N ALL FAIRNESS - Clubs can key to Munster revival

Rugby is approaching its high point of the season with the Six Nations Championship on the horizon with the group stage of the European Champions Cup to conclude next weekend.

Following their gutsy win over Saracens last Saturday night, it felt like the old days at a raucous Thomond Park where an underdog Munster team somehow found a way to take down a big dog. Munster are a long way from the peak years of twenty or so years ago, but the passion remains in the backs to the wall performance produced. It was far from perfect, but they found a way to win.

They will hope it sparks them for the rest of the season and if they get some of the injured players back, they might have a chance of going deep in the Champions Cup and URC, however they still lack top-end talent to go the whole way and until such time as they get more game-changers to go with the likes of Peter O’Mahony, Tadhg Beirne and Jack Crowley, results like last Saturday will be the exception rather than the norm.

The game in Thomond Park was one for the purists, not easy on the eye by any means, particularly compared to what was produced at New Ormond Park earlier in the day when Nenagh Ormond and UCC played out a ten-try thriller as the All-Ireland League resumed after its Christmas break.

Nenagh Ormond are on such a positive run of results over the last two years or so that they refuse to lose, and that mentality was evident in the period of added time after they fell behind in the final minute of normal time with UCC set to hand them just their second defeat of the season. However, their resolve is such that nothing is irretrievable and in the period that followed they banged down on the students door until Mikey Doran finally got over to secure his sides eighth win from ten games in the league, and in the process cutting Old Belvedere’s lead at the top to just three points with eight games to go.

The March 1st clash between the sides at Ollie Campbell Park in Dublin does have a feel of a title-decider at this stage, if their respective form holds up, and certainly Nenagh have some winnable games before then against the bottom three of the four bottom sides in the league, including Shannon, more of that anon.

Naas will be a tricky one this Saturday, considering the Kildare side ran Nenagh to a point last month, and Ormond have been struck down with injury to key players, but they managed to overcome that last Saturday. It’s to their credit that they have developed the depth to overcome injury, not just with astute signings of players from outside the club that have bought into their culture which is a key aspect of their growth in recent years, but also their local talent with Fionn O’Meara, an Ireland underage international and recent Munster ‘A’ graduate, coming off the bench to a great impact last weekend, as did Joe Coffey who despite not playing much representative rugby at underage, certainly warrants a look by the Munster Academy.

While the schools system is serving rugby in this country well, particularly in Dublin, it can’t be the be-all and end-all in terms of developing players. Munster’s development into two-time European champions was backboned by players from the clubs when Shannon, Garryowen, Young Munster, and Cork Con in particular were taking lumps out of eachother in the AIL and dominating the rest of the country.

By all means, the schools game in the province and the likes of PBC in Cork, Ardscoil Ris and Glenstal Abbey in Limerick and Rockwell College in Tipp still have a part to play but Munster’s hay-day came through the clubs and maybe that is where they could do things a little differently to Leinster.

It is no coincidence that Munster’s drop off has coincided with the decline in the strength of the clubs in Limerick, Shannon are now in danger of back to back relegations and falling to the third tier, while Garryowen are currently bottom of division 1A. There is a chance that if Nenagh Ormond were to be promoted at the end of this season, they would be the third strongest club in Munster behind Young Munster and Cork Con who are still going strong but still aren’t what they would like to have been in the past.

There’s no doubt that Limerick’s success in hurling over the last decade at all levels has hurt rugby in the city, just as hurling was impacted during rugby’s hay-day. That’s an issue for Munster Rugby to try and address but emerging clubs such as Nenagh Ormond have a part to play, highlighted by Fionn O’Meara and Evan Murphy’s recent appearances for Munster ‘A’, and maybe that should be tapped into more.