Take a bow David Corkery. Never one to mince his words or shy away from giving his opinion, one could question the former Irish back-rower's choice of language in his post-match rant at the IRFU following the defeat of his Young Munster side to Cork Con in Saturday's Munster Senior Cup final.
However, no one could dispute his heartfelt frustration on behalf of the club game and his comments will most certainly have struck a chord.
“When you have a player pulled from you the day before the game for a f**king Ireland Sevens training camp after what we have gone through all year, it’s a disgrace,” said Corkery after his side’s 14-7 defeat.
“The IRFU need to have a serious look at themselves in the mirror. They pulled some of the Cork Con guys for an Irish U-20s practice game. If that’s how they treat the Munster Senior Cup with more than 100 years of history, they need to seriously look at themselves.”
It certainly sends out a curious message about the importance or otherwise of the club game, albeit Corkery’s choice of words might have been a tad more diplomatic. Then again, if he had skirted around the issue, Corkery would never have generated such a debate.
Admittedly, it also seems highly unusual that a Munster Senior Cup final did not take place until May, and after both the Bateman Cup final and the Ulster Bank League final in the Aviva Stadium a week previously when Con were beaten by Clontarf. Con's presence in both finals also probably contributed to the Munster decider being put further back, and this Irish Sevens training camp had been placed in the calendar some time ago.
Integral parts
Although Corkery stressed that Cork Con were 100 per cent deserving of their victory, his mood wouldn’t have been helped by losing.
The two players concerned, outhalf Dave Goggin and outside centre Gearoid Lyons, have been integral parts of Young Munster’s largely successful season. Both are members of the Munster Academy, although Lyons is moving to Nottingham next season.
Corkery also expressed the view that his “rant” was on behalf of a great many coaches who are peeved by having their players pulled for provincial A games, notably in the much disliked B&I Cup. In this he is assuredly correct.
Recently, on foot of announcing his retirement as a professional player to concentrate on his business, the St Mary's and Leinster winger Darragh Fanning was bold enough to express the view that B&I Cup games generally lacked the intensity and quality of an Ulster Bank League game. It was a brave thing to say, and something which only a retired player could perhaps risk articulating.
As if to underline his point, in Leinster’s six group games in this season’s B&I Cup, they averaged exactly 40 points per match against Moseley, Rotherham Titans and Ealing Trailfinders.
In their three home games at Donnybrook they scored 138 points. Fanning questioned the value of one of these high-scoring romps as against a 12-6 game in the Ulster Bank League.
The recent performances of gifted Clontarf outhalf Joey Carbery in the Ulster Bank League semi-final wins over UCD and Cork Con underlined his status as the stand-out player in this season’s League campaign.
The New Zealand-born 20-year-old, who moved to Ireland when he was 12, bears all the hallmarks of a Kiwi-reared rugby player: all the basic skills of passing, running, holding the ball in two hands and kicking out of hand have been augmented by an improved place-kicking game.
Academy set-ups
His development will have benefited from regular game time among the more varied age groups that the club game has to offer, and despite the advent of the B&I Cup – which has seriously hurt the club game – there have been plenty more examples of that in recent times.
Just because a player isn’t invited into one of the four provincial academy set-ups or is then cut from one doesn’t make him a bad player. Peter Robb, like Matt Healy before him, was an underage international who was let go by Leinster and like Healy with Lansdowne, so Robb relaunched his career with Old Belvedere before also being brought into the Connacht system.
Similarly, Niyi Adeolokun would have been lost to the professional ranks were it not for the form he showed with Trinity which again alerted Connacht to his ability. Pat Lam, Nigel Carolan, Jimmy Duffy et al in Connacht have identified better than any province the hidden jewels in the club game, and there's plenty more where they came from, and not just from Division 1A or even 1B.
This season there have been countless examples of full Irish internationals whose development has been enhanced by the club game. Last season, Ultan Dillane was part of a Corinthians pack which was also featured Danie Buckley, James Connolly, Eoghan Masterson and Finlay Bealham.
Underage rugby
Stuart McCloskey’s form with Dungannon, sometimes alongside Paddy Jackson, in a team coached by Justin Fitzpatrick and Kieron Campbell, initially earned him a sub-academy contract at Ulster. Munster outhalf Johnny Holland cut his teeth and played all his underage rugby, from under-10s to under-18s, with Sunday’s Well, before his game developed further with Cork Con.
Matt Williams regularly made the point that Irish players often developed later than players in other countries, and the only viable avenue into the pro game for late developers or those not spotted by the academies was club rugby. Healy, Robb, McCloskey and many others would assuredly have missed the net had it not been for the club game.
Next season’s proposed mid-winter break from early December to late January is a good idea and shows the IRFU haven’t washed their hands of the league. But the sooner the IRFU can extricate themselves contractually from the B&I Cup, the better. Then they can allow all the academy, sub-academy, development and contracted players and the full-time players not being used by their provinces to play for their clubs.
