Rarely has one television programme provoked such discussion within rugby circles as last week's insight into schools rugby and Clongowes Wood College entitled: Clongowes - The Greater Glory. It probably wouldn't be stretching things to describe it as the talk of the game, albeit for a week. If nothing else, that made the programme good television.
Why the interest and the debate? Most probably because schools rugby, at its most elite tier, is something of a separate world if not quite a secret society. One other renowned rugby playing school in Leinster declined to be the case study for the programme makers - indeed such is their prickly self-importance that one other noted rugby playing school even declined to co-operate with a recent study into creatine in sport.
So this was a rare insight into a school which has become a phenomenon in the last decade, from also-ran to one of the main power bases in Leinster Schools rugby. It was a well made programme and was particularly interesting from a rugby perspective.
As the programme panned out the schoolboys and players became a backdrop, with the emphasis on teachers, coaches and parents. The views of the pupils, past and present, would have been more interesting to hear. Talking to some Clongowes graduates this week, it became clear that the school regarded rugby as an ideal way of promoting bonding among borders. A decade ago, the senior panel had to sprint the length of a pitch, and not only the quickest but also the slowest had to achieve certain target times or else the entire squad had to do the sprint again.
"It meant we were more interested in encouraging the slowest guys to cover the pitch than in our own time. It was a very clever ploy," recalls a former pupil. But he also recalled: "In our day we just rucked and tackled all day long." By comparison, he "couldn't believe the individual skills levels of Des Dillon's team a couple of years ago." Clearly, Clongowes do more to develop individual skills than used to be the case, and having had negligible impact beyond schools rugby before, more ex-Clongowes players seem to be staying within the game. It still seems to this observer that too much emphasis is placed on winning and losing a one-off cup tie. One imagines the senior schools coach, Noel Murray, regretted his half-time team talk during the heavy quarter-final defeat to Terenure which essentially spoke of the ignominy of a potentially heavy defeat. But all of that is as much a fault of the knock-out system.
The programme also served to remind us of the cocooned world in which the more elite rugby playing schools live. Though they are good people by and large, it might still come as a surprise to many the degree to which they and the game of rugby are detested by those, say, in domestic Irish soccer circles. In confirming that these schools regard themselves, somewhat objectionably, as self-appointed leaders of our society, one imagines this programme will only have strengthened that viewpoint from outside. Not that they'll care.
OF all the celebratory parties in all the rugby bars across the country this past sun-drenched May Bank Holiday weekend, none would have surpassed that in Clifden and Griffins bar especially. Connemara had to do it the hard way of course, augmenting their last ditch 3-0 win away to Navan with last Saturday's nail-biting 14-13 win over Highfield in Ennis, where the referee apparently played 12 and a half minutes of injury time. But after so many near misses, they deserve their chance in Division Three.
A more common theme throughout rugby clubs would have been sympathy for the demise of Highfield. Nonetheless, the senior clubs enjoyed too closeted an existence for too long, and the adoption of promotion from the junior ranks has shaken things up while showing the inequities of the old enclosed system. Highfield at least have the chance to take same route back to the senior ranks.
The advent of the Connemara All Blacks (the strip and nickname are in deference to fly fishing, not New Zealand rugby) to the All-Ireland League probably does more to broaden the competition geographically than any other individual addition to the ranks of the 48 senior clubs, given their nearest away game will see them travel about 50 miles. There'll be a widespread fear that it might be a step too far for them but there's only one way of finding out. Similar fears will be expressed within Carlow after their rapid rise through all the divisions. But as with their arrival three years ago, so Connemara's promotion is a continuation of a trend forecast here for years and liable to continue apace, whereby upwardly mobile, community-based rural clubs progress at the expense of previously closeted clubs from urban areas.
Seven years ago, Old Wesley and Greystones finished fourth and fifth in what was then a 10-team first division. Next season they will be one division away from the junior ranks and their fixture list will include historic meetings with the Connemara All Blacks, amongst others.
Like Carlow, others such as Ballynahinch, Thomond and Barnhall have overtaken Old Wesley and Greystones from the junior ranks, while they'll also be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Naas and Clonakilty.
Clonakilty go up, and alas Highfield go down. But somebody has to. All in all, with due deference to the plight of Highfield, it should have been happening decades ago.
gthornley@irish-times.ie
