Sport in Ireland, the Rugby World Cup 2015
It’s been a great month of rugby during this World Cup, with some very exciting games including Ireland’s epic victory over France. I hope that there will be a few more weeks of excitement for Ireland. Whatever happens, however, we will be left with fond memories of games at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, Wembley and the Olympic Stadium that will be savoured for many a year.
Before one of our pool games, I was at the airport to greet President Higgins and spent some time with dignitaries from the British side who were there to welcome our President. One such person asked me if our team was made up exclusively of players born within the boundaries of the Irish State? I explained that this was not the case and that our players are drawn from Ireland’s four provinces, Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Ulster, each of which has its own professional rugby team competing in the European Rugby Championships and the Celtic League. This conversation, which I have had with others in Britain who were confused about the provenance of our team, lead me to reflect on how very important sport is in Ireland and on how rugby is a unifying element among Irish people across the different political traditions on our island.
In Ireland, we are very fortunate to have a rich palette of sports that engage our interest throughout the year. Our national games, Gaelic football and hurling are truly an Irish phenomenon, which generate a huge amount of public support and enthusiasm throughout the summer months. People from outside of Ireland who come into contact with our national sports frequently express astonishment at the levels of fitness and skill maintained by our amateur Gaelic footballers and hurlers. The crowds that attend All-Ireland Finals at Croke Park in September also testify to the sports’ abiding, indeed growing, popularity. Few other countries have national sports that retain the kind of popularity enjoyed by our football and hurling.
Irish soccer has also gone through a period of considerable success going back to 1988. I was among the lucky ones who travelled to Stuttgart for our opening game of Euro ‘88 against England, and witnessed Ireland’s one-nil victory from behind Packie Bonner’s fortress of a goal during a hectic second half as our team held out against the odds and under relentless pressure from a strong English team. Since that time, our team has qualified for major championships in 1990, 1994, 2002 and 2012, and have come up just short on a number of other occasions. This is not a bad record for a country of our size and population. I hope that we can still qualify for Euro 2016 via next month's play-offs. I was personally pleased to see Northern Ireland qualify for Euro 2016 on the back of some very strong performances in their qualifying group.
And then there’s rugby. From a young age, I can remember looking forward to the annual 5-Nations tournament, hoping that I would one day see Ireland win the Triple Crown. (I sense that Grand Slams were beyond the horizon of my ambitions at that time). Those were the days of Mike Gibson, Tom Kiernan, Ken Goodall, Ken Kennedy, Fergus Slattery and Willie John McBride. I had never played rugby at school and part of the attraction for me even at a young age was the fact the Irish team had players from all over Ireland. Indeed, the player I admired most in those days was the Ulsterman, Mike Gibson. I was already on posting in India in 1982 when Ireland won its first modern Triple Crown and remember listening to the game on my shortwave radio during a visit to the Taj Mahal at Agra!
The period since 2000 has been a halcyon period for Irish rugby with a number of Triple Crowns, 6 Nations’ Championships and a Grand Slam in 2009. It has also been a hugely successful era for our provinces with three Heineken Cup wins for Leinster and two for Munster, while Ulster have also been serious contenders for European glory and Connacht have emerged in recent years as a more competitive rugby team.
There was a time when our sporting codes perhaps saw themselves in sharp competition with each other, but cooperation has been the order of the day in more recent years. Irish soccer and rugby now share a stadium in Dublin and the GAA made Croke Park available to the other codes while the Aviva Stadium was under construction. The first visit of England to Croke Park in 2007, a stadium that evokes memories from the period of Ireland’s struggle for independence, was an historic occasion and contributed to the climate of reconciliation fostered by the success of the Northern Ireland peace process. Ireland's first score on that day was the product of a Gaelic football-style catch by the Irish winger Shane Horgan and today's Irish team uses that tactic to good effect, drawing on skills honed on Gaelic football pitches. In 2011, Queen Elizabeth visited Croke Park as part of the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch since independence.
Rugby unites sports fans from Ireland, north and south. The Irish Rugby Football Union has done a great job in maintaining the unity of the sport throughout the dark days of the Northern Ireland troubles. At this World Cup, fans from all over Ireland and the overseas Irish have flocked to Ireland's games in record numbers. They have added greatly to the enjoyable atmosphere that has prevailed. Ireland's game against Romania at Wembley Stadium attracted a record crowd for a Rugby World Cup match. The vast bulk of the attendance on the day were wearing the green of Ireland. The same was true of Ireland's other games. On the way to Ireland's games in London, I came across families (in many cases, Irish-born parents with their English-born children) decked out in green from top to toe and enjoying a unique experience, the photographs of which will I am sure be treasured for years to come.
Our love of sport and the willingness of Irish fans of all sports to attend in large numbers surely augurs well for Ireland's bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup, a bid that has the support of the political administrations in both parts of Ireland. A Rugby World Cup in Ireland, with games being played in Dublin, Belfast and other parts of the country (many at stadiums belonging to the Gaelic Athletic Association) would be a further example of sport's unique potential to bring together people from different backgrounds in celebration and enjoyment of what they have in common. That is the beauty of spectator sport, not least in Ireland.