Turning the corner

In her latest look  at Leinster’s past, Catherine Kavanagh features The Day Everything Changed…

2^nd May 2009

This column has taken as its benchmark a kind of “BC” and “AD” approach to Leinster’s evolution over the past 12 years or so. For “BC”, substitute Before Croke Park. For “AD”, suggest After D Day.

This week deals with D-Day.

The 2009 season gave much to Irish rugby. Our first Grand Slam since 1948. Scenes of wild celebration and unbridled emotion in the Millenium Stadium on the Spring Equinox were a fitting herald to a new kind of season. Winning was an unfamiliar concept to Leinster in the European Cup competition, but suddenly after that heady evening when Stephen Jones (both of them I reckon!) clutched his and we collectively lost ours, things seemed eminently possible. At Easter, the season of redemption and new life, we held our own in Twickenham against a nuggety ‘Quins side with a coach who needed to win at all costs. (see previous week’s column)

We had known since January that we were potentially meeting Munster or the Ospreys. That Easter weekend in South West London we sat cheek by jowl with London-based Munster fans who grinned at us conspiratorially in restaurants and in bars, and talked about booking flights home for “the real Final” to be held in Croke Park on the long bank holiday weekend in May. We got the feeling that the Quins’ and Ospreys fans had been resigned to this fate a long time prior to their quarter finals.

As the weeks went by, the Irish media went into the kind of feverish overload we normally associate with ITV and their coverage of England’s soccer teams. We found ourselves torn between pride in our provinces and the smug pronouncements that ours was indeed “The Real Final”, and that peculiarly Irish mortification that we were shouting about our teams’ achievements. By Friday of that welcome Bank Holiday weekend, we talked of nothing else.

The lead up to the game hadn’t been without its own controversy amongst the Leinster supporters’ network.

A glitch in the Ticketmaster system had provided a chance for season ticket holders to purchase 6 tickets, not their allocated 2. Chaos ensued. Hysteria threatened to take the focus away from the real job of the support base – to represent our team as best we could and support the only way we were able. We felt for Leinster Rugby as it became increasingly obvious they were stretched to breaking point that week. They were as nervous as the rest of us. Credit to them, they managed to smooth it all over.

They had also issued a formal email to its supporter base advising that Leinster tickets were to remain in Leinster hands, “or else”. This included the requirement for anyone with a Leinster ticket to ensure they wore blue on the day. This was seen as an effort to counteract the “Munster effect” which had done us down so effectively in 2006. We raised our eyebrows & wondered how Leinster would enforce this. To their credit, it worked as a ploy. Croke Park turned into a Sky Sports theme park for the afternoon. We begrudgingly accepted once the stadium was full that in fact the patchwork effect of red & blue throughout the ground was an inspired move by the TV paymasters, and by the team at Leinster themselves. We judged that Munster probably hadn’t issued a similar edict to its own .

My memories of Saturday May 2 are vivid & intense. The walk to the ground beneath the banners high above the streets with Rocky Elsom and Brian O’Driscoll’s images promising an epic match. The colours within the stadium. All the old Leinster jerseys out in force, and some new ones. More old than new though. The music that precedes the Sky coverage of Heineken Cup games roaring through the ground. The air literally crackling with the tension. A feeling that we had one chance to get this right or face a future christened as poor relations, as also-rans. Munster had trounced the Ospreys a month prior. Munster had been here before. This was uncomfortably familiar territory for us. A Dublin semi - final on a bright spring afternoon against the Oul Enemy (no, not that one. The real one). The only journalist I remember giving us a fighting chance was a proud Munster man whose job it was to talk a global audience through the game. Michael Corcoran walked a thin line admirably that day. The feeling of indescribable pride that 2 Irish teams could produce a spectacle like this, and a crowd like this. A world record-breaking 82,208 jammed into Croke Park. That record for a club game stood until 2012. Even the Dublin Bay seagulls seemed to want to take in the overhead view. You got the feeling that there were no neutrals in the ground that day.

The match was 25 minutes’ old by the time Felipe had landed us a drop goal and Cian Healy had been sent to the bin ,when the Old Guard made way for the new, and a new era began in Irish rugby. It was an innocuous enough stumble, but enough to see those of us at the Canal End put our hands to our faces. Felipe just wasn’t the type to wind the clock down or seek a water break. There was too much personal and professional pride at stake for him in this game. We knew once we saw him writhing, clearly in pain, that things were serious. He left the pitch, clearly emotional, to the applause and tears of the Leinster crowd who had seen him create, conjure, and fail in front of a snarling Munster pack in many previous matches. He wouldn’t play for Leinster again, and most of us knew it.

The first job of the replacement outhalf was to land a tricky penalty in front of his terrified supporters. Munster sat back and waited. The old dogs versus the new blood. The now familiar Sexton ritual of look-up-look-down-look-up –and- walk seemed to tick on forever. Few of us were breathing normally by the time he landed a powerful thump to send the ball sweetly between the posts. Our cheers were as much for ourselves as for our new youngster. Thank God, thank God. You’d cruelly taken the Good Doctor and replaced him with what we were sure ROG would deem the devil incarnate by the end of the match. Suddenly things seemed like they were going our way.

A dynamic lineout where Leo Cullen paid back in full all those detractors who’d said he was a poor man’s Donncha O’Callaghan. An Australian called Rocky who played like a man possessed. A set of outhalf to centre to centre which looked like they were demonstrating at an exhibition game, and suddenly Gordon D’arcy was screaming towards the Canal End with the Munster defence in tatters.

Half time and we were sitting on 11-6. ROG had taken 2 penalties in the first half, and we knew how he’d swung matches for Munster and Ireland before. None of us could quite believe that we were ahead, but we were too nervous to settle.

It was only on Minute 44 that we started believing that this was our day. Just after half time, with the thirsty barely back in their seats, Luke Fitzgerald sprang from left to right and wrong footed Paul Warwick to effectively nail Munster fans to the floor. A kind of heady disbelieving laughter overtook us. Johnny did his thing and we were suddenly gibbering about being out of sight. A tense and emotional 15 minutes followed. Could we do it? We knew they could, but how about us? Did our team with its callow young outhalf possess the discipline and leadership needed to see off a twice-previous Cup winning side?

Those questions were definitively, categorically answered by Brian O’Driscoll. Fitting, really. As the game drew into its final quarter, a last gasp “Hail Mary” of a pass from ROG to Paul O’Connell was plucked from the evening sky by Brian in a moment of serene grace, and almost in slow motion he was out of sight. He ran the length of the famous pitch with the entire stadium on its collective feet. We reckoned that even the blow-ins in the posh seats were screaming at that one. One of the abiding moments for those of us who watched and rewatched the Sky Sports coverage in the days and weeks after, was the sudden roar of Miles Harrison which stayed with us. “And Striding away Now! Brian O’Driscoll!”It still gives the shivers.

Munster didn’t score again that day. Our fate was sealed. We knew that we had the measure of Cardiff or Leicester. Whichever of those two took the spoils in the match on Sunday the third didn’t intimidate us. We knew that day, that 2009 was our year. The year of the Grand Slam and the year of our first Heineken Cup. It was humbling to see the aftermath of the game played out in so many meetings with friends in the streets and bars of the city that evening. Munster fans were grace and class personified. They were gentle in their assessment of their own players. They could afford to be. They’d won it twice already, we reminded them. An old friend of mine grasped my hand and said “ a lot of old scores were settled out there today”. That seemed a fitting epitaph.

Post script

We would all be reunited in red a month later in a dusty field in Gauteng province for the Lions Tour decider on June 27. It’s worth remembering that Alan Quinlan destroyed his Lions Tour, and quite possibly ours too, on May 2. Not everything turned out sweetly in 2009. Quinnie now plies his trade and flies the flag admirably for the country on Sky Sports during the Heineken Cup weekends. He keeps the panel honest.

Luke retained his dignity in the face of some abhorrent play by Schalk Burger in South Africa that summer, and is making his way back following a nightmare few years.

ROG now teaches Johnny how to kick in Paris. Who teaches whom, we wonder. Apparently they are mates. We laugh about that one. We’re pretty sure they do too.

Felipe took his young family to France, and thence to Argentina. An honorary Irishman if ever there was one, he deserved his medal and his moment with the team on the podium in Edinburgh a few weeks later. He retired from international rugby just a few weeks ago and received a guard of honour from the Wallabies as he left the pitch.

The old rivalry continues, and so it should. It’s deep and it’s abiding, but the “bite” that threatened to sour the fixture for a while has gone. The mutual respect from that day permeated more than just the players. Long may it continue.

Previously in this series…

1 - All Things Early Leinster (pt 1)

2 - All Things Early Leinster (pt 2)

3 - Bath v Leinster 2005

4 - Lansdowne Road April 23, 2006

5 - “the toughest match I ever played”

Catherine [@KavanaghCK] is a Dubliner with a strong sense of outrage and blind loyalty to all things Blue. She attributes these faults sorry qualities to her role as the instigator of the Leinster Supporters' movement. Serious Family involvement in Irish Rugby over the generations and being the son her father never had, has left her with Oval-Ball dementia. This is an incurable condition.

When Catherine isn't at the RDS supporting Leinster she works in London & enjoys visits to Rosslyn Park RFC where she is a non-playing member. These afternoons remind her of the amateur days, when the beer was cheap & the talk was cheaper.

“the toughest match I ever played”

That agonizing 80 minutes at the Stoop in 2009 as remembered by Catherine Kavanagh…

Sunday 6^th April 2009

After a long dreary winter of banking crises, midnight Dail decisions and emergency budgets, an early spring weekend in South West London and a chance to have a crack at Harlequins RFC appealed on a grand scale. We had come out of the gloom and relentless negativity, and had shivered our way through the games in Edinburgh, London & France to qualify as #6 seed from Pool 2.

Harlequins seemed like a tasty enough prospect. London was easy to get to, and most of us knew our way around the Heathrow to Richmond circus well enough from previous visits to Twickenham. The mood was a little less buoyant than in recent years. We’d been chastened by Black Sunday in 2006 (see last week’s article) and then a dismal exit in High Wycombe in 07. Still, the Richmond Hill Hotel, the venue of choice for me & my entourage, had rooms and was within walking distance of The Stoop if the black cabs didn’t like the look of us. We headed off on that Friday, having indulged in a long weekend given that our game had been allocated the graveyard slot of 3pm on Sunday. The last game of the weekend. You kind of got the feeling that it was shaping up to be THE game of the weekend, or it was going to be the last hurrah for us for a season.

Sunday lunchtime in the ground gave us our first inkling of the numbers who had travelled to The Stoop wearing the colours. The one negative about a London game is that there is no nucleus or focal point to that great sprawling metropolis. When we reached The Stoop and entered what the members proudly call the Longest Bar in Rugby, we began to realise the enormity of the day itself. The huge crowds of families, the boys on stag parties, the older couples who’d come to London to “do a show and take in the match”, the younger ones who were London-based but kept their colours on display and kept up with the news from the RDS. Each and every one of all of us seemed to have that stubborn, bolshy hardened attitude we’d noticed from our team and their management in recent weeks. By the time we’d all found ourselves jammed into the North Stand and focused with our flags and our chants for the 3pm kick-off, the tension was crackling over our heads.

For such a low scoring game, anyone who witnessed what happened that day struggles to explain how it felt like each and every minute stretched the nerves and the vocal chords beyond imagination. Every single belting break made by a fine hardy ‘Quins side seemed to almost, but not quite, get away. The wings for Leinster were magnificent that afternoon. More than one Lions 2009 place was bolted on that mild Spring Sunday. Strettle and Ugo Monye, at their peak, thundered at Fitzgerald and Nacewa like they were wild boar on the rampage. It was a like a game of British Bulldog, only nobody had told our boys that they were supposed to dodge and let the home team seal the deal. Felipe, our wonderful charismatic flaky talisman, seemed to feed off our nerves and our gripped knuckles. Only they made him as sick as we were. BOD, with all that sublime effortless skill turned a sweet ball into a donkey-hoofed howler. Even Isa, whose kicking game made Rob Kearney’s look average, wobbled in that first half. Danny Care launched a punt towards the posts and it seemed to wobble for minutes before lamely falling wide. Oh Thanks be to God – sorry was that your arm I was gripping. Sorry.

We went in 6-0 at the break, but with a dry-mouthed fear as to what was to come.

Kearney had a try disallowed after the break. Fair enough we murmured with wry grins, as they reply showed the forward pass.

Felipe was yellow-carded for a bit of Argentine side stepping in front of Mr All England, Chris Robshaw. Howls and catcalls from the North stand greeted Nigel’s arm on that decision. We didn’t like people picking on Dr Phil. There followed an uncomfortably tense but brilliant passage of play which saw Fitzgerald save the day all by himself after a seemingly perfect effort to change the direction by Danny Care. The North Stand erupted.

We couldn’t hold that level of sustained force for ever. ‘Quins barrelled through a committed and increasingly wild-eyed Leinster defence to score in the corner. The outhalf Malone whom many of us recognised from Bath, missed the conversion and we all sank back into our seats to retrieve our flags and our sanity.

And then began a chicanery of pantomime proportions. Looking back now, it appeared that a clatter of Opposition were doing a kind of colourful shimmy between pitch and bench. By now of course, most of us were gibbering about the need for a flash of BOD brilliance or a Felipe drop goal. With a point in it and an unconverted opposition try we weren’t getting involved in the substitutions that Deano was making. A game of musical chairs began on the pitch, and we howled about time wasting.

The first inkling most of us got that something was badly, weirdly wrong, was the sight of a normally composed Leinster bench up on their feet and screaming like premiership footballers towards the touch judge. Somebody beside me with better eyesight and a clearer head managed to get the message around us that “yerman was on already. They took him off and now he’s back on!” We could make out an apoplectic Ronan O’Donnell screaming and an icy contemptuous Dean Richards in a stare-down of most uncomfortable proportions. Still, there was a match to be played. A few minutes left. The game was nearly beyond us when a penalty conceded in the corner saw a ‘Quins line out, but we just “knew” that this was our day. We watched an Evans drop goal sail away from the posts and blow us head first into a semi final, and fell on each other like exhausted players ourselves at final whistle.

Harlequins 5 –Leinster 6

It only became clear in the hours and days afterwards that something really odd had played out before us at The Stoop. One player demanded whistle-blower status and a guarantee that his mortgage would be paid off before he testified. We don’t know whether that happened or not. One doctor was suspended by the General Medical Council for deliberately cutting a player to produce the requisite injury. She pleaded intolerable pressure from the brooding menace that was Dean Richards and it was hard not to feel sorry for her. Deano himself disappeared into a 3-year exile, disgraced but you got the feeling completely unrepentant. ‘Quins did their soul searching and washed their dirty linen in public that year. Our own ex – Leinster man Conor O’Shea got the job next.

Quins vs Leinster in April 09 remains to this day, the tensest and most riveting game I’ve ever attended in my life. For many more reasons than I realised. And that year we won the Heineken Cup!

Catherine [@KavanaghCK] is a Dubliner with a strong sense of outrage and blind loyalty to all things Blue. She attributes these faults sorry qualities to her role as the instigator of the Leinster Supporters' movement. Serious Family involvement in Irish Rugby over the generations and being the son her father never had, has left her with Oval-Ball dementia. This is an incurable condition.

When Catherine isn't at the RDS supporting Leinster she works in London & enjoys visits to Rosslyn Park RFC where she is a non-playing member. These afternoons remind her of the amateur days, when the beer was cheap & the talk was cheaper.

Lansdowne Rd April 23, 2006

In the early days Leinster had low points, very low points, and this, writes Catherine Kavanagh…

Much & all as I want to forget this particular match ever happened, it marks a huge turning point in the evolution of the Leinster ethos and the fan base as we know it today. It deserves its place in the catalogue.

Toulouse at the end of March 2006. I thought about trying to do justice to that game in writing, but I couldn’t then and can’t now. The clocks moved forward that weekend. So too did we. Both on and off the pitch. The Toulousains stood in file and clapped us and our team out of the stadium. I can remember gangs of us standing outside the team bus area and screaming like teenagers at anyone arriving out of the players’ enclosure. Stuart Barnes stopping a group of us and shaking everyone’s hand. “Jeez we thought you preferred Munster Stuie”. “Not any more”!

The next three weeks of that gentle sunny April passed in a feverish sick-with-excitement blur. Munster were booked to visit Lansdowne Road. None of the Thomond Park witchery guff could apply for them now. They had barely scraped through their own pool game, in comparison with our glory days in the Sud Ouest. We had beaten them that year in an Interpro. We were finally gearing up to make the statement that we knew had been on our lips since the European Cup idea became more than just a concept. As match week wore on, the traditionally “above-that-class-of-thing” RTE Morning Ireland sports slot was extended and extended again to give the respected former greats their 30 seconds of punditry.

My abiding memory of that week was Gerry Thornley’s Friday morning death knell. “Nobody beats Munster twice”.

Something about that phrase still rankles with me today.

The experience of moving slowly down Anglesea Road to our designated meeting point in Ballsbridge and suddenly realising that as primary colours go, red is a damn sight sharper on the eye than royal blue, is not something I’ll forget in a hurry. Arriving onto “our” colony point on the old East Terrace and watching David Knox spinning a ball 60 metres towards his backs like he wanted to be playing himself. Denis Hickie and Felipe, heads down, caged cheetahs, bouncing through their paces. And as the match started, and as it became all to evident that Jerry Flannery and Denis Leamy had done their homework on our pedigree racehorse, we stood abjectly, watching what we knew was a new world order take shape.

Felipe can take great credit from how he recovered from that day. I speak as a rugby fan first and as a Leinster fan second. It must have taken all of his professionalism to withstand the sustained onslaught by a Munster pack that clinically targeted a perceived weak link. He’s had better days for us and for Argentina, before and since. He won’t look back on that day with any fondness. He had cupped his hands to his ears a few months’ previously at a Magners’ League Derby in the RDS, in a blatantly provocative motion to the vocal Munster support after he’d silenced their cat calls in the best way possible. Those of us with a human streak in our rugby brains forgave him. Many have not. Munster ‘s pack clearly didn’t, and it showed that day.

David Knox left Leinster& Ireland that year. You always got the feeling that Knoxie would rather have been walking barefoot up the road at Coffs Harbour in any case. The misery of one Northern Hemisphere winter and a rugby season was enough.

Munster finally, finally, won their big game in probably the best stadium in the European Cup’s stable. A closed roof only adds to the drama in games like those. You couldn’t begrudge it of them. You felt you couldn’t even begrudge O’Gara’s showboating after he nailed an excellent try in front of the South Terrace that day. True, they’d been unbearable to us after the game on April 23, but we stopped taking it personally after a while. It was an obsession, a perfect sweet reply to their perceived sense of injustice that we somehow “got more out of the game” in Ireland than they did. They also saw to it that Irish Rugby was finally taken seriously in the European game.

We regrouped. We licked our collective wounds. Mick Dawson publicly lauded the fans who’d been so comprehensively muted. Cheika held his head up and pushed his team onwards. 2006/7 was a challenging one too. However, if you’re reading this & you remember it, you’re probably a survivor of those dark, strange, irritating times. We know from experience that we had to sink low to enjoy the highs. There’ll be other bad days. Tell the younger or newer ones around you when they come along that we’ve weathered worse storms! Don’t tell them too much about April 23 2006 though. It still gives me nightmares.

Update Sep 12 - "An eagle eyed reader spotted the inaccuracy in my article. It's been amended now. Thanks to that person and abashed apologies! :-)"

Catherine [@KavanaghCK] is a Dubliner with a strong sense of outrage and blind loyalty to all things Blue. She attributes these faults sorry qualities to her role as the instigator of the Leinster Supporters' movement. Serious Family involvement in Irish Rugby over the generations and being the son her father never had, has left her with Oval-Ball dementia. This is an incurable condition.

When Catherine isn't at the RDS supporting Leinster she works in London & enjoys visits to Rosslyn Park RFC where she is a non-playing member. These afternoons remind her of the amateur days, when the beer was cheap & the talk was cheaper.

Bath vs Leinster 2005

The latest trip down Leinster’s memory lane by Catherine Kavanagh takes us to the Rec…

18^th January 2005 – Bath vs Leinster

13.00 Kick off at The Rec.

Friday 7^th January

0600 am Dublin airport

The early morning Ryanair flight to Bristol is unusually lively. I see a school friend of mine with a briefcase and a business meeting to attend just ahead of me in the boarding queue. We exchange waves before she spots the people I’m travelling with and moves away hastily.

Most are on their second pint of the day. All are wearing their jerseys.

We get to Bath and are stunned by the grace of the ancient limestone city. Few of us have been here before. The Rec really is in the dead centre of the city. Surrounded by those Dublin-esque Georgian buildings where Sky Sports have always trained their cameras on the residents leaning dangerously close to their window ledges to catch a glimpse of the game. Bordered on one side by the freezing River Avon and its rapids, the other by the steep hills of the West Country.

The restaurants are excellent. The Wife of Bath (sadly no longer with us!) welcomes 26 Leinster fans that night and sees a version of Father Abraham that they will no doubt rather forget.

Saturday 8^th January

Howling Gale in Dublin. Texts from the family coming in for the day to say that flights doubtful. The rabble descend on the Pulteney Arms above the Avon, for sustenance and song practice. St Patrick appears in full beard, crozier and also appears to have spent rather longer than the rest of us in Duty Free. Sure why not. Family arrives, ashen and gibbering about the Ryanair slam dunk landing. Family repairs to the Rec for game and takes seats for the 1pm kick off.

David Holwell and his unerring sense of direction keep us focused. Jenno has grabbed an early try. Things look positive. St Patrick delighted.

Second half begins. Bath rediscover their Roman origins and start giving the Celts something to think about.

This is a nightmare. We can’t get anything right. St Patrick waves his crozier valiantly and captures the imagination of the Sky Sports commentary team. Appears as often on tv as it takes for them to say “And even St Patrick can’t help the Luck of the Irish today”. St Patrick exhorts the crowd around him not to give up. St Patrick also gets a barrage of text messages from “home” telling him to pipe down, that he’s making a show of himself on the box. St Patrick is rather pleased by this.

Meanwhile, on the frozen ground of the Rec, Olly Barkley continues his flapping. We respectfully catcall under our breath. We are rugby after all. This isn’t in the bloody script. The points mount up. The West Country crowd sense an easy victory and thoroughly enjoy St Patrick by now.

Finally , 9 minutes from the end, one of our party stands up in disgust and announces he’ll go get the seats organised in the Pulteney Arms. He can watch no more.

And then in a heartbeat, as only rugby games seem to do, the whole scenario changes.

Holwell (remember him!) grabs a beautiful try on the stroke of the 76^th minute. He converts. We might just be in with a sniff of a losing bonus point. We cheer lustily.

But suddenly it’s Mal O’Kelly, ungainly, tripping slightly over the upturned frozen sods of muck in midfield, who has the ball. He seems to take forever to get up the field, through a hapless defender or two, and finally, unbelievably, touches down for us in minute 78.

Holly scores. We’ve won by 4 points in the 79^th minute.

Bath players and their fans are magnificent. Shocked beyond speech, they simply wave and acknowledge St Patrick who has now lost his crozier and is shouting words that his predecessor probably only said to the snakes.

And we march on into the freezing chill of a Somerset night. We coast into the last 8 not quite believing what we’ve witnessed.

Bath will always hold a fond memory for those of us who visited that ancient, beautiful city that weekend. Some of us go back there still and say “do you remember”... and remember we do!

Catherine [@KavanaghCK] is a Dubliner with a strong sense of outrage and blind loyalty to all things Blue. She attributes these faults sorry qualities to her role as the instigator of the Leinster Supporters' movement. Serious Family involvement in Irish Rugby over the generations and being the son her father never had, has left her with Oval-Ball dementia. This is an incurable condition.

When Catherine isn't at the RDS supporting Leinster she works in London & enjoys visits to Rosslyn Park RFC where she is a non-playing member. These afternoons remind her of the amateur days, when the beer was cheap & the talk was cheaper.

The early Leinster years…continued

Part two of Catherine Kavanagh’s trip down memory lane for Leinster fans…

[click here for last week’s part one]

Background

2003 had been a particularly challenging year for Leinster’s European aspirations. Leinster had the unprecedented gift of a home quarter, home semi and home final. Those were the days when the GAA stadia were off limits, and when the concept of stadium-sharing was alien to us. We’d moved from Donnybrook down to Lansdowne Road in what seems like a logical step to all these days, but was a bold new departure back in the early 00s. Unfortunately to keep a theme adopted by the national side chasing a Grand Slam against England that year, a nightmare slowly unfolded in spring 2003 at Lansdowne Road in front of one of the biggest home crowds the European Cup competition had seen in its 6 year history.

In April 2003 Biarritz arrived in numbers for a quarter final & were dispatched in a largely unconvincing display at Lansdowne Road. A near capacity crowd shuffled its collective feet, bought chips for the children to keep them entertained and murmured about summer holiday plans for much of the second half. Then came Perpignan in a blaze of rhubarb- &- custard striped socks a few weeks later for our “home” semi final. A Leinster team with bigger issues to address off the field were sent packing by a Perpignan team who couldn’t quite believe their luck. Toulouse and Trevor Brennan duly took the honours that year and brought a new level of professionalism to the sport in doing so. Matt Williams left Leinster and Ireland amidst rumours of dissent and unhappiness. He was replaced by one of the legendary Ella brothers from Australia, a young man with fresh ideas and a gentle manner. A new season was born later that summer. A new era beckoned.

In January 2004 the fledgling travelling support had begun to mobilise in earnest. We targeted 2 away fixtures to get us over the relentless gloom of that morbid rugby Limbo which sits between Christmas & Six Nations. This was a much more exciting competition than it had been in previous years. The Bonus Point system had been devised to encourage tight finishes and running rugby.

On a filthy grey January Sunday, a growing rabble with more tricolours than blue flags descended on a determinedly closed-for-business-til -Noon Manchester. Taxis were ordered out to our designated meeting point – the Royal Oak pub in Sale. Edgeley Park, a little-known pin point on the ERC map, was hosting us that day. Amidst the general introductions and the wow-factor of getting change (from a tenner! Aren’t we robbed at home!) for 2 pints, we chatted about Ben Gissing’s citing and subsequent clearing. Most agreed that D’arce at 13 was an inspired choice by Gary Ella. A few doubted the ability of the team to withstand a Sale force with the wind at their backs after claiming our scalp a few weeks previously in Lansdowne Road.

But We did. One abiding memory remains from that grey, numbingly-cold January that Northern England does so well, with malicious drizzle seeping down through your layers and hands so frozen that you can’t find your unfamiliar sterling change in your pockets (All this change! From a day out!). Coyler and D’Arce, filthy and victorious, grabbing a Tricolour from a group of lads who had been marooned at the far side of the ground, and running towards the main body of the Leinster contingent who had gathered at pitchside. The staff in the clubhouse with its oak panelling and plush carpets, a nod to the football-loving Brian Kennedy, welcomed us with that bemused look that was slowly becoming familiar. Suddenly we were back in the game.

Biarritz lay in wait on the last day of January. Suddenly there were a flurry of conversations online and via email round-robin (Bloody January will it ever end – sure we get paid next week don’t we), and there was a sniff of a quarter-final in the air. On Saturday January 31 the team brought our flags on their flight with their baggage to get around that nasty acquisitive habit we’d noticed last time out with Airport Security and their fondness for the plastic flag holders. We arrived in the South West of France to a balmy Saturday morning in a beautiful seaside resort, and poured into Pascal Ondarts’ bar in the town centre. Pascal himself greeted us with the effusive bear hug that only a prop from the amateur era can muster. Six of us left his bar in the back of his Renault Espace that day – all strapped in like grinning overgrown children. Pascal’s cachet remains such that the gates opened smartly and we were deposited almost to our seats by the efficient stewards in the Parc des Sports d’Aguilera. God knows we needed the assistance on the way up all the steps. We certainly needed it when poor John McWeeney bounced the rugby ball down over our line like it was a grid-iron match, and with the bounce went our chances. We went down 35-21 that sunny afternoon in the Basque Country.

Aftermatch & Aftermath

Pascal’s bar remains festooned with Leinster memorabilia from that visit. We wobbled our way into the team marquee where the French players linked arms with the Leinster fans and gracefully put up with our gauche inability to hold our jar/ hold a note. A talented but underachieving Leinster team moved into the realms of the Celtic League and did themselves little justice. The terrace at Donnybrook returned to the rabble. Another Australian Coach left Dublin that summer.

However, those of us who suffered through that stunted season remember it with misty pride. It was the year Gordon D’arcy came of age, winning the IRB Player of the Year award in 2004. His elevation to the midfield was nothing short of inspired. It made him as a player and set us on a path upwards. Not all things from that year ended sourly for us.

Til Next Week.

CK

Catherine [@KavanaghCK] is a Dubliner with a strong sense of outrage and blind loyalty to all things Blue. She attributes these faults sorry qualities to her role as the instigator of the Leinster Supporters' movement. Serious Family involvement in Irish Rugby over the generations and being the son her father never had, has left her with Oval-Ball dementia. This is an incurable condition.

When Catherine isn't at the RDS supporting Leinster she works in London & enjoys visits to Rosslyn Park RFC where she is a non-playing member. These afternoons remind her of the amateur days, when the beer was cheap & the talk was cheaper.

All Things Early Leinster

Leinster rugby road trips were a bit more humble back in 2003, writes new HoR2 contributor Catherine Kavanagh…

Hard to fathom, really, the course of the past 10 years if you're from Ireland. Squash them into a microcosmic evening and you've a catalogue of misdemeanours by drunk uncles at a wild family wedding. Gracefully bucking this trend & cocking 2 fingers at the uncles are the bridesmaids in the corner. And that's where Leinster Rugby & its now-established & burgeoning fanbase come in.

Relative newcomers may not believe it, but there existed a time shortly after the advent of professionalism & the European Cup when being a Leinster follower was right up there with announcing one's membership of the US Birther movement, in terms of killing social credibility. The great old tradition of the province (because that's what it is, not a club) hadn't helped it transition to the professional era. The high profile nearly-made-it exploits of our Southern friends in the early days made Leinster's toil and their challenges uncomfortably mediocre in the eyes of many. Different times, as we say.

And so it was that in the Autumn of 2003, back when life was exciting and the game as we knew it was changing to cope with the increasing challenges of other world sports, and Ireland under Eddie O'Sullivan (yeah, remember that?) headed to Australia with a goal of "quarter final qualification", a new thought process began in Donnybrook. I had begun a hugely enjoyable few weeks working on a now defunct rugby show hosted by George Hook & Brent Pope on Newstalk 106FM.

The idea was to provide a slightly different fans' angle on RWC 2003. It's easy to talk about what you know and love. At the same time at Leinster Rugby, disparaging comparisons with our friends in Munster were becoming uncomfortably prevalent in the media and in the blogosphere (such as it was back in those days). It's of huge credit to the team at Leinster Rugby, some of whom are still there today, that they decided to take notice of their tiny but vocal fanbase. After a few conversations with Peter Breen, still at Leinster Rugby and a familiar face to most, and a few quotes dug out from mini bus drivers, we cobbled together 15 people who took a Friday afternoon from work and headed up the M1 to Ravenhill for a Celtic Cup fixture against Ulster. Quarter Final, win or bust.

Hard to believe now, as we say.

The trip itself was a fairly pleasant and calm experience. A disparate group of slightly self-conscious people of all ages. Most faces largely unfamiliar to each other. Breener up front chatting about the job he'd started doing. Some thoughts on the imminent RWC. Leo Cullen's unjust exclusion featuring with elevated decibels as the day wore on. We were all in that giddy happy zone of conviviality that only rugby fans will understand by the time we were passing Malone RFC on the outskirts of Belfast.

Then began what felt to me as the designated responsible adult, as a plummeting descent into sweaty nervous chaos. Ever tried driving to Ravenhill? Ever tried parking outside? Ever tried wandering into a tiny shop on a busy Friday evening with a rictus grin and a blue and yellow scarf to ask for directions whilst your bus of passengers outside blocks local traffic? Like I said, this was the early prehistory of supporters' tours. Not for us the liveried sparkle of CityJet. Or even a map & driving guide.

Belfast and the area around Ravenhill in particular, is an ordered city for the most part. Traffic restrictions apply, and are observed. No-Parking zones are rigorously enforced. The view of Ian Paisley's Martyrs' Memorial Free Presbyterian Church as we inched along the busy residential roads around the old Ground itself sent the more skittish of our merry troupe into orbit. By the time we landed outside the turnstiles and negotiated our entry to the strictly-for-staff car park, we felt like pioneers of a new and unexplored frontier.

So the game in brief - our tickets entitled us to places in the Memorial End Stand as it's known these days. We put up a spirited fight on the vocal front & the team were clearly inspired by our many ragged choruses of Allez Les Bleus to .... well. Let's just accept that after what I remember as really quite a good game of rugby, our 23-23 draw led to a stewards' enquiry.

We clung to our plastic pint glasses (illegally smuggled under coats up to the seated areas) and our flags. We kept a respectful distance from Jeremy Davidson who had announced his retirement earlier in the year after an innocuous slip on a fishing trip & wondered about how bloody cruel sport could be at times. How it gives and takes in equal measure.

It certainly took from us that evening. An announcement which really should have been delivered in the bland drone of the neutral organisers, but instead received quasi-hysterical treatment from the Ravenhill die-hard using the microphone, told us that we'd been dumped out on try difference. The bars began to close. The team bus was loaded up with the enormous body-bag style carriers that grace the shoulders of rugby players the world over. The bus loaded up. By this time we'd perfected our Allez Les Bleus with some synchronised flag waving. The driver only asked us to shut up 4 times on the way down Onslow Parade. Kielys' of Donnybrook was mooted & seconded as Base Camp.

Ulster would win the Celtic Cup tournament that Christmas. Alan Quinlan would give the Ireland performance of his life by stretching with a serious injury to place a ball over a white line in a field in South Australia. Samoa went 10 nil up in the first half of their qualifier against England and threatened to send the rugby playing world into Italia- 90-esque delirium. Woody and Fabien Galthie embraced in tears at the final whistle in Melbourne, knowing that there but for the grace of God went each other. Leinster enjoyed a period of fallow shortcomings, a failed Contepomi registration and a series of increasingly depressing European Cup exits. The Supporters' Club started on an email round-robin during work hours when I really should have known better, and was marshalled via the Leinsterrugby.ie messageboard, ably and calmly monitored by Breener. My stint with George and Brent came to an end.

But from tiny acorns....to be continued!

Catherine [@KavanaghCK] is a Dubliner with a strong sense of outrage and blind loyalty to all things Blue. She attributes these faults sorry qualities to her role as the instigator of the Leinster Supporters' movement. Serious Family involvement in Irish Rugby over the generations and being the son her father never had, has left her with Oval-Ball dementia. This is an incurable condition.

When Catherine isn't at the RDS supporting Leinster she works in London & enjoys visits to Rosslyn Park RFC where she is a non-playing member. These afternoons remind her of the amateur days, when the beer was cheap & the talk was cheaper.