THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

Munster and Leicester battlers put our pro teams in the shade

JOHN BEATTIE


WE NEED some of the Munster spirit in our rugby. Why can't Glasgow, Edinburgh or the Borders copy what they do?

Flattered as I am that some people think I was a hard player, I know deep down that I wasn't really. Oh, I might fight a few people, run like an idiot at times, and enjoy whacking into people, but even if you are brought up in the jungle as I was, a later student life with a safe and loving family doesn't seem to me to be the right environment to produce a very, very tough rugby player.


Deep down all you parents reading this know that as you watch your little boys play rugby you are wondering if they really have the bite to counter a tough-tackling Samoan or a Frenchman who is intent on "bag snatching" as the Aussies used to call it. And you are wondering, frankly, if that's what you want for your child.

Which is why I was fascinated by two games I watched over the weekend, the Leicester win over Clermont Auvergne in France, and Munster's demolition of Sale in a packed stadium in Limerick which looked more like a football ground than a rugby one. I sat upright in my chair as I watched both those teams as I think I can honestly say those are two of the most uncompromising sets of players I have ever seen in my life.

The dirty play may have gone from rugby in its most blatant sense, but the taunting of the opposition, the cheating, the bravery, and the sheer physicality of rugby are all there, laid out on a bloody stage. And demonstrated ably by Martin Corry and Donncha O'Callaghan. Corry went to Tunbridge Wells grammar school, and O'Callaghan went to the Christian brothers fee paying school in Cork.

Yet the players from Leicester and Munster do things on the pitch that are brave, physical, and so driven by desire, coaching and passion that the fans must think that they are doing the right thing by forking out the gate money to pay the wages.

Do you notice anything, first of all, about the names Leicester and Munster? Well, contrast them, if you will, with Wasps, Saracens, and some of the other names with no home.

Leicester and Munster are a town and an area respectively, and they mirror, exactly, our own professional outfits in that the team names themselves represent a community. That Munster crowd was going barmy for its players.

I allege cheating. Well, Munster and Leicester both do a great line in fake scrimmaging - as in the first time you go down you deliberately wheel it so that you are more ready for the second time.

They get people on to the wrong side of the ball, they are offside at the breakdown, they obstruct anybody near the ball and, frankly, they look as though they would do anything to win. Bravery? Just watch them fly into contact with no fear. Physical? Aw, come on, the Leicester pack has possibly the ugliest grouping of eight men in one place at one time in the UK. And yet, there was a post-match interview with a Munster player after the game and what a nice chap he was. Quite posh in a Southern Irish way.

What we had just watched, therefore, was a cleverly orchestrated act of 15-man savagery, or nice lads who appreciate that to win a game of rugby there is the science, but there is also the psychology and the physicality.

In terms of rugby, they are ahead of us. They spin mauls in defence, they get their bottoms high when posting the ball on the ground, and they strip men off the ball differently from us, but they aren't that much better as players. They just strut more. The Leicester players were constantly arguing with their French opponents. The Munster men were involved in countless dust-ups with the Sale lads. It is really only the Borders who seem to have an appetite for the argy-bargy.

Some of our players have to walk the walk a bit more, roughen up, toughen up, and understand what it means to us when they go on to the pitch. Fans have to be blown away in admiration.

I watched games at the weekend that left me full of admiration for an English team and an Irish team who sell out their stadia and play for the jersey. I'd like to see a little bit of that from our teams, please.

But if Glasgow continue to play as well as they did yesterday, the crowds will surely come back.

This article was posted on 23-Jan-2006, 12:37 by Hugh Barrow.