How Ireland went from third-rate to world superpower
Strong provinces, central contracts and rest for players have all played a role as Joe Schmidt’s team have grown into an international force, writes Tom Cary in Dublin
The headquarters of the Irish Rugby Football Union are not much to look at. A nondescript three-storey building on Lansdowne Road, a few hundred metres from the Aviva Stadium where Ireland take on New Zealand this evening, it does not strike you as the nerve centre for one of sport’s superpowers.
Nobody could quibble with that description of Irish rugby these days, though. From European champions Leinster, who continue to sweep all before them, to Joe Schmidt’s superbly drilled team who not only claimed a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2018 but also won a first Test series in the southern hemisphere for over 39 years, success is seeping from every pore. The IRFU is even making money, posting profits of €1.2 million (£1.07 million) this year.
The rise of rugby’s version of the Celtic Tiger is one of the modern game’s great success stories. From being a nation who had not won a Six Nations title in a quarter of a century before 2009, Ireland have now scooped three of the past five and sit second in the world rankings, laying legitimate claim to being the most credible threat to the All Blacks at next year’s World Cup.
Indeed, had England managed to hold on against the All Blacks at Twickenham last weekend, Ireland would be battling it out for the No1 spot tonight.
Sitting in his corner office on the third floor, Philip Browne, the union’s longstanding chief executive, is trying to pinpoint exactly how we have arrived at this juncture. “It is pretty extraordinary when you look back now,” he says. “When I first joined as a volunteer 25 years ago, if we beat England it was seen as a good year. We were generally playing for the last two spots in the Five Nations.”
There have been, Browne says, three phases to Irish rugby’s evolution during the professional era. The first – and “most important” – was the original decision to go down the provincial route after the game turned professional in 1995. “There was a lot of pressure from the clubs,” the 57-year-old explains. “We had a pretty vibrant club scene back then. The top games in the All Ireland League were attracting crowds of maybe 5,000, particularly in Limerick. “And there was some pressure that the union should put money into them and they would effectively contract the players. Fortunately, we had some pretty wily, strong-willed characters – Syd Millar, Tom Kiernan, Ronnie Dawson; former Lions all – who effectively said, ‘No, we’ve got four provinces. We’ll use the provincial system. And we will contract the players centrally.’ ”
That decision was to prove a masterstroke, although it took a while to bear fruit.
Ireland had been one of the last bastions of amateurism. At the famous 1995 meeting in Paris that changed the face of rugby forever, Millar and Kiernan were sent over to oppose the motion. They swiftly realised they were powerless to stop the juggernaut.
“The irony is we had what was called the Amateurs Committee and overnight it turned into the Contracts Committee,” Browne chuckles. “It was all very halfbaked to begin with, though. I think we started off with four or five full-time players. It took us a few years to work out what to do.” The catalyst came in 1999 – “our annus horribilis”, says Browne – when Warren Gatland’s team were dumped out of the World Cup by Argentina in a quarterfinal play-off.
It was then that the second phase of Irish rugby’s evolution kicked in, with talismanic figures such as Keith Wood, Ireland’s shaven-headed captain and hooker, who had gone over to England to play for Harlequins, demanding that the IRFU up its game. “Keith, ultimately, was the player who said, ‘I’m fed up operating in an amateur system.’ Who argued we had to keep our best players,” Browne says.
The Noughties brought about a complete overhaul, with first Eddie O’sullivan and then Declan Kidney running the national team and influential figures such as Michael Cheika coming in at Leinster.
O’sullivan, the former Gaelic footballer who had coached Ireland Under-21 and the United States national team, emerges with plenty of credit.
It was O’sullivan who campaigned for the player management system from which Ireland still benefit today; the deal being that Ireland’s players would get one month’s holiday every year,
‘When I first joined 25 years ago, it was seen as a good year if we beat England’
an eight-week pre-season and no more than 25 games per season in total.
It caused huge tensions, with the provinces suddenly finding they were not getting their biggest stars for more than a handful of regularseason games.
But with the IRFU controlling not only the players but also the senior management within each province – the head coach, the CEO, the head of strength and conditioning, head of medicine, head of physiotherapy and academy manager are all now on central contracts – they had to fall in to line. “The pay-off was twofold though,” says O’sullivan in a phone interview.
“Firstly, it prolonged the careers of the players. You see guys like Donncha O’callaghan retiring last year at 39. Peter Stringer at 40. Paul O’connell. BOD [Brian O’driscoll], Ronan O’gara … they all played over 100 times for Ireland. But the other thing was that when it got to the business end of the season, the players weren’t injured. It took a while to convince the clubs of that.”
The third and final piece of the jigsaw, says Browne, came in 2013, following a root-and-branch review of Irish rugby. Schmidt was appointed head coach and David Nucifora, Schmidt’s boss at the Auckland Blues a few years earlier, was made performance director.
Again, it was to prove a masterstroke. Until then, Browne says, performance decisions had been debated and decided by committee. “But high performance is not about reaching consensus.”
Nucifora now oversees everything from the academies to strength and conditioning, taking a holistic view, trying to ensure the system is equitable, trying to ensure Schmidt has depth in every department.
It was Ireland’s inability to cope with injuries to key players which scuppered them at the 2015 World Cup. This time around the cupboard feels better stocked.
The system is not perfect, of course. Leinster are arguably overly dominant, their muchvaunted schools system providing the bulk of Ireland’s squad. Thir- teen of Schmidt’s match-day 23 to face New Zealand today went to one of the handful of schools who compete annually for the Leinster Senior Schools Cup. Ireland’s once vibrant club game, meanwhile, is withering.
“It’s a concern,” Browne concedes. “People don’t have the time any more. But it’s not an issue confined to Ireland. It’s societal.”
In that respect, the failure of Ireland’s 2023 World Cup bid last year was a crushing blow. The impact on a generation of schoolchildren would have been incalculable.
But at the elite end of the game, at least, Irish rugby is thriving. And O’sullivan can see that trend continuing. “I can because I think the system we have now is the envy of a lot of countries,” he says.
“You see Wales now trying to get back into that space, but I think the horse has bolted in England and France. There’s no chance now.”
Mick Dawson, the Leinster chief executive, agrees, noting the recent decision in England to extend the domestic season until mid-to-late June, with guaranteed in-season breaks.
“The Premiership are trying to create this myth that ‘we’ll have all our best players playing all the time and they’ll still play for England’,” he says, sitting in his office at Leinster’s facility on the University College Dublin campus.
“I don’t feel smug about it, though. We’ve had our share of teething problems. The relationship between the provinces and the union has improved a lot, but there was a Mexican stand-off for a long while.
“I think we’ve just reached a point where we have accepted reality. And our supporters have accepted it. The big stars are not going to play Pro14 every week.”
Browne smiles. Ireland may have lost out on the 2023 World Cup. Schmidt and Nucifora may move on.
But the fact that Ireland can go into today’s match against New Zealand with high hopes of winning, and expect to make “at least the semi-finals” of the next two World Cups (according to the IRFU’S latest strategic plan), is proof positive of the progress Irish rugby has made under his watch.
“The great thing is the consistency,” he says. “You have to remember rugby is the No 4 field sport in Ireland.
“There are more women playing Gaelic football than there are men and women combined playing rugby.
“So we’re a niche sport. But what has happened in the last eight years is that we have become consistent.
“Joe’s win record is around 70 per cent. That was unimaginable in the 1990s.”