There was a simple joy to playing rugby at the dawn of professionalism. The game was straightforward, the pay modest and future expectations muted. No one thought they were going to be on a ‘rich list’ anytime soon.
Perhaps the biggest endorsement of where the game was financially at that point could be found in the car parks of Donnybrook and Anglesea Road on training and match days. I often walked or took the bus.
Shane Horgan drove a car with one door a different colour to the rest of the vehicle. Brian O’Driscoll’s sponsored Toyota Celica was considered exotic as everyone marvelled at its beautiful lines, perhaps someday hoping that they too would be courted by a sponsor. The norms of today were a stratosphere away.
We, as players, used to sit on the edge of car boots to get changed for pitch sessions because we didn’t have permission to use the changing rooms just 10 metres away across the car park. That access came later, but it serves as a reminder of how the relationship between the professional and amateur games has evolved over the last 30 years. Back then, the club was king.
Nobody really understood what success could or should look like. We were trying to find our feet with players from varied backgrounds. GAA was often more prominent than rugby in many players’ grassroots, with most having grown up playing hurling or Gaelic football alongside rugby. It showed on the pitch: overhead catches, potshots at the crossbar with a rugby ball.
Shane Horgan often tried to emulate Trevor Giles’s ball-striking and scoring prowess, though that’s where that particular comparison ends. However, Shane’s brilliance in the air would later be immortalised by his iconic catch against England in Croke Park, something Giles would surely have admired.
Those memories were inspired by Meath‘s victory over Dublin in the Leinster senior football semi-final in Portlaoise over the weekend. Shane is a proud Meath man and he’d been telling anyone who’d listen – a select and small group for the most part – that it was only a matter of time before the glory days returned to the Royal County.
While there was no trophy on offer at the weekend, the win introduces so many positives going forward, not least the accrued belief for Robbie Brennan and his players. The shot at silverware comes the next day.
Meath’s win serves as a timely reminder that one of sport’s most endearing and captivating characteristics is that not every game adheres to the form book. Dublin were odds-on favourites, Meath significant underdogs. But the nature of the contest and the result made a mockery of that projection.
Returning to rugby, it’s not so much a case of Leinster beware as they host Northampton Saints in the Champions Cup semi-final at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday evening (5.30pm) but a reminder that the integrity of performance matters far more than any tags or labels.
Leo Cullen’s side are 21-point favourites. Do Northampton care? Not one iota, and rightly so. You can see from some of the chat in the press that they fancy the task in hand and will travel in expectation and not just hope.
Leinster and Northampton have a rich history. The Irish province has won eight of their last nine meetings starting with the most famous one of all, the 2011 Heineken Cup final. But a number of those games were tightly contested, not least last year’s clash at the same stage of the tournament at Croke Park. Leinster clung on for dear life at the end before escaping with a 20-17 win.
There are a couple I remember as a player, the first way back in October 2000, when they came to Donnybrook as the reigning European champions. They established an 18-point lead after 19 minutes before we managed to get a foothold and eventually ran out 40-31 winners. I scored a rare hat-trick of tries.
We effectively ended their title defence, although neither the Saints nor Leinster went marching on from the pool as Biarritz Olympique and Edinburgh Reivers finished first and second respectively. There’s been enough written about the 2011 final but the one match against Northampton that sticks in my mind like a beacon and a reminder about the unpredictability of sport is the two pool matches between the clubs, a week apart in 2013.
We went to Franklin’s Gardens and thrashed them 40-7 as we produced a performance for the ages. The following week, back at home, everything felt different. From the moment we gathered in the changing room, I sensed something was wrong: too many smiles, too much comfort. Despite the most stirring of prematch speeches, complacency crept in to the changing room unnoticed.
From the opening whistle, Northampton seized the initiative, George North scored an early try and we never really recovered. Once it became clear that the previous week’s dominance wasn’t going to repeat itself, we scrambled to fix it on the field. But when a team isn’t mentally locked in, desperation takes over. Passes go to ground. Decisions become erratic. And slowly, inevitably, the result slips away.
Northampton weren’t necessarily the better team on paper but with players like Courtney Lawes, Luther Burrell and North they had enough quality to ask serious questions of us. Trying to realign a team mid-match is one of the hardest things to do. Often, the surge of frantic energy only leads to chaos, not control.
On paper, this weekend’s game looks like a formality based on Leinster’s form in the competition to date and especially the two knock-out wins over Harlequins and Glasgow Warriors. But for the first time this season, it may not be Leinster’s defence or attack that decides the outcome. Instead, it will come down to mentality. The biggest danger is looking at past routs and underestimating the task ahead.
History shows that sometimes a team only needs the door left slightly ajar. Northampton nearly stormed through it in 2011; Leinster left it swinging wide open in 2013 and very nearly again just last year.
This time around, Northampton once again have the players who can disrupt and deliver. Henry Pollock will bring energy at the breakdown, Tommy Freeman providing pace in the back three, and Fin Smith steering the ship at outhalf, looking every inch a Lions bolter.
Northampton will try to disrupt Leinster, individually and collectively, knocking them from the playing rhythm that enables the Irish province to dominate matches. In a match of this nature, it could come down to individual moments, and Northampton have enough players capable of delivering them.
For Leinster, the challenge is simple: get the mindset right, and the body will follow. Anything less and they will be formally introduced to sport’s glorious unpredictability.
