Gerry Thornleyreviews the best of the year's rugby books
In keeping with the sport's progress in Ireland over recent years, rugby books - once as rare as hens' teeth - have become more commonplace in our bookshops. There has arguably never been a better year in the professional era than 2006, thanks in the main to the men from Munster, and fittingly it is the story of their Heineken European Cup odyssey that dominates.
With any other story you could possibly have too much of a good thing, but given you could never really have scripted Munster's magnificent obsession to begin with, no one book could perhaps have entirely told the tale.
Hence, having a choice is no bad thing.
The first to hit the shelves was Beyond Our Wildest Dreams, 1995-2006, The Story of Munster's Heineken Cup Odyssey (by Ciarán Cronin and published by Tuatha na Mumhan Books at 23.99).
The title itself brings to mind the post-match exchange between an American sportswriter and the coach of a collegiate basketball team who had just won a final. When the coach was asked if the victory was beyond his wildest dreams, he responded dryly: "My wildest dreams have got nothing to do with basketball."
Such perspective isn't necessary in the telling of Munster's European Cup triumph, for no Irish rugby story has surely ever engendered so many dreams.
Undoubtedly the author and publishers of Beyond Our Wildest Dreams were obliged to make sure their telling of the Munster tale was first on to the shelves given there was a gagging order on the players in deference to the official story to come out later in the year.
As befits the independent-minded rugby correspondent of the Sunday Tribune, Cronin uses his investigative journalistic skills to bypass this inconvenience, and is helped out by many former players, notably Mick Galwey, and former coaches, notably Alan Gaffney.
Cronin rightly takes Munster's celebrated encounters with touring sides as the starting point, in particular, of course, the 12-0 win over the All Blacks in 1978, not to mention the vital work of the Munster clubs in the AIL. This neatly allows him to emphasise that no-one played a bigger role in creating the whole Munster concept than the then coach and former player Tom Kiernan, not least because the European Cup was the brainchild of Kiernan and the late Vernon Pugh. Manna from heaven to Munster and vice versa. Neither would have amounted to what they are now without the other.
In his extensive, detailed research, Cronin doesn't overlook any of the campaigns. Indeed, the earlier ones highlight the ridiculous odds against which Munster were competing.
Plenty of insights are also offered, such as the exact origins of how the Brian O'Brien-inspired Stand Up and Fight became the team's fitting new anthem for the new millennium, while Declan Kidney's role in changing the Munster mindset is tellingly highlighted throughout.
Along the way too, the author puts the fabled Gloucester gameplan-in-a-taxi story to bed for good. All in all, a thorough and excellently researched work.
By contrast, Munster: Our Road to Glory, written by Alan English and published by Penguin Ireland (price 22.99), is essentially the players' story and accordingly, is filled with intimate vignettes from the sanctity of the dressingrooms, players' meeting rooms and so forth.
Atmospherically, English takes the night before the 2006 final in the Vale of Glamorgan hotel as his starting point. In one anecdote, Donncha O'Callaghan recounts the story of team-mates playing table tennis outside his room. The lock sends his room-mate Marcus Horan out "to quieten them" - but is dismayed some time later to discover Horan has joined in.
Thereafter, English, too, essentially puts a chronological order on things, though he arrives quickly to the 1999-2000 campaign in which Munster reached their first final.
The book is interspersed with excerpts from journalists who've written about Munster over the >>shorter chapters on individual players such as Paul O'Connell, Ronan O'Gara and >sure>revealing than in Our Road to Glory.
Hats off to English for eliciting so much entertaining and anecdotal material along the way before reaching a fittingly emotional conclusion. It >>far effortlessly> than it was put together; the interviewing>>and gloss>>also helped by the pictures of Billy Stickland and his sports photographic agency >undoubtedly the best Irish rugby photographers.
tom>is Edward Newman's Lansdowne Through the Years (>price , which tells the story of the oldest international rugby stadium >>>->-for >one who exhaustively ticks all the boxes and simplifies both his own workload and that of the readers by placing Lansdowne Road's own story in the context of self-contained chapters/interviews with celebrated >>in no particular order.
And as interesting as those chapters featuring Irish >to >featuring the likes of Colin Meads, Gavin Hastings and Martin Johnson, >regarding the pre-match Slam showdown.
>Heineken out>>than many of Ireland's games in recent times.
There are also plenty of paperbacks out there, such as Sui>price remarkable, posthumous story of Tom Cleary, as told by his niece diaries>There are autobiographies of JPR Williams and Richard Hill, though neither could be as good as the paperback version of Moss Keane>>>>typical wit and wisdom by >And, as ever, for something completely different, there is the latest satire of the elite Leinster schoolboy, otherwise known as Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, >n>>price €13.99. Hilarious and acerbic as ever. Ripe and outrageous material, of course.
