This article is from page 103 of the 2009-05-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 103 JPG
IT WAS a Saturday afternoon in downtown Barcelona and I was caught between Antonio Gaudi and a very soft place.
My Lonely Planet guide book had made Gaudi a must see experience on my only day in the capital of Catalo- nia, but there was a little matter of a rugby match in Murrayfield between Leinster and Leicester.
Now, if it was Munster v Leicester, Gaudi would have to wait for another year, but Leinster…1 was sure where my loyalties lay.
You see, I suppose I could be called a Lunster — that’s the moniker some wordsmith cooked up these past few months to explain away people who hail from the green field where rugby players wear blue geansais, yet pledge complete allegiance to the Munster Republic.
The reasons for this were mani- fold.
It’s true that I couldn’t be more Dublin — bread there, born there and lived there for the first 24 years of my life and all that. And, that living was done in Blackrock and therefore in the shadow of the famous rugby institution run by the Holy Ghost Fa- thers on the Rock Road.
The only way to explain away Blackrock College is that it has been to rugby what St Flannan’s College has been to hurling. Once upon a time Michael Cusack may have been on the teaching staff there, but that was in the rugby and cricket playing period of his life.
However, Blackrock College was something of anathema to people of country stock — it was this big fee- paying institution behind massive corrugated iron gates, while their ritual winning of Leinster Senior Cup titles on St Patrick’s Day in Lansdowne Road most years did about as much for rugby in Dublin as St Flannan’s winning Harty Cup titles did for hurling in Clare.
I got many opportunities to get my spoke in about the wrongs of Black- rock’s near-monopoly on things rug- by in Dublin. Most days going home from school in fact — the number 6 or 6A bus (one of those old pale brown ones like the red double-deckers in London where you alighted from the back) that transported me home from school passed by the corrugated iron gates of the institution.
Those gates represented hate at first sight and conflict all the way — mea rabid Irish-speaking outsider wear- ing my Dubs (or Kerry at various times it must be said) football colours on my heart and sleeve who went to school on the inner-city northside was looked upon as something of subversive fundamentalist. This was especially so during by PLO scartf- wearing days.
Let’s put it this way — the GAA and the gaeilge made one viewed with deep suspicion, even though one of the first teams to ever win the Dub- lin SFC were Feach McHugh’s from Blackrock. I loved reminding the rugger-buggers of this, telling them (as Gaeilge of course) that the GAA had made it big in Blackrock before there was an oval ball in sight.
This, allied to having the temerity to take the high moral rugby ground on the top of the double-decker bus by saying that Blackrock College were killing rugby for everyone else in Dublin turned deep suspicion into something well beyond hatred and contempt.
Maybe that’s where the Lunster in me was born — railing against all things Blackrock College was the starting point, from there spread into many other corners.
Cast your mind back to the start of the AIL back in the early ‘90s — this was the competition that was going
to confirm Dublin’s dominant posi- tion in the game. That’s what the Dublin-dominated media told the world at any rate — it was Blackrock’s league and if not it was Wanderers’ or Lansdowne’s.
There wasn’t much mention of Shannon, Garryowen, Young Mun- ster or Cork Con. They were beyond the pale, so largely out of sight and definitely out of mind.
With that the Lunster in me grew rapidly towards manhood – still a Dub, always a Dub with a blue gean- sai, but most definitely the sky blue one you’d find on Cnoc 1916 and not the navy or royal blue ones you’d find on the cushioned seats of the Royal Dublin Society or Donnybrook (pro- nounced Dawnybroke in this D4 dis- nulee
You could say the Lunster in me fi- nally flowered in Lansdowne Road in 2006 when Declan Kidney’s Munster hit Leinster’s soft underbelly so hard that they were catapulted back up to
Dawnybroke by a canon as big as the ones that were parked on the Cliffs of Moher during the making of the Guns of Navarone.
So it was without regret that I hopped aboard an open top bus on Saturday afternoon to take up the trail of Gaudi — it was the unfinished/ work in progress of his imposing cathedral over Leinster’s unfinished/ work in progress any day.
Gaudi was run over by a tram in 1926 just as the monument to his life’s work was taking shape — Lein- ster could be run over by Leicester’s train for all I really cared.
That’s what pre-conceived wisdom told me at any rate as my old preju- dices about Blackrock Collge and the fee-paying elite culture of rugby in Anna Livia converged one more wba ele
Antonio Gaudi, the most talked about architect of the 20th century after Hitler’s Albert Speer, was making a Catalan out of me for the
afternoon. Catalans want their inde- pendence from Spain — I was Lunster from the Munster Republic making my own independent stand.
However, something happened en route from Sagrada Familia (Gau- di’s cathedral) to Parc Guell (Gau- di’s Park). A fellow Paddy-traveller who was wearing a Leinster geansai crossed my path.
He’d been on Gaudi’s trail too, but had now turned deserter and was in search of Michael Collins — not the one who was alive in Gaudi’s time but the pub bearing his name.
Suddenly, I was caught between Gaudi and a very hard place. Some Michael Collins-like nationalism sparked. It wasn’t about being anti- Blackrock College any more. Same way as for Catalans last summer it wasn’t about being separatists any more as Spain marched on Austria/ Switzerland to win Euro ’08.
For the Catalans it was about being rabid nationalists, same way for this Lunster — it meant deserting Gaud1’s trail and hopping aboard the Leinster train to Michael Collins’ pub.
Of course, for my own peace of mind I cooked up a temporary get- out clause from my Lunster contract and Blackrock College prejudices.
‘Rock’s finest GAA man after Car- ron’s Citizen Cusack was Citizen O’ Driscoll — before rugby super-star- dom opened out before him he played football with Clontarf.
This was the same club that gave the lion-hearted Jim Roynane to the “Dirty Dozen’ team of 1983 that won the All-Ireland for the Dubs, while Kilmihil’s Noel Normoyle of Clare’s Munster championship win- ning squad of 1992 also togged out for “Tarf for a few years.
There were 20 minutes left in Mur- rayfield — the sides were level 16-16 and Michael Collins’ was a little melting pot of Irish rugby nationalist SroeLNDOOLSI 81m
There were Lunsters there; there were (by their Dawnybroke accents) a few ‘Rock old boys there; there were those from the fourth green field who support Ireland but not the flag; there were those who sing Ireland’s call in- stead of Ireland’s Soldiers Song.
But for those 20 minutes we were all Leinster and willed Jonathon Sex- ton’s penalty between the posts.
Still a Lunster thanks to the number 6 bus though, but always a rabid na- tionalist when it comes to the four eau BECCA K
Up Leinster!
Now it’s time to get back on Anto- nio Gaudi’s trail.