Brilliant piece by Franno @Sidney
I somehow think Franno would have appreciated my thought provoking post last week about how the white Namibian should be someone we respect and the difficulties faced by their rugby team in a land now taken over by barbarians, unfortunately the site admins now choose to delete any decent post of consequence lately due to “complaints”…
Were we a bad side? Definitely not. If we’d been prepared in today’s professional conditions we would have given the current lot a good match
Neil Francis
For our second World Cup pool match in 1987, Ireland were billeted in the two-star travel lodge in Dunedin. The food had been so bad that my ribs had begun to show - not good at a time when bulk or ballast of any kind was considered advantageous. The restaurant in the hotel was a time capsule; I’ve never been to a 1960s civil service canteen but this is what it smelled like. Henry Ford came to mind . . . you could have anything on the menu as long as it was lamb stew.
I’d vomited most of the previous night as Dolly’s fat and intestines made acquaintance with Franzer’s intestines. I took three mouthfuls and gagged, then ate nine or ten pieces of bread and butter and was just getting up to go when Syd Millar, who was so impressed with the quantity of bread and butter I’d eaten, insisted I had lamb spew seconds.
“What weight are you now son?” “About 16 stone.” “You need to be heavier, get it into you.”
He almost stood over me as I committed gastronomic hara-kiri. When Syd left, I went outside, ran up to the top of the car park and leaned over the wall, stuck my fingers down my throat and puked for Ireland. I’d become the nation’s first bulimic second-row. During my technicolor yawn I sensed a movement between my knees. The hotel porter’s dog had seen me run up and down the car park and followed me. He couldn’t believe his luck when gallons of lamb stew appeared from nowhere. The hound was too busy hoovering up to notice that I’d drowned him with my second splash. World Cup glamour or wot?
Physically weak, I went for a walk to try and get myself together. Four blocks down the road and a chorus of Handel’s Messiah hit me. Hallelujah. There he was, the specky chuckmeister in all his neon glory. One family bucket later and the world was good again.
The squad was made up of the bones of the 1985 Triple Crown-winning team and I was newish. It mightn’t have been such a good idea to stray off when the team were eating together, but rule number one in the self-preservation manual says ‘when you are Lee Marvin forget everything and get to the trough.’ For three consecutive nights I sneaked out to gorge myself, vampire-like in the Dunedin darkness.
On the third night I had just given my order when the girl at the counter said, “Ah youse guize a basketball tyme?” “Sorry?” I replied, and turned around to see half the squad sitting down tucking into the Colonel’s finest.
It would be nine years before a nutritionist would come knocking on my door as the move from semi-professionalism took its final course. It was symptomatic of the cack-handed, half-baked preparation which was engendered by this virginal World Cup. As I look back, naivety supersedes nostalgia. It was great fun but we hadn’t a notion of what was required.
In 1987 there were still places up for grabs but the selectors went for an ‘I’m not going to get on the plane but I’ll make sure that bollox doesn’t either’ Blues versus Whites extravaganza. Sinn Féin were still a banned organisation but Mé Féin was very much alive and kicking.
The difference between the two fairly evenly matched teams was that the side I played on was captained by Ciarán Fitzgerald who was in the process of being royally shafted, yet he still did the Fitzy magic that night and the whites trounced the blewz. It was my only really big game in Ravenhill and while Gerry Holland and Mike Gibson were still in the equation, if the movie Jerry Maguire had been out ten years earlier I’d have been shouting ‘show me the plane ticket’ down the phone.
The flight told you everything you needed to know about the state of the game. Everybody turned right when they got on board. We spent 32 hours in steerage, no hydration, no stretching and just a few beers to relax us and make us sleep. By the time we reached Auckland I had had two hours’ kip and felt as wooden as Hugh Grant. Never mind, I’d get a good rub-down from Joe Doran. Sorry, left him behind in Dublin. Perhaps a plyometric stretching session with the squad’s physical trainer? Unlikely when there wasn’t one. Perhaps a pool session to loosen up the aching limbs and gently get the elasticity back into those muscles? Nope. What about a three-hour session of murder ball and scrummaging 30 minutes after we got out of the airport! Good thinking, Batman.
Half the squad picked up injuries but none as severe as the one picked up by our aspiring centre three-quarter. Mick Doyle had spent the session chasing Keith Crossan, Mick Kiernan and Brendan Mullin around the paddock. We had heard later that he had become ill. Sure enough, we were told that he had suffered a heart attack; it would affect him and the squad for the rest of the tournament. Doyle was seriously overweight and as he lay on his bed with his Ned Kelly hanging out Donal Lenihan and Brendan Mullin popped in to the hospital to see him. “Well Doyler, is it a boy or a girl?” the lads asked. After the delivery, Doyle suffered from a severe dose of the baby blues and was not the same man who had coached a Triple Crown-winning side in 1985.
Things got worse for me as Uncle Syd took over the reins. Nothing that five trillion press-ups and three hours of scrummaging wouldn’t put right - and that was just the backs. New Zealand just wasn’t doing it for me. The training was shit. The hotels were shit. The food was shit. The weather was shit. The training facilities were shit. The piss-ups . . .
Did I mention the piss-ups? They were legendary. We were a bunch of international-class players but sometimes behaved like a club side on a tour of Canada.
The enormity of the event didn’t really dawn on us. A small inkling of truth permeated at the inaugural dinner in Auckland. The Paddies were first into the hall. While we were waiting for the rest of the teams to arrive I went over to the main table, lifted the Webb Ellis trophy off its plinth and promptly knocked the lid off. It would be the closest I’d ever get to it. Philip Matthews came over and lifted it back just as the All Blacks walked in. Silence descended. Wayne Shelford came over to us. We felt like a 12-year-old kid who had just been caught playing with his 22-year-old brother’s Fender Stratocaster. The look we got said it all. ‘That’s our property mate.’
I still think the gradual Welsh descent to South Sea Island standard for a time after that had its genesis in the Ballymore bashing that the Kiwis inflicted on the Taffies in the semi-final. Back then a 49-6 thrashing would constitute a 90-point drubbing in today’s terms. It wasn’t the scoreline, it was the way they literally dismantled the Welsh. One of the Welsh second-rows that day was a guy called Huw Richards and he had a fair idea about the forthcoming All Black scorched-earth policy. So he did the only thing you can do when the situation is hopeless - start a fight.
He went in a little heavy in his loafers at ruck time, threw a few fresh air Pradas and then walked into a vicious Shelford short arm, cocked at the waist. When he woke up there was red everywhere, his red jerseyed team-mates checking to see if he was still alive, blood on his face, but most dispiritingly a red card from referee Kerry Fitzgerald. He could barely stagger off the park. Just watching the All Blacks play that day sent a very clear message to me. We were all sure we were playing rugby union but they were playing a radically different version of the game, a version that nobody was able to live with.
Prior to that Wales had managed to dispatch Ireland in the first match in our pool. It was without parallel in the history of the game - universally chosen as the worst game of rugby union ever seen. Anybody who took part in it would pay a high price at the Webb Ellis pearly gates.
When the match was over the subs and dirt trackers were thrown out of the dressing room and Doyle launched an amazing attack on his players. Some of the squad were bitter about it, but never mind, that wasn’t going to last too long and there was a huge piss-up to be had. I met Mr Benghazi that night as players from both sides got rollocking drunk.
As the bus went through the centre of Wellington on the way back to our hotel it stopped at a set of traffic lights. Some ladies of the night put on a show, two of them removing their boob-tubes and letting it all hang out. Naturally, there was wild excitement and the driver was ordered to go around the block again and the Bobbies put on an even better show until one of them overdid it and then came the awful realisation that we were looking at an early version of The Crying Game. Hard to explain the graphic quietude on the bus but if Stephen Rea had been in the team he would have understood.
There would be no hangovers at training in the morning, all of us sobered up immediately in the silence. The team was made to go around the block again about 100 times on the training paddock over the next couple of days. If we failed to perform against Canada in the next match, we were out.
Dunedin was the next stop. They call Carisbrook ‘The House of Pain’ and if that be so then it extended all the way to the city limits. I thought Dunedin was a frightful kip. We really struggled, trailing for most of the match but coming good in the last 10 minutes or so. The Canadians took their beating and without a hint of malice or sour grapes announced that they only played 70 minutes a match back home and they weren’t used to 40 minutes a half. Our side was in need of radical surgery in terms of attitude, direction and strategy but it never came and the squad never had the cojones to take the initiative.
The team moved to Brisbane, a change from minus three degrees to plus 33. I missed the KFC in Dunedin but there was food - edible food - in Brizzy and sunshine too. The team to play Tonga was announced in the morning, it was my only chance of a game. Lenihan, Anderson . . . “Shite, I’m not getting a game.” Matthews, McGrath . . . Francis.
Number eight! I hadn’t played there since under 14s. What did I know about the position? I’d have responsibilities. I’d have to remember back-row moves, but, worse still, I had to make things called tackles and I’d have to learn quickly. Mercifully, I was extremely fit, I don’t know how, but as a young bloke I was suffering from a terrible affliction called enthusiasm. First cap I’d give it all.
I sponged Brads (Michael Bradley) for the four days before the match, but I needed more. I asked the great Doyler about my defensive alignment off scrums only to be told, “If the Pope comes round the side of the scrum on a Honda 50 you just tackle him”. Inspirational! All my problems solved. I played well despite the advice but had a 'mare in the dressing room beforehand. The heat was stifling in Ballymore and most of the players had cut their sleeves for ventilation purposes. My first Irish jersey, it was a shame to defile it in such a way but needs must.
I put it on the ground and started to cut, threw the sleeves away and put on the sacred garment. Syd came into the dressing room and was overcome with paroxysms of rage. How could I desecrate the national jersey? Worse still one sleeve was shorter than the other. No worries mate, snip, snip and the job is oxo. Syd went ballistic as the opposite sleeve was now much shorter. No worries mate, snip, snip . . . snip, snip.
I played my first Test in an Aussie Rules shirt which looked like a vest and I was christened The Dipper after the Aussie Rules guy who played for Hawthorn. The Tongans spent the match bag-snatching, clothes-lining and gouging which suggested that we might have been caught a little bit out of rhythm but we physically were too strong and too aggressive for them and we managed to overcome with a bit to spare which gave us hope that Australia in Sydney might not be insurmountable. We were beginning to act like the pros of today.
I had an early-morning pool session which ended when I pocketed the eight ball in the best-of-nine frames with an Irish supporter in a speakeasy in the Brizzy suburbs. I retained my place but there was mounting disillusionment at the lack of focus as we considered how we would go about trying to upset a good Australian side. In an intensely physical game the Aussies blitzkrieged us in the space of 20 minutes; it was nearly as crushing a defeat as the 1991 spectacular. Doyler was happy though, we won the second half apparently.
Were we a bad side? Definitely not. If we’d been prepared in today’s professional conditions we would have given the current lot a good match.
Overall, the first World Cup was amateur with a capital ‘A’ yet there was a real aesthetic about the quality of the two finalists. The match was poor but New Zealand were unforgiving where Michael Jones’ performance in the tournament and in the final remains unmatched to this day. Franck Mesnel got his pink bowtie Eden Park label going and David Kirk got his political ambitions kick-started. Apart from the glorious Australia/France semi-final, the only other classic I can remember was the Colonel’s chicken burger with fries and a large Pepsi for $2.99.
I suppose it had to start somehow and obviously the competition has changed out of all recognition. They will look back in 50 years at the prototype and wistfully shake their heads.
Sunday Indo Sport
