IRISH RUGBY ends the decade on an all-time high, with the rude health made all the more remarkable because the previous one, arguably, constituted an all-time low. Where the Nineties yielded virtually nothing, the Noughties have brought the most bountiful 10 years of all.
To illustrate this stark contrast, composite tables show Ireland rose from last in the Five Nations in the 1990s to joint first in the Six Nations in the 2000s.
Nothing encapsulated the rather depressing state of Irish rugby prior to 2000 better than the results against Scotland. In the 1990s, Ireland lost all 10 championship meetings against the Scots (and against France), and, as with France in 1995, they were also beaten by the Scots in the 1991 World Cup (Finlay Calder/Jim Staples and all that).
Whereupon, the turn of the millennium saw this trend turned on its head, with Ireland winning nine and losing one of the meetings with Scotland in the Six Nations.
Indeed, the turning point was at Lansdowne Road in 2000. Famously, Warren Gatland launched the Test careers of five players – John Hayes, Simon Easterby, Peter Stringer, Ronan O’Gara and Shane Horgan – and recalled Mick Galwey, Denis Hickie and Girvan Dempsey, after the 50-18 defeat at Twickenham a fortnight before.
Had Ireland lost, Gatland and manager Donal Lenihan would have resigned. O’Gara kicked 10 points on his debut, before a 30-minute cameo off the bench by David Humphreys helped steer Ireland to a 44-22 win. Ireland’s more aggressive defensive system yielded two breakaway tries, and the old ground has rarely witnessed a more sublime piece of skill than Humphreys cushioning the ball, left-footed, without breaking stride and with backspin, to stop in the in-goal area for his try.
With one bound, Ireland were reborn. A 60-13 rout of Italy, with O’Gara landing 12 from 12 for a 30-point haul, followed two weeks later, and then came the Brian O’Driscoll-inspired 27-25 win in Paris: Ireland’s first in the French capital since 1972.
In the decade that followed there would be two Heineken Cups for Munster and one for Leinster, a brace of Celtic/Magners League titles apiece, three Triple Crowns and finally the Grand Slam. And much, much more besides.
Of course, there had been the first shoots of the rejuvenation in the late 1990s. Connacht’s double over a Northampton side littered with Lions in the Challenge Cup in 1997-98 and win in Bordeaux – the first competitive European win by an Irish side in France – en route to the quarter-finals injected the game with real belief. Ulster took that to another level by winning the European Cup on that memorable January day in 1999 at Lansdowne Road.
The IRFU had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the professional era, but after a few teething problems the demise of the amateur era was good for them and Irish rugby. Credit has to be given to IRFU men such as Tom Kiernan, Syd Millar and Noel Murphy for eventually bringing home Ireland’s front-line players and focusing their resources on the provinces.
To a degree, their hand was forced with the advent of the Heineken Cup, which has been as good for the provinces as the latter have for the tournament itself.
Most of all, though, it’s simply been an era of wonderful players. There haven’t been too many decades when truly world-class operators such as O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell come along. There had been good ones too in the ’90s as well of course, and while the likes of Humphreys, Hickie, Galwey, Keith Wood and Peter Clohessy may not have won much of the silverware, at least they were key players in the rejuvenation.
Thus, credit also has to be afforded the likes of Stephen Aboud, whose national academy began to produce a conveyor belt of players much better primed for the professional game, and to Dr Liam Hennessy and the IRFU’s much-envied player management.
The influence of foreign players – John Langford, Jim Williams and Felipe Contepomi spring to mind – and foreign coaches such as Gatland, Matt Williams, Alan Gaffney and others, were immense also.
Arguably, though, no one individual, player or coach, has contributed more than Declan Kidney, when you think of how inspiring Munster’s runs to the 2000 and 2002 Heineken Cup finals were, and their emotional wins of ’06 and ’08.
There were other disappointments along the way, not least Leinster tripping up over Perpignan in 2003. And for all the new-found consistency under Eddie O’Sullivan, it would still have been a decidedly unfulfilling decade but for the events of 2009, especially when one adds in the distinctly under-achieving World Cups of ’03 and ’07.
And for all their talent, Leinster would have come up short but for last season’s triumphs over Munster and Leicester.
Above all, perhaps, the biggest single contributory factor was the winning culture developed by the Munster clubs and especially Shannon in the AIL in the ’90s. This was something Brian Ashton did not have the foresight to dip into, whereas in his first week in charge Gatland attended a near full house at Thomond Park to see Shannon play. And, prompted by a full-on training session at Dr Hickey Park in Greystones when Wood and the Munster forwards upped the ante, Gatland dipped heavily into the Munster zeitgeist in picking that side to play the Scots. Galwey, Hayes, Anthony Foley and Stringer were all Shannon men, and along with O’Gara, Wood and Clohessy they gave Ireland a hardened Munster edge which it has hardly lost since.
