January brings the smell of mothballs, threadbare scarves are discovered in the darkest recesses of a thousand closets, old school ties that were once regarded as badges of slavery are proudly sported in a seasonal outing. The Leinster Schools Senior Cup - and the same could be said for Munster and Ulster - beguiles pupils and those who have long since seen the back of the school gates.
Schools rugby is unique in Irish sporting culture, an outlet for teenage fantasy and an opportunity for those who are old enough to know better to indulge in sepia-tinted recollections of distant school days. "Blodger Byrne's" drop goal to beat 'Knock in '56 is recalled with a reverence undiluted by the intervening decades.
The media contribute, softening the glare of scrutiny in recognition of callow youth and the purity of endeavour. Pressure is manifest, however, in the training regimes imposed by the elite colleges, threatening to ape the professional game, rather than in the minutiae of newspaper reports where mammies and daddies claim that culprits are sacrificed in print.
The cold winds of January and early February will extinguish the aspirations of more than half of the combatants in the provincial cups: four and a half months of blood and sweat ending in tears. Those schools anaesthetised by the awareness of their predicament await failure, glorious or abject; it doesn't matter. They will "party hearty" in defeat.
Professionalism and Ireland's continuing shortcomings on the international stage ensure that nothing is sacred. The schools rugby culture is not beyond reproach as pundits search for the elixir that will revive Irish rugby. The elitism of schools rugby offers an easy and perennial target, yet there are more schools playing now than at any stage in the past. The base is finally widening.
Equally culpable are those who shriek that the schools game must not be touched, citing the family tree of internationals that it has spawned, the passion, the excitement. They ignore the grim statistics, the tiny coterie of schools - Ulster is an exception - that can reasonably expect to win a provincial cup. There is little point in expanding the various competitions if the numbers that can win it remain the same.
Sunday Tribune rugby writer Neil Francis pointed out in a recent defence of schools rugby that he had learned the majority of his skills during those formative years: few will dispute that this area of the sport fertilises good and bad habits. It is therefore imperative that the structure is right, complimented by continual skills development.
One idea that could be adopted is to introduce a law, banning tackling above the waist. It would promote a better tackling technique among young players and improve the safety aspect of the game where, on occasion, stationary players are obliterated with the double tackle above and below the waist. Banning kicking outside the 22s to encourage a more expansive approach, a policy pursued by the French at under-age level, is a popular suggestion but as one school's coach pointed out: "It would just mean that teams would fan out across the pitch in a line, knowing the opposition could not kick. It deprives players of using an important skill and pushes the game towards a rugby league approach."
There is some merit in the criticism but at the same time, better quality backplay must be encouraged. Ironically it is the "weaker" schools that are often the most innovative, simply because they have to be. Faced with physically bigger and more accomplished opposition, they are willing to pursue the unorthodox, take more risks.
Coaches at the top colleges cite the pressure to succeed, where winning is the only commodity, to camouflage a sometimes sterile approach. The IRFU must address the structures of the schools game in an effort to remove the monopoly and promote a more genuinely competitive environment. Failure to do so would be to merely doff a cap to tradition.
Whatever transpires at committee level will not affect those schoolboys who count the hours to the start of the provincial cups. Preoccupied by playing, they covet the opportunity to be immortalised in the eyes of their peers: everyone wants to be a "Blodger Byrne."
Claiming knowledge borrowed from others, I tentatively suggest that in Leinster, St Mary's College will sneak past defending champions Blackrock in one semi-final while CBC Monkstown will end the great famine - they'll reach the semi-final - only to lose to Terenure. The latter will win the final on St Patrick's Day. Having unhappily committed this to print, I await chastisement.
