional contracts. Three of these contracts were full-time and the remaining twelve were part-time. Declan Kidney and Niall O’Donovan were also appointed joint-coaches to the team. The province was struggling to get to grips with the professional era, and neither the administrators nor the supporters were sure of what they wanted from a professional Munster team.
Supporters of Rugby looked on the new Munster as something of a curiosity during the mid 1990s. Yes, they were interested, but not committed. The aggregate attendance for Munster’s home Heineken Cup games between Bourgoin and Harlequins in 1997 was 13,000. The same season a combined attendance of 15,000 paying patrons watched Shannon and Young Munster play in the All-Ireland League and Munster Cup.
Somewhere between 1995 and 2000 there was a cataclysmic change in Munster rugby. What emerged was not a province, but Club Munster. The new Munster not only stands for what can be achieved on the playing field, but also what can be achieved in the world of brand marketing.
Rugby in Munster: A Social and Cultural History by Liam O’Callaghan is the first book-length treatment of rugby in Ireland. The book traces the origins of rugby in Munster from its middle class beginning in the 1870s through to the professional era. What emerges is a fascinating account of the social, cultural and political strife not only within the rather fraught Munster rugby fraternity, but also across the province.
The vast majority of comment on Munster Rugby over the past 16 seasons has focused on the innate spirit and fighting qualities of the remarkable present team. These qualities have been retrospectively attributed to all the Munster teams of the past. We learn very quickly, that this unity of purpose between the two main rugby centres of Cork and Limerick was at best an occasional flag of convenience. It only really existed when the Big Brother of the IRFU tried to interfere in the local bickering.
Almost from the very beginning the rugby folk of Cork and Limerick tread different paths. As Liam O’Callaghan puts it “Rugby in Limerick was a game of the inner city, while in Cork it had a clear suburban bias.” The Garryowen club was founded in 1884. The club emerges from the early years of Limerick rugby with a great deal of credit. The Garryowen club members especially Mike Joyce, W.L. Stokes and Tom Prendergast, helped to organise Sunday (junior) rugby in the city from the late 1880s. This facilitated the expansion of rugby in the parishes and working class areas of Limerick’s inner city.
Sunday rugby could have taken off in Cork too if there had been Godfathers in the senior clubs to organise it; but there were not, and a golden opportunity to broaden the game across the social classes of Cork was missed.
Around this time also, the lines between Gaelic Football and Rugby football were particularly blurred. The most famous example in Cork is that of the Nils Desperandum Club who drifted between Rugby Union and GAA for several seasons before eventually settling for Gaelic Football. The club went on to win six Cork senior county football titles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Another incident that highlighted the crossover between the codes was a game organised between Skibbereen and Baltimore in 1887. Skibbereen turned up under the impression the game was to be played under the rules of rugby. When the game began it was apparent that Baltimore knew nothing of rugby and insisted that the game be played under local Baltimore rules known as ‘Kick and tear away’. Skibbereen left the field saying they would play again at any time that suited Baltimore in either GAA or Rugby rules.
No aspect of the evolution of Rugby is shirked in this meticulous examination of rugby in Munster. The chapter on ‘Violence and Masculinity’ is a very thorough account of some of the issues that plagued the game at various times over the last 140 years. Many of these instances seem to arise in the heat of junior cup ties between Limerick clubs. Liam O’Callaghan says “If there was an inevitable gap between theory and practice when it came to elite sporting values, this disparity became a chasm when applied to rugby in Limerick… it was a rugby culture much at odds with the professed ideals of contemporary Muscular Christians and gentleman amateurs.”
These violent outbursts as well as some protestations from the religious section of the Ulster branch led the IRFU to try to ban Sunday Rugby in 1929. The ban let to a classic instance of the Cork and Limerick fraternities riling against the parent body. The IRFU eventually relented and Sunday Rugby survived.
Schools rugby has always played an important role in portraying all that is good in the game of Rugby. This has been particularly true in Cork. Here again Liam O’Callaghan outlines the battle for the hearts and minds of the playing students of Cork. In the first two decades of the 20th century rugby was played to the highest standards in Christians Brothers College, Presentation College and the North Monastery. Indeed, we are reminded that it was rugby and not hurling that was the leading game in the North Mon when Tomás MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney were students there.
By 1918 the GAA seemed to gaining the upper hand when all three schools played in the inaugural Dr Harty Cup (The Munster Colleges Hurling Championship). It was an enforcement of the ‘Ban” on playing foreign games by the Cork Colleges Committee (the students who previously were exempt form the rule) that forced the hand of Christian Brothers College. They subsequently opted out of GAA competition.
Presentation College, probably due to the influence of the then teacher Padraig Ó Chaoímh, continued to play both codes until 1926 when the school won the Harty Cup. The following year, Pres entered the same team in the Schools Rugby Cup and won that competition also. It should be noted that at the time of enforcing the ‘Ban”, the Cork Colleges Committee were acting against the wished of Luke O’Toole, the General Secretary of the GAA. As for the North Mon, the school won the 1919 Harty Cup and when on to become one of Ireland’s most important hurling nurseries.
Rugby in Munster: A Social and Cultural History is a compelling read. Its narrative unravels many of the highly complex mysteries of rugby in Munster. It puts into context the opinions, grudges, loyalties and traditions that have evolved since the game was first played here in the 1870s. It is a thorough examination of the family tree of Munster Rugby in the context of general society. Like all family trees, not every branch is exemplary. Yet, thanks to the work of dedicated clubs, individuals, some good fortune and serendipity, Munster Rugby has developed into a powerful sporting force and brand. Anyone who wants to try to understand the nature of that force has got to read this book.
Rugby in Munster. A Social and Cultural History by Liam O’Callaghan. Published by Cork University Press
Caption for the North Mon pic: By the time GAA competitions for schools were established in 1902, rugby was already the game of choice in the North Mon, Christian Brothers College and Presentation College. Liam O’Callaghan examines the ensuing battle for the hearts and minds of the sporting students of Cork.