FROM THE BLINDSIDE:Connacht need success to bring in the crowds to generate the revenue. And to have success, you need the players first. Catch 22.
THIS CHRISTMAS, I am going to do something out of the ordinary. I am going to enjoy it. I am going to relax and take it easy and not worry about going training or watching what I eat or drink.
I’m not going to think about Munster’s game against Connacht on St Stephen’s Day other than to organise who I’m going to go along and watch it with.
Rugby takes away enough of your Christmases as a professional rugby player, so this year I’m going to take one back.
Last year was a terrible Christmas. We were down to play Connacht in the Sportsground on Stephen’s Day, but it got pushed back to the 27th because of all the snow and ice. And then when the game did actually go ahead, I managed to dislocate my elbow.
I dived for a loose ball and next thing you know my arm got trapped underneath one of their players. It was one of the most painful things I can remember happening to me on a rugby pitch, as anyone who was watching on TV will have guessed by the big girly screams I let out of me within earshot of the referee’s microphone.
I was rolling around on the ground in agony and squealing with the pain, making noises my team-mates slagged me about for weeks afterwards. Once I came off, I waited for about half an hour before being brought to the hospital to get fixed up. I was annoyed because I knew this would be the last time I’d play in The Sportsground and I didn’t want to go out with a bad memory of the place because I’d had enough tough battles there down the years. As it was, my last playing trip to Galway ended with Paul O’Connell bringing me a burger and chips in a hospital bed – and all after me spending Christmas preparing for the Connacht match.
I was a Connacht player once, actually. It was once and once only, but it’s the truth – I got a game and wore the jersey. It was just before the 1999 World Cup and I was a standby player for the Ireland squad. Warren Gatland had his side play a few warm-up matches against the provinces and I played for Munster when we beat them down in Musgrave Park. Connacht were next up for the World Cup squad a week later, but they were crippled with an injury crisis in the back row so myself and David Wallace were called in to help out.
We were Connacht players for one game and we loved it. Wally and I were both bursting to make an impression and show that we were ready to go if anyone dropped out of the squad. We scared the life out of them as well – going something like 21-6 up on them after half-time. Wally got a try and I managed two of my own as well, but they reeled us in eventually and beat us in the end.
I’ve often thought since that I should have asked if I could hold on to the jersey from that day.
Although we’re talking about completely different scenarios, the basic reason we lost that day isn’t a whole lot different to the reason Connacht are going through their bad patch now, a full 12 years later.
It’s a lack of resources, a lack of playing power. I played with Eric Elwood for Ireland and I have huge admiration for what he’s been doing there.
Losing to Gloucester the way they did last weekend was a killer, but I know that with his integrity and intelligence, he will find a way to improve them. I would only love to see him get the support he needs to do that.
Connacht’s problem is that their squad is just too thin to cover all the high-intensity games they’re having to play. They weren’t able to get a good enough squad together for the Heineken Cup and it has caught up with them. You can have all the fight and all the spirit in the world, but, ultimately, that lack of depth is going to catch up with you. Eric lost four of his best players before they knew they were going to be in the Heineken Cup and, without Ian Keatley, Fionn Carr, Jamie Hagan and Seán Cronin, they’ve been struggling.
They have four defeats from four matches in the Heineken Cup after last weekend and if you bring it down to brass tacks, I just don’t think they have the players to compete at what is almost Test match level rugby. They have a few outstanding players who could get their game anywhere else, fellas like John Muldoon and Michael Swift who have been hugely loyal to Connacht.
But they just don’t have enough of them and when big matches come down to tight margins at the end like they have for Connacht over the past few weeks, those are the guys you need.
But how do you get those players into the Connacht squad?
That’s the question we have to face up to. With more and more kids playing the game every year and more and more talent coming through, you are going to need room for 120 elite professional players in the country.
The challenge is there at all times and in all provinces to attract top players. You can’t blame the likes of Carr and Cronin and the rest of them for going to where they think their career might be helped along and you can’t blame the other provinces for looking after their own patch.
In a way, I understand it from the IRFU’s point of view. The other provinces attract big crowds and play in the Heineken Cup every year. They can afford to get players to move to them because they’re more self-sufficient – money is tight everywhere and provinces have to help themselves. So you could argue that Connacht need to be generating their own revenue if they’re going to have success.
But there’s a Catch 22 involved in that they need success to bring in the crowds to generate the revenue. And to have success, you need the players first.
That’s why I think there should be some sort of loan system within Ireland. Each of the other provinces has a handful of young guys who are still developing, who are hugely talented, but who aren’t getting any game-time.
Most coaches know at the start of a season what they have in mind for the players in their squad and, realistically, they know which players they’ll be calling on and which ones will be left to a few starts here and there in the Pro 12. Surely, it would be better for these players in the long run to be playing full-time.
Obviously, this isn’t an idea that would appeal to Tony McGahan or Joe Schmidt or Brian McLaughlin. Any coach will guard his own patch and will want to keep the best 30 or 35 players available to him where he can use them if he needs them. If a player goes to Connacht early in the season on loan and gets cup-tied for the later rounds of the Heineken Cup, then he’s no use to his own province if there’s an injury crisis down the line.
But the IRFU have a duty to look after the bigger picture. If there was a system in place where they could go to Connacht for six months or even a full season, the players would progress and the fourth province would benefit too. The deck is stacked against them in so many ways and this seems such an obvious way to improve it.
You have an over-supply of quality rugby players in the country and a fourth wheel that is crying out for attention.
If you look at the playing numbers in France and the playing numbers in England, we’re way behind the curve here.
We have to be able to support 120 professional players here, otherwise we’re going to be losing a lot of young players to foreign clubs over the next few years.
It’s tough on Connacht having to come to Thomond Park on Monday with Munster on a high having won four games from four, but they will have to tough it out.
And the other factor they’ll be up against will be the huge wave of emotion surrounding John Hayes’s last match for Munster.
As if Munster weren’t going to be trying hard enough in the first place.
The first time Hayes and I played against each other, the try was still only worth four points. Clanwilliam beat Bruff in a Munster Junior Cup match back in 1992 and Hayes was playing second-row. He was useless that day, clearly a man with the footballing ability for the front row and nowhere else.
Over time, we became team-mates at Shannon and Munster and Ireland and got to be very close friends. Myself, himself and Mick Galwey always seemed to drift towards each other.
If Shannon were after playing a game in Dublin, the three of us would go down to Kilkenny with Gaillimh for the night afterwards.
Hayes was a terrible drinker for a man his size and you’d often see him reduced to sleeping standing up in a pub – you could nearly mistake him for a pillar holding up the ceiling. At the end of the night, we’d head to the chipper and Hayes would gather up all the scraps on the tables and eat them while he was waiting in the queue.
Although he was never much of a drinker at all, he gave it up altogether a few years ago.
I always said it made him more boring, but it was because when it came to playing for Munster and Ireland, he was just so professional.
The whole of Ireland can see that he had no interest in attention, that all he ever wanted was to get on with the job. He’s very humble and respectful and all the things most people think he is, but he’s very funny too and he’d do anything for you.
And I do mean anything.
When I had my dislocated shoulder in Australia during the 2003 World Cup, I couldn’t reach around to wash my own back.
Hayes never blinked – he scrubbed my back for me for the rest of that tournament. Talk about above and beyond the call of duty.
I’ll be there for his send-off on Monday and, hopefully, we’ll be able to slip off and have a quiet pint when it’s all over.
It’s Christmas, after all.
