CLONTARF DINNER SPEECH ON IRISH RUGBY
13/05/2008
This is a copy of a speech made at the Clontarf Annual Dinner. It represents my views on the fundamental challenge facing Irish Rugby at this time and offers some suggestions for debate..........  

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'In 2003 after Ireland exited the World Cup in Australia, Eddie O’Sullivan stated in an interview that he worried for the future of Irish Rugby because the sides with comparatively limited resources in both financial and player terms would find it increasingly difficult to keep pace with England, France, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa; countries which, quite literally, are getting bigger in every way.

Quote:

“The game is moving irreversibly towards hand to hand combat with the ball……. South Africa have muscles, but they were knocked out by someone with bigger muscles. It is getting harder and harder for teams like us.”

He continued….

“In the early rounds of the tournament some of the weaker teams played some fantastic rugby, some of the skills, for instance, of the Japanese were sparkling; but they were just rag dolled to death in the last 20 minutes of the game.

That is a concern, for Ireland with the player base we have, that’s a worry. How far up the food chain can we work ourselves? We can get so far then we hit the big, big teams and it’s very, very hard against them. How we get round that is up to us to solve.”


In the aftermath of Irelands disappointing performance in the 2007 World Cup, and after the publication of the Genesis Report, Eddie O’Sullivan was interviewed by The Sunday Times. In the interview Eddie took responsibility for Ireland’s performance and admitted in his own words that he had made a ‘balls’ of it. He had a 12 week window leading up to the competition and should have cut back on the fitness preparation and played two more matches, thereby having a team which was more match hardened and ready for the competition.

I’m not sure that Eddie made “a balls” of anything ………..

I believe that the decision not to play two warm up games was a calculated risk between:

The players being match fit for the competition.

Or

The players being able to play at all.


I believe that Eddie’s decision was taken because his greatest fear was that he would lose one of his key players to injury. and that those key players were irreplaceable in his squad. This was confirmed by Eddie’s frantic efforts to get his top players up to speed during the competition. While most coaches were rotating their squads Eddie was forced to play his top players in all games.

You will remember that in the competition Ireland took 30 players and didn’t play 9 of them.

Ireland lack of playing resource was confirmed by their coach in the clearest manner possible leading up to and during the World Cup. The other squads had 30 players capable of competing and Eddie decided that we had 21.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Eddie O’Sullivan.

Imagine the media and general furore had Brian O’Driscoll been forced to miss the competition after receiving a box in the head from that Bourgoin journeyman. Imagine had we thrown in a game or two against …say SA and had lost John Hayes.

Eddie had a choice of two evils and he made a decision.

Go with your irreplaceable top players tanned and cotton woolled or risk going without some of them at all.

Eddie’s decision relates back to his quoted concerns expressed after the World cup in 2003 about the size of Ireland’s player base. He would not have had the problems leading up to the World Cup if he was confident that he had a squad big enough and talented enough to rotate, play continually, perhaps take some injuries, and still be able to compete and hopefully progress.

Since then the issues about the depth of our player base have become more visible particularly in the recent six nations campaigns where Irelands lack of performance has been blamed by sections of the media on the number of foreign players in the Provincial system … “Taking our boys places and denying them game time at the highest level”.

How interesting it is to see the media indulging in a little sporting racism; blaming ‘Johnny foreigner’ for our rugby ills.

The professional Provincial coaches are echoing Eddie’s actions with regard to Ireland’s rugby talent. They know that with the limited size and quality of our player base we cannot compete against the might of the European clubs without outside recruitment.
Consequently, we are now being entertained by Contepomi , Howlett etc etc ..

Their preference is to have more foreigners in the provincial game and are deflecting some of the flak by pointing to the lack of a deep ‘A’ fixture schedule from which to develop local talent. Their negotiations with the PAG on the number of foreigners look like being ongoing. If the Provinces start struggling in the Heineken Cup those negotiations will get frantic.

The rugby reality is that the provinces are now more important than the National side in terms of Irish rugby branding. The continuing development of the Magners League and the Heineken Cup will drive this process forward at pace.

We must keep the provincial professional rugby teams in the top tier of European rugby. If we cannot produce Irish players to compete then the provinces must be allowed to recruit abroad. Keeping Foreign players out of the Provincial system will not make Irish rugby stronger; it will simply weaken the provinces , weaken the Irish rugby brand, and ultimately damage the development of the domestic game.


So what is the story with our playing base and what are we doing to maximise it in terms of numbers and quality?


Let’s have a look at the recently selected Irish team and the recently selected Irish ‘A’ side as a starter.

Of the 43 players in the two squads you will be delighted to hear that 100% of them went to school. 70% of the players attended fee paying private schools with the Limerick non fee paying making up the difference along with St Mary’s, Drogheda (Horgan), Ard Scoil Ris , Limerick (O’Connell) on the senior side and CBS Nenagh and Kilkenny along with Colaiste Iognaid, Galway on the ‘A’s.

The fact is that the Irish international team is almost totally reliant on the output of the Rugby schools for its players. The future of the game in Ireland is reliant on the sporting output of maybe 20 , 25 , 30 schools max??.......

Let’s put this in further perspective ….. Today we had the final of the Leinster Schools Senior Cup. It was a great day for the winning team, a serious experience for the losers and a great day out for all who were there.
The winners Belvedere are one of the Irish Schools mentioned above, one of the thirty we will be relying on.

In England they have a schools competition called the Daily Mail Cup. It is played at Under 18 and Under 15 level with the finals at Twickenham. It started in the late 80’s with about 64 schools entering. This year the competition attracted entries from more than 1000 school teams.

That is what we are up against ……. It is that scary ….what is even more scary is that the boost to the game in England when they won the world cup is running through their system like a Tsunami. They won in 2003, 5 years ago.
The wave of interest would have sucked 7 to 12 year olds into their system 4 years ago. They will start hitting their adult system as 19/24 year olds for the World Cup in 7 years time.

For us to compete in this game we must be ruthlessly efficient in our management and development of playing resources.

So are we?

All indications are that we are not…… Funny as it may seem that is positive news.

Further confirmation of our limited playing resources is seen in the constant, and continuing, disagreement about access to and the control of players at all levels of the game in Ireland.

As previously mentioned, at the highest level the provinces are in disagreement with the IRFU about foreign players.
At the next level the provinces are in disagreement with the top clubs about access to the Provincial Academy players. The top Clubs are in disagreement with the provinces about ‘A’ interprovincial fixtures using ‘Their ‘players.
Beneath that the Junior Clubs are upset because the Senior Clubs recruit their players giving little or nothing in return.
Beneath that we have, in Leinster, a provincial schoolboy and youth system which run in glorious parallel…..

Schoolboys on the left ….youths on the right.

Never the twain to meet until U19 level when it is frankly too late for the youth system boys to make any meaningful impact. It is a pure case of sporting apartheid, with a Gordian knot of rules and regulations designed to keep the boys separate at all costs.
A complete nonsense and a waste of effort for all involved because the Leinster youth system has not made any meaningful contribution to Irish International Rugby at the top level. I emphasise meaningful … there have been exceptions ..Trevor Brennan and Shane Horgan being the only two to go all the way to the National side. If the provincial youth system is to make a meaningful contribution then talent must be recognised earlier and amalgamated into academies earlier.

OK ….. So what should we do?

Well , thankfully , there are some chinks of light.

The first chink is the willingness of all of the Senior Clubs to acknowledge, in principal, that the Club game needs to be recalibrated.
The ongoing debate about the clubs and the position they hold in Irish rugby, be it third or fourth or whatever tier is, in my opinion, a moot one.
The debate is about relevance.
And at the moment for all the wrong reasons the club game is becoming irrelevant.
That is a potential catastrophe for Irish Rugby.

The second is a quiet initiative from Leinster Schools that has pulled a squad of Under 16 boys together for a limited number of ‘elite’ coaching sessions. They have selected two teams and are playing Munster schools on Tuesday in Blackrock College.
The point here is that they asked the top schools to recommend players for the squad and after the first session started cutting the squad down from about 100 boys to about 60.
This was done to manage numbers. It wasn’t because the boys were not good enough, but because there wasn’t enough coaching to go around.

It is a terrible pity to bring that number of boys together just to immediately disappoint so many of them. Particularly when it is numbers that we need in Irish Rugby at the moment.

This Leinster initiative is a start …. It could be so much bigger.

Here is an idea.

The structure of Irish Rugby should essentially be a pyramid with the International Team at the top and the vast mass of Club and junior school under 7’s at the bottom.

Beneath the Irish Team are the four provinces.

The provinces are commercial operations and should be encouraged to pay their way at all stages.
They should operate separately and distinctly apart from the Provincial branch administrations which are primarily the administrators of the Provincial amateur Club game.
They should operate without interference from the Clubs at what ever level they wish.

If the provinces want a full fixture list of ‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’ or ‘D’ games they should be allowed to do so on the proviso that they use their own contracted players.

The professional provincial structures should not be charged with the Irish Rugby developmental agenda. The drive for success at Magners League and Heineken Cup level and the long term development of players for the Irish National side are conflicting agendas. The professional game should focus on the former only; the latter should be delegated to a new structure below the professional game.


Beneath the provinces we should introduce 12 elite Academies or centres of excellence.


These Academies should be charged with developing Irish players for the future.

The Academies should be the preferred pathway for young player development in Ireland.

All provincial and Irish International School and underage teams should be selected, exclusively, from the Academies.

The Academies should be based in the main population centres and should work with the province administrators but separate to and outside the control of the current provincial school and youth structures.

The Academies should be directly answerable to the IRFU elite player development system which should be geared up to accomplish this administrative task.

The Academies should begin with intensive skills based coaching of players at all levels starting, initially, at the Under 16 age group but with a longer term strategy to identify talent at an earlier age. Ideally we should be identifying boys at Under 14.

The Academies should have access to all players and should initially employ a policy of affirmative action to ensure that recruitment is not seen as cherry picking. The academy should recruit and coach no less than 50 players at all age groups, 20 of whom must be from the current ‘Youth’ system. Over time the number being selected from the ‘Youth’ system should increase.

The Academies should focus on skills based training with a programme of inter academy challenge matches at all age groups up to Under 19 when a full scale Academy League should run at that level and at Senior Level.

The relationship between the Academies and the clubs/schools should be open.
Any player in an academy who is not selected for an academy game should be free to, and encouraged to, play for his club/and or his school.


Where should the Academies be based?


I would envisage 12 academies in Ireland with 4 in Leinster.

That is 120 schoolboys plus 80 current ‘Youth’ players entering at the same time, initially, at under 16 level in Leinster with the other 8 distributed around the other three provinces.

This will build over time, in Ireland, to a 12 Academy structure with squads at U 16, 17, 18, 19, and senior level. With a minimum of 50 players per group that adds up to 250 players per academy and 3000 elite players in total.

This is a considerable logistical challenge so the location of the Academies needs to take advantage of current successful coaching facilities and administrative structures.

All ideas for location will be welcome I suppose but you can be sure that some of the top Clubs will apply.
It would makes sense that Clubs or amalgamations of Clubs would work because in order to contain the costs of administrating this costly initiative the IRFU would have to rely on the army of volunteers that run the Club game.
It will be the local amateur administrators that will make or break this structure and the best of them are in the Clubs. This will also require a significant investment in elite coaching. Most of the potential future rugby coaches are playing in the top Clubs at the moment.

Ultimately this structure, if adopted, would go some way to ending the debate about the position of the clubs in Irish Rugby. From being irrelevant the Clubs would find themselves, frankly, exactly where they belong; at the centre of Irish rugby.

This academy system could offer all Clubs an opportunity to contribute directly to the future of our game. It leaves no player or Club behind.
All Clubs should have reason to support this structure because it does not require any player to leave his home Club in order to progress his rugby career.

Most of all it brings the boys into a structured coaching and monitoring system at the right age and, most importantly, in the kind of numbers that allows Irish Rugby to develop scale for the future.

On the RFU website they have a copy of their strategic plan for English Rugby.

Under the heading ‘Club/Education links’ the opening sentence is:

‘The retention of players in the 16 to 24 age group is a vital element for our future success’

Maybe we should take the hint?



Peter Walsh

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