Home is where the heart is for Irish

You'd wonder how fickle it all is really and how much of it is based purely on results. After all, Scotland and their kilted Kiwis were champs last season but having become chumps it seems their very Scottishness is being called into question.

For example, Jim Aitken, the former Gala prop who captained Scotland to their grand slam in 1984, was telling the Guardian on Saturday that he would not be attending the Scotland-France game that afternoon.

"I'm not paying to see a bunch of mercenaries. There is no passion in Scottish rugby any more. The performance of the national team is part of a general malaise and it wouldn't be so bad but myself, David Sole and Finlay Calder warned two or three years ago that this was going to happen."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Similar complaints were made two or three seasons ago when the haemorrhage of Irish players to England especially was at its peak. Yet however fickle this perception might be, Ireland coach Warren Gatland believes it has some substance.

It wasn't so much that playing abroad or being second generation stock made the Irish players any less passionate or proud to wear the green jersey, more that some of them may have been just a little too removed from the heartbeat of the game.

In the aftermath of defeat a couple of seasons ago the Irish coach felt that some of the overseas-based players had "no feel for what was happening in the media and in the public."

Gatland raised a few hackles when publicly declaring that home-based players would be preferred to those based abroad in tight selections as a boost to the IRFU's campaign to bring the prodigal sons home. Gatland, team manager Donal Lenihan and the union deserve credit for having done so.

"They were also answering to two or even three masters, which didn't help either, and I'd hate to see us go down that road (of a player drain) again," said Gatland.

His and the IRFU's present concerns have been brought about by rumoured approaches from both London Irish and Newcastle to Brian O'Driscoll. Gatland has endorsed the views of Keith Wood by publicly advising O'Driscoll to remain, partly on the basis that at the moment the 21-year-old centre has a very good chance of making the Lions. And those chances would, more likely, run the risk of being diminished if he was playing every week in the Allied Dunbar as opposed to the relatively lesser exposure of European Cup and Six Nations commitments with Leinster and Ireland.

Regardless of whether the English offers might be based on proposed league formats as opposed to actual ones, never mind examples of cost-cutting and contracts not being honoured, there are more cases of Irish players whose form and selection prospects suffered from being in the Allied Dunbar than vice versa.

Even so the IRFU will have to be pretty proactive about this, and promptly at that, in shelling out the big bucks for O'Driscoll, whose market value must be a six-figure basic contract over four years. However, O'Driscoll isn't the only gem. Irish rugby is unearthing a fair few jewels lately - with the likes of Jeremy Staunton and Gordon D'Arcy coming up on the rails.

At least two internationals in Saturday's squad, and probably a good deal more, have told me that they've been approached. What price, if it hasn't happened already, of financially tempting offers being made to the crop of young Leinster players, say, who could also provide the basis of potential European Cup winners in two or three years' time?

THE GRAPEVINE has it that feelers from abroad have been put out to Bob Casey, for example, and it's likely that some fringe players, perhaps even a little disillusioned such as Andy Ward, will or have been approached.

It would be a terrible shame if the drain reverted the other way, for there's little doubt that aside from the logistical difficulties it would create, it would surely imperil the existing spirit within the squad.

In particular, the management have tapped heavily into the Munster spirit, which now provides almost the complete spine of the team. "I don't think it can be ignored in Irish rugby at the moment," commented Gatland. "I don't think nine AIL titles going to Munster clubs is a co-incidence, any more than Munster winning the last two interpros is."

It helps though, that compared to a few years ago, the advent of professionalism has seen Munster's fitness levels significantly improved, and that the provincial scene has been expanded with a home-and-away interprovincial championship and European Cup.

It helps too that there are a couple of grizzled and winning old heads in the mix as well, even if the veterans, Mick Galwey and Peter Clohessy, remain classic cases of 33-yearolds still going on 14. One of the shrewdest judges in Irish rugby I know maintains that rugby is first and foremost about people, and here lieth the proof.

Galwey's bear-hugging of Peter Stringer and Ronan O'Gara was one of Saturday's defining moments and a symbol of this burgeoning team. O'Gara describes his Munster captain as "brilliant" and revealed that Galwey had been telling a few non-PG jokes during the anthems.

Of Galwey, Gatland said: "For some people to say he was redundant couldn't be further from the mark." Privately, one wonders if the Irish management reflect ruefully on Galwey's omission from the World Cup, particularly when they recall young Casey coming on for the last quarter in Lens with only 10 minutes of international rugby behind him as opposed to Galwey's decade and depth of knowledge. It's hard not to think that the result might have been different had the replacement been Galwey.

Leadership is a collective thing, and all good sides require at least three or four of these natural-born leaders. Wood happily concedes that Galwey has taken a huge weight off his leadership responsibilities, and so too has Anthony Foley. Nothing helps like winning of course.

Playing like this, they can trouble anybody now, and the temptation must be to play the same team for the third game running, without there being excessive pressure to garner a third successive championship win.