Keith Duggan hails a chronicle of a year in the life of Ireland's rugby team by photography agency Inpho

When Sports Illustrated ran an issue celebrating the best photograph of the last century, it was not the familiar and iconic images of those blurred decades which ultimately won their hearts. Ali, Michael Jordan, Carl Lewis and all the gods in their prime do feature, but it was an obscure college football photograph from 1957 that was regarded as the most precious. A sweeping, wide-angle lens image, it captures the team at prayer just minutes before the beginning of a long-forgotten championship game.

It is the power of retrospect and the accompanying story that gives the photograph such an aura. Looking at the still, the viewer is privileged with knowing the fate of its subjects over the following minutes, hours and years. The shared experiences, the everyday heartbreak and happiness that the subjects would encounter in their street lives, renders their last team moment at once immediate and terribly distant.

Similarly, one of the central images in Putting it on the Line (A Year in the Life of the Irish Rugby Team, from Inpho Sports Agency (in association with Permanent TSB), frames the Irish team at song in the dressing-room of Lansdowne Road after their famous victory over England last autumn. The sheer joy and spontaneity of the sing-song (a Keith Wood-inspired From Clare to Here) will acquire greater meaning over the coming years when the current team inevitably breaks up and - in many Six Nations years ahead - England will be untouchable.

Billy Stickland's team of photographers chose wisely in their year of chronicling the fortunes of the national team. With a busy calendar, some bright young things causing a sensation on rugby fields across the globe, and the usual backstage IRFU conspiracies, the national scene made for rich visual theatre.

Also, 2001 marked a crossing point for Irish rugby. Although many of the photographs here stress the sheer burden of the professional era, Ireland perhaps more than any other country has managed to cling onto the fabled spirit of old. Peter Clohessy, a lion in the glorious and gory days of amateurism, managed to make the transition to this precise new era that has spawned the likes of Brian O'Driscoll and Malcolm O'Kelly. Many of the casual, pre-game images here demonstrate how the squad managed to blend the best of both eras: fun with deathly seriousness, dedication with occasional devilment.

So much has happened over the past 12 months that it is almost a surprise to see a soulful black-and-white close-up of Warren Gatland, the affable New Zealand coach, deposed immediately after the finest few weeks for Irish rugby anybody could remember. A series of essays by the most prominent rugby writers in the country paints the backdrop for this and other dramatic chapters in the season.

Most of the stories here are, however, contained in the photographs. We get close enough to Gary Longwell to almost share his pain as he meets the colossal Jonah Lomu in a head-on tackle. Some of the dressing-room stills are so intimate that the steam practically rises off the page. There is a wonderful homage to Clohessy towards the end of the book that will undoubtedly find a home on many walls, and a few Herb Ritz-y torso flatterers of the young bloods of the Irish game. Oh, and action shots. Dozens and dozens of vivid, bone-crunching and stunningly high quality stills of the most memorable moments of the season.

Putting it on the Line whets the appetite for the new season while ensuring that the previous year will long be remembered.

Putting it on the Line(€40)