Munster stories stand up best

Sports Books 2005: Sports books can be like fast food: easily digested but lacking long-term sustenance. Rugby books are not free from the tendency, offering perhaps more autobiographical junk than most.

There are exceptions. Alan English's Stand Up and Fight (Vintage, €15.00) is one such. It celebrates Munster's victory over New Zealand at Thomond Park in 1978. The standing joke is that close to 500,000 people claim to have been there.

This offering - a collection of stories from those who played in or attended the match in one capacity or another - will allow punters flesh out the white lies.

What English achieves brilliantly is allowing the characters to recount their tales in their own words, the author refraining from overwriting, a canny knack that serves the book well.

There is little affectation in the tales, some humorous, others poignant.

The chapter titled Brendan Foley's Story opens with the death of his mother and newborn baby brother on the same night. A matter-of-fact chronology of Foley's childhood, it is a striking chapter that unfurls several layers of Limerick life in that era and is recounted in lean, sparse prose, without a trace of self-pity.

Gerry McLoughlin is a constant source of irreverent humour. So too Moss Keane and legendary All Black wing Stu Wilson. While Bill Walsh recalling the death of Dan Canniffe, father of the Munster scrumhalf and captain Donal, on a Cork street while the match in question was being played out, offers a stark counterbalance to the general euphoria of the day.

Munster coach Tom Kiernan is portrayed by his charges as a master tactician, a Cork Svengali. The story of that day may be dog-eared but there is nothing jaded in the way English fleshes it out through the reminiscences of many of the principals. An apposite celebration of a great and historic occasion, this is an excellent book, rugby or otherwise.

Speaking of ancient history brings us to Rucks, Mauls & Gaelic Football (Merlin, €24.99), a journey through the life and times of Maurice Ignatius (Moss) Keane as told to Billy Keane.

Happily, this is another excellent effort. And it works because of the subject matter.

Moss Keane is a rugby icon of the amateur era, when men were men and aftershave was a post-prandial cocktail (just ask the former English prop Colin Smart).

The book is liberally sprinkled with stories from both sides of the whitewash.

But there is so much more to this book than typical rugby hyperbole. Moss Keane is an intelligent man, self-deprecating with an interesting story, beautifully written by his namesake and fellow Kerryman, Billy.

Brian O'Driscoll: A Year in the Centre (Penguin Ireland, €21.50) needs no further hype. The events in the first Test between New Zealand the Lions during the summer provided this diary-style book with all the momentum it required.

Various issues are rehashed, some fleshed out, and there is the odd glimpse into the author's lifestyle away from the day job.

Written in conjunction with the Daily Telegraph's Brendan Gallagher, it is a soft-focus glimpse into the life of the Lions, Ireland and Leinster captain, a sanitised account of a rugby professional midway through his career and sensible enough not to ruffle too many feathers. It's O'Driscoll-lite for the younger generation.

There are a myriad books about that ill-fated tour to New Zealand, from official outpourings to more personalised accounts, like that from UCC law graduate Paul Daly: The last great Tour? Travelling with the 2005 Lions (€9.95).

It could be have been titled Have Pint Glass will Travel - most of the action takes place in bars and at press conferences. It does contain some interesting statistics but lacks a sense of New Zealand and of the rugby context. Rather mundane in fact.

The blurb for Todd R Nicholls's The Winter Game (Mainstream, £17.99) claims: "In his 1997 book Winter Colours, author Donald McCrae assessed the modern game two years into the professional era. Todd R Nicholls investigates the current state of the sport throughout the world today."

Linking arms with McCrae's brilliant offering invariably draws comparison and it is not a favourable one for the Nicholls.

There's no doubt the Kiwi loves his rugby but there's little depth or bite to his book, a shallow, rambling look at world rugby, where the author is hopelessly smitten.