JGP fairly sprinted away from him today but I hope you’re right.
Pa Campbell will kick on hopefully.
I didnt see the game today so cant speak of that, but ive seen how fast the kid is. Pa is another level again. Classy player
If you got him for April and the Hnken Cup last 16, you’d take it. He has shown he can come offa lay off and do wreck. Him and Du Toit won the World Cup really. He is possibly the best forward in Europe when he is fit. Id sign him on again if I was Munster, same with Kleyn.
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Bar falling off that tackle tonught, I thought Zebo was really good. If they can get the mind and fitness right, he has it. You’ve Mike Brown battering away in England 5 years older with a fraction of the talent.
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The rubby is back
Munster’s Limerick link — the stars rebuilding city’s love for rugby
The city has produced many of the Munster greats but it is only now that a new generation of players are emerging in the face of competition from hurling
From left: Paul O’Connell, Keith Earls and Jerry Flannery are icons of Thomond Park
Sunday November 26 2023, 12.00am GMT, The Sunday Times
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“The Limerick derbies were mad, manic affairs. When Garryowen came to play Shannon in 1991/92, there was an estimated crowd of 18,000 at Thomond Park. This was before the days of terracing at either end, so people piled on to the grassy banks, anywhere they could get a view…”
Anthony Foley (from ‘Axel, A Memoir’)
For anyone reporting on the All Ireland League in the 1990s, it seemed like every Saturday started with the 10am train from Heuston to Limerick. This allowed time for a bowl of soup in Charlie St George’s before a taxi ride to Tom Clifford Park or Dooradoyle or Thomond Park with a driver who’d share the latest mythologies about Halvey or The Claw or whoever.
Working conditions were often primitive. In Greenfields, we were plonked on the upper deck of an open-top bus — exposed to the elements but above the massed ranks and with a decent view of edgy, often violent scraps, the highlights of which would be shown on RTE that evening.
“Saturday night, you’d have everyone around the pubs in town in their club blazers,” recalls Ian Costello, then a Garryowen rookie, and now Munster’s head of rugby operations. “I remember the rivalries, the passion and the excitement when there was a derby game coming up, and the bitterness when there was a Dublin team coming down to play.”
Jordan Larmour, centre, celebrates after scoring for Leinster against Munster in front of a full house at the Aviva on Saturday. Munster are the reigning champions of the URC, while Leinster currently top the table
DAVID FITZGERALD/SPORTSFILE
We look back fondly at the amateurism and the innocence of those afternoons in Limerick, yet we shouldn’t see them as being unconnected from Irish rugby’s current prosperity, as represented by yesterday’s full house at the Aviva.
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If this boom was triggered by Leinster’s determination to catch up with Munster, it’s worth remembering that Munster were triggered by their AIL clubs, especially those in Limerick. Three-quarters of the man-eating packs that won Heineken Cup titles in 2006 and 2008 came from Shannon, Young Munster and Garryowen. Recall the enormity of the crowd that watched the first of those finals on giant screens in O’Connell Street.
But now? Limerick is inescapably a hurling city. There’s no arguing with five men’s All-Ireland titles in the past six years. Combine hurling’s explosion in popularity with the increased migration of young people to Dublin for work and you have a sense of why rugby plummeted in popularity.
That trend began long before Costello’s career took him to the UK in 2016 for coaching jobs at Nottingham and Wasps. And it didn’t slow down while he was away. The year before his return as academy director in 2021, just one academy member out of 19 was from Limerick — Paddy Kelly, who had to retire from the game because of injury. Things were only marginally better in the senior squad, with Craig Casey and Calvin Nash the only Limerick representatives in their twenties.
While rugby union has declined in popularity in Limerick, the county hurling team have been dominant and have won the last four All-Ireland finals
DAVID FITZGERALD/SPORTSFILE
Contrast this with the huge influx of talent from West Cork. Given the historic rivalry between Limerick and Cork, the imbalance in player representation was hardly a unifying influence, at least not in the minds of supporters. This club has its training base and its main stadium in Limerick and yet the majority of its players are from the province’s capital? Really?
Out of this mess came “Project Limerick”, a term coined by the late Tom Tierney but only whispered at first, seeing as it was only one element of a bigger job — to revitalise Munster’s production line, or pathway, as Costello would call it.
“Three years ago Munster’s PGB [Professional Game Board] came to me with a clear and exciting vision of what they wanted.” Costello says. “We went after the whole pathway, the whole environment, all our systems and practices and completely rebuilt it. It’s probably a five-year project but I know that we are turning a corner.
“Initially we placed a huge emphasis on alignment — a vertical alignment, meaning that there was a connection between the development staff and the senior staff. Instead of having seven pathway coaches and a dozen in the senior set-up, we aimed to align everything so we could extend our reach into clubs and schools.
“‘Project Limerick’ was essentially a subplot of that, driven by Tom, who joined us on secondment from the IRFU. He co-ordinated staff to blitz schools and clubs around the city; to have a presence on the ground; to identify and develop talent. What started as a six-month trial slipped seamlessly into a longer process. Tom was completely immersed in it; totally passionate.”
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If there is a poster boy for the scheme it’s Shay McCarthy, the 21- year-old wing who was on the bench for Munster yesterday — quick and powerful but barely mapped until he was plucked from Richmond and developed at Young Munster before being fast-tracked into the Munster set-up. “You couldn’t pick a better example of the Munster system working,” says Costello. We gave him a five-month training contract with the senior team. He didn’t have the benefits of having trained four days a week in school but we could see quickly that his capacity to improve is enormous.
McCarthy is one of a number of Munster players that hail from Limerick, with the youngster being fast-tracked into the set-up
SEB DALY/SPORTSFILE
“Shay will get more caps now with Andrew [Conway] and Keith [Earls] retiring but that doesn’t happen unless you’ve got an integrated model. I’ve never come across a coach as invested as Graham [Rowntree] in what’s happening top to bottom.
He’s incredible — he’s at every game, he knows every player across the various levels. Our integration and our alignment is our point of difference. It really is.”
That bond was strengthened by a double tragedy. Five months after Tierney’s untimely death in February came the tragic loss of Greig Oliver, another member of the Munster development staff and father to academy member Jack.
It reflects only a fraction of the contribution made by Tierney and Oliver but Munster’s academy and sub-academy squads show a very even demographic spread between north and south Munster.
Using “north” and “south” is, of course, more politically sensitive than “Limerick” and “Cork” and also allows for the fact that all six Munster counties are represented in the senior squad. Cork is still the most productive, with 18 players, compared to five from Limerick, but the picture may change with the emergence of the back row Ruadhán Quinn — Young Munster via Killaloe — Shannon’s loose-head prop Kieran Ryan, UL Bohemians lock Evan O’Connell, and others.
Clearly none of these will be vying with Diarmaid Byrnes or Cian Lynch for the affections of Limerick’s young male population in the near future. Predictably enough, Costello — a former hurler for Na Piarsaigh and Limerick Under-16s — says he doesn’t see rugby and hurling as competitors.
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“There is no conflict at all in my mind,” he says. “Their approach is very different from ours. They start at a very young age with this massive volunteer base. But I have very little patience for people who obsess about what another sport has or what another province has. It’s about what we have. We have a clear idea of the Munster way of doing things and we’re making big strides.”
Costello makes the point that three talented young hurlers have been drawn to the professional career that rugby offers — Ben O’Connor and Pat Campbell, both Cork minors, and Tony Butler, Clare. But what about Limerick? How can you compete with seven All-Stars for a second year in a row? You can’t, but you can do things like building on the excellent athletic development programmes designed by Rob Cassidy. Or you can stress the importance of the AIL — still the main source of game time for academy and sub-academy players.
“When someone plays for his club, their footage is cut up by video analysts, same as you would for a senior game, and that’s part of his weekly review with coaches,” Costello says. “This completely changes the value and perception of playing in the AIL and that was very deliberate on our part. I can’t stress enough the importance we put on the AIL.”
Bringing it all back home, you might say.
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Shur even Kinnerk has been seduced
$educed you say?
Confirmed Kleyn is stayin. Rj is off.
That’s a brilliant try by young Ahern.
Not many players score that try.
Munster have become the harlem globetrotters of rugby in the last five minutes.
Some lovely interplay going on. Forwards playing ball and with width. penney’s plan in action more than a decade after he first attempted to introduce it
Penny was trying to do it with forwards that had hands like tits
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He was trying to introduce it from top to bottom, right the way through the ranks.
O’Connell and Ocallaghan primary culprits of lacking the skillset needed to make it work in top team.
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Ahern > Baird
Back in from the game. A near sell out again at Muzzer. Great atmosphere. Great game, you score five, we’ll score six fibe. Never really in doubt. Glasgow are a good team but something special happening for Munster this year.
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Not hard to sell out 6k
You wouldn’t get 6k at most county finals
I’d prefer to be in a full Musgrave than a half full thomond. A great little stadium. Gets plenty use now with the u20 internationals.
I was at a mini rugby blitz there a few weeks ago and when we rolled off Douglas gaa rolled on with 50 or 60 kids playing hurling and football
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cork man bigs up cork stadium shocker
I agree on the stadium part and fit for purpose.
What they did tearing up a fantastic pitch for astro was criminal