Charlie Mulqueen
Leinster players and fans who couldn’t understand why their Munster counterparts were becoming more and more frustrated with Romain Poite every time they encountered him until Sunday at the RDS.
Munster have found to their cost on at least three occasions that he could never be classed as an official who tends to favour the home side. If anything, he is more than happy to see the biggest section of the attendance driven close to distraction. It began with the famous game against the All Blacks in 2009 and has continued since with Heineken Cup games against Northampton and most recently the quarter-final against Ulster.
This time it was Leinster’s turn to suffer as Poite dispatched Heinke van der Merwe and Nathan White to the sin bin in Sunday’s RaboDirect Pro12 final. Joe Schmidt, the Leinster coach, isn’t one to complain but who could blame him. Especially after the dismissal of White at a crucial stage for a technical scrummaging infringement that only he could have spotted and surely didn’t merit such a severe sanction.
It may not have cost Leinster their coveted cup-league double but defeat to an admirable Ospreys side was far from a disgrace. They should already have shaken off their understandable sense of disappointment and now have the summer to look back on a season in which they did themselves and Irish rugby very proud indeed.
Meanwhile, the spate of enforced Munster retirements has brought to an end the careers of some of the greatest rugby players of the modern era. David Wallace, Jerry Flannery and Denis Leamy had all passed their 30th birthdays when obliged to call it a day but each of the trio still had a great deal to offer at the highest levels of the game.
Several fine words come to mind that still don’t quite adequately do justice to the trio. Brave, committed, talented all apply but there was a whole lot more to each as they took their rightful place at the very top echelons of the game.
Wallace will probably be best remembered for his powerful ball carrying that helped his teams win just about every available honour in the game and for scoring some crucial tries.
Flannery had everything you wanted in a modern-day hooker, highly intelligent in possession, prepared to go through the proverbial brick wall to achieve his aims and remarkably accurate with the darts, especially when in consort with Paul O’Connell.
Leamy’s potential was apparent from his earliest days at Rockwell and was duly realised in his many glory days with province and country. For a back-row forward, he was the consummate footballer even if he often gave the Red Army a few heart flutters as he gathered restarts with his hands high above his head when the text book advocated tucking the ball deep into the bread basket.
And, yet in the end, nobody should have been surprised that injury would end all three careers. When you put your body on the line week after week against opponents who are at least as big and strong as you are, then something has to give. Wallace, Flannery and Leamy lost a lot of game time and many honours over the years because of long term damage to different parts of their bodies.
Hopefully, all three along with the others who retired because they feel their time is up — like the excellent Mick O’Driscoll — or those who have to quit early in their careers like the luckless Darragh Hurley — have been amply compensated in a monetary sense for all their dedication and commitment and recover sufficiently well from their injuries to go on and enjoy a full and contented life inside or outside the game of rugby.
Stephen Ferris has already been ruled out of the Irish tour to New Zealand and no doubt a few more will fall by the wayside before the party takes off for the land of the world champions. Even if Paul O’Connell is deemed fit to take part, there is a body of opinion that believes he should be spared the ordeal having taken a series of frustrating knocks over the last couple of years.
How coach Declan Kidney wishes he could indulge in such luxuries. But as he has quite rightly pointed out, you can’t afford to experiment against teams of the quality of New Zealand, especially on their home territory. It must be a trip that even a man of Kidney’s eternal optimism is facing with no little sense of trepidation!
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/tOZJQwXtidc/post.aspx
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