Cunningham continues to make good

Back in the summer of '92, the way Garryowen people recall it, a couple of newcomers from the Dublin university circuit turned up for training in Dooradoyle. One of them wore a scruffy old Trinity shirt and spoke with such a D4 accent that pretty soon he became known as The Bear. How did he survive?

However, not only did he survive to tell the tale, he's still there. At 32 Paul Cunningham has become one of the elder statesmen of the team and, ironically, has been more of an integral part of the team than even the AIL winners of '94.

He actually came to Garryowen with an unfortunate degree of baggage. For despite the D4 accent, the St Michael's College and Trinity education, and a cv which also included spells with Old Belvedere, his family hailed from Cork with strong Cork Constitution connections.

"What saved me was that my father also played for Garryowen," explains Cunningham. But that, he says, is typical of the first city of Irish rugby.

In fact, though he was reared a long way from Limerick, it's hardly known that Cunningham was born in Limerick, before his parents moved to Deansgrange.

He reveals, surprisingly, that "I never played senior rugby at St Michael's. In my last year there I was tight-head prop on the seconds and thirds.

"I played a couple of seasons at Old Belvedere where they had some great coaches in the Shaw brothers and Ollie Campbell, and then I played for Trinity and came under the influence of Roly Meates." That, he says, was the making of him.

Soon after came one of the highlights of his career. "Beating the living daylights out of Scivor (Stephen McIvor) and UCD in the colours match." But better still would follow when his work took him to Limerick.

Within a few weeks of joining the then AIL champions, Cunningham was pressed into the first team after Keith Wood popped his shoulder. He played for the remainder of the season, culminating in a Munster Senior Cup final win over Garryowen's successors as AIL champions (and crowned just a few weeks before) Young Munster.

"That was a bit of crack," he recalls mischievously. "They'd just won the All-Ireland League and that was my first taste of a big Limerick occasion.

An example of the talent in Limerick was the irrepressible Wood, and Cunningham took his understudy role the following season in typically phlegmatic style. "I had a few intermitted spells on the firsts, which meant I didn't have to train too hard because Woody was doing all the work."

However, with Wood focusing his preparations on the 1995 World Cup, Cunningham was in place to win a second Munster Senior Cup medal in the '95-'96 season. The following campaign, the departure of Wood to Harlequins and an injury to Terry Kingston left the Munster door ajar and Cunningham's own career began taking off.

Though his manner suggests he takes it all in a very laid-back way, Cunningham's approach on the pitch belies this. He's a very big-hearted player, and also a very intelligent player; a good reader of the game and technically sound in lineout throwing and scrumagging.

Cunningham clearly considers himself lucky that his rugby career panned out in Limerick, and he readily admits that it was purely a lucky consequence of his work. A qualified chartered accountant, he began his working life with KTMG in Limerick and now is a financial analyst with Jetphone Ltd, who are based in Shannon.

Only once did the rugby career come first when his run on the Munster team led to a stint with the Irish A squad and with that the offer of an IRFU contract. "I'll give this a go, I thought to myself, but three months into it I popped a disc and so I had to have an operation on my back. Ironically, the surgeon was the St Mary's club doctor, Ossie Fogarty. Top man. A day after the operation, the pain was gone."

However, it also stalled his career and meant he never quite scaled those heights again. "Ah yeah, it put the knockers on it. I had suffered a lot of muscle wastage because I couldn't do anything and effectively was forced to lie on my back for three months before the operation. Then to get back into shape took ages."

Cunningham had a full run in the 1996-'97 interpros but was then dropped and has been confined to club rugby since, though he was dropped by Garryowen when he return from provincial duty to them last season after being sub Munster hooker.

"I had no complaints when I was dropped. Though I'd been training hard, I hadn't been getting any games and Pat Humphreys, a good player by the way, had been going well and took my place."

This season though, Cunningham started every game bar last Saturday's against Munsters, before usually giving way to the younger Humphreys at half-time or early in the second-half. A renaissance? "Just a new coach, with new ideas.

"We've had a big turnover in terms of a new coach and new players. But John Hall is very good and he's blended a few older heads like myself with good young guys like Tierney and Staunton.

"There's a load of talent coming through the club. He's let them have their head to a degree. He's put the structure there but said go for it. I don't see why we can't keep it going."

Light-hearted and self-deprecating until the end, he concludes: "Winning it would be great. I might just totally retire then and decide the body has had enough. We'll see."