RUGBY/European Cup Final: Gerry Thornley talks to Dominic Crotty who candidly admits that Munster have not been at their best this season -possibly through fear
As a barometer of Munster's well-being, Dominic Crotty is both more accurate and articulate than most. Coming into the final two years ago, he was on the crest of a wave but this time he's the first to admit he isn't.
Think back to the quarter-final two years ago and the highlight is Crotty arcing around Cristian Stolz for a classily taken try against Stade Francais at Thomond Park. The semi-final in Bordeaux against Toulouse was as good a performance as he's ever produced. One of Munster's most potent weapons on the day, he created space for those around with some incisive running and gave the try-scoring pass for both John Hayes' try and that memorable sweeping effort which Ronan O'Gara finished off.
They were good times for Crotty. Sheer good form for Munster and Ireland A's championship winning campaign forced him into the Ireland squad, though the minor matter of his impending nuptuals delayed his appearance until, with rotten timing, the weary end-of-tour draw with Canada. And with that, swoosh, he was gone again.
"I suppose the Canada match for all the team didn't go well. We were hot favourites after beating the USA 83-3 but they were two completely different sides playing at two completely differently levels. And I suppose it just didn't work out for me on the day. I didn't make the next squad.
"I made the As before the foot-and-mouth last season but other people have come into it this season. Paddy Wallace has emerged in Ulster and is playing very well and Girvan, for me, has been the best full-back in the Six Nations. I know Robinson is far more exciting than most players but overall, I think Girvan is very good.
"So overall, it's been hard to push it this year and I don't think Munster have been playing very well generally this season. I think we've been on half throttle so it's been hard to push yourself into that selection area."
Right enough, the chances to hit the line or link up with what were trademark Munster multi-phase drives such as in the Bordeaux semi-final just haven't been as commonplace. "Without a doubt. When I compare myself to other full-backs around they're getting their hands on the ball far more. That's just the way it goes. I have a match on Saturday to play and they don't. You win some and you lose some.
"I've got to try and push myself more to get into those positions where I get the ball. Possibly two years ago I was pushing myself more. Certainly the Toulouse game was the high point of my career personally from a playing point of view. Maybe I'm playing more to team rules now and stuff like that but I don't blame anybody else for me not getting chances."
Of course he wouldn't. That simply wouldn't be Crotty's style. He's never hinted at bearing a grudge toward the Irish selectors when they first picked him out of position on the wing as a 22-year-old for his first four caps, then jettisoned him with the assurance that he wouldn't be considered as a winger again, only to pick him there for the next A match and then leave him out altogether from an Irish/Development squad tour to New Zealand.
Likewise this season, when seemingly everybody in the Munster squad except Crotty was involved in the Irish or Irish A squads in the Six Nations. As the incumbent first choice at one of Ireland's leading three provinces, indeed only Mick Galwey, Anthony Foley and Peter Clohessy have accumulated more than Crotty's haul of 35 appearances in the Heineken Cup, Crotty would be entitled to feel a little slighted.
He wouldn't be human if he didn't think about it and admits he often does. "Certainly during this Six Nations when every other person in the backline, even Jason Holland, who's a New Zealander, was at least getting a chance at A level, I thought 'Surely I can't be playing that badly?'
"So there are times when I do think what is happening and is it all very fair? But a few years ago I spent a lot of time thinking about that when I first dropped off the Irish team and then I got dropped off the Munster team for Brian Roche and it was just a never-ending circle of going around certain answers and not coming up with any solutions. But you can't force anyone to select you if they don't want to select you and I learned to live with it that way and that's the way it is now. If I got the call to go to New Zealand, or anywhere, tomorrow I'd be delighted but it doesn't keep me awake at night."
He still harbours ambitions. He asks himself how long will he keep playing rugby and he uses his international hopes as a benchmark. The day he feels he's no chance of that, he'll stop altogether. "I want to play at the top level and I'll keep striving to do that. When it happens that I'll get the feeling that I'll never do that, then I'll give up."
One of the most obliging and helpful players on the rugby circuit, it's hard to reconcile his current sang-froid and rational ways with the apparently obsessive trainer and intense young man he was up until three or four years ago; indeed even before the game went professional.
Older and wiser, he's also been through the mill too often now, and has developed a harder chin. "I'd have to admit I'm possibly more relaxed, through bitter experience if nothing else. If I was constantly making the Irish team the whole time and always at the top of the game then I'd say I would possibly be as intense as I used to me.
"But I've had too many kicks in the teeth on the way up and down, to really worry about it as much. I desperately want to be on the Irish team and when a squad comes out and I'm not on it I'm desperately disappointed but I'm not dejected, whereas a few years ago I would have been.
"It's tough when somebody tells you you're not good enough for this level. It's tough. There are times when I feel I'm not getting enough credit but I have to look at my own game as well. I have to get to the stage where I'm playing well enough that they can't leave me out of a squad. To be fair to myself, I haven't reached that level yet."
The youngest of what seems a family of inordinately gifted athletes and academics, Crotty laughs when admitting that the four of his seven older brothers who took rugby seriously are now either doctors or dentists. In his teens, he presumed that all players retired at around 24. He deliberately took another route.
"Honest to God, I took a conscious decision that I wanted to play rugby. I wanted to have a longer career or social life than they would have had so I did engineering instead of doing medicine."
That said, he's still not the fully fledged pro. Munster coach Declan Kidney, ever the parent cum psychologist to his players as well as a coach, was foremost among those who encouraged Crotty to seek additional employment outside the game.
Crotty agrees that his decision to work - if only for 10 hours a week or so - with the American electronics company Analog Devices was hugely beneficial to him as a rugby player. "It really helped me. It took my mind off it. I went to training and then I could come back and concentrate on my work. It's set me up for after rugby as well."
He admits he's not as drained at the end of the season as most of his squadmates and he's more willing than most to concede that Munster haven't scaled the heights of two seasons ago.
"We're a bit afraid to go out and win matches. In some ways we don't want to lose them, so we don't have enough confidence in ourselves that we can take on anybody. I know we're in the final but I think we could have got to the final more easily."
At the very least, Crotty is adamant that Munster shouldn't have had to play an away quarter-final. Though brilliant at times this season, Crotty reckons Munster played "outstanding rugby" for a season and a half until the foot-and-mouth interruption.
"Northampton was a blip on the screen the more I think about it. I think we just became a little bit afraid, afraid we weren't going to be on the perch anymore. That's something as a team you've got to face down. Like any team it's always easier on the way up to get to the top."
Win today and it will put two years ago to bed, once and for all, even if it has never come up in conversation. There's also the real possibility that now that they have reached another final, Munster will be released from those self-imposed shackles Crotty alludes to.
Win today, and it will also more than atone for all the slings and arrows Crotty has endured. "Let's put it this way. When I meet guys in 30 years after we've all been apart, if we win it'll make that little bit of difference to the memories we have. I know that sooner or later some Munster team is going to win the European Cup so why not us? Why can't we cement our place in Irish rugby history?"
