Madam, - Vincent Browne (Opinion, May 21st) accurately describes Munster rugby identity as a "brittle" and "fleeting" phenomenon, and rightly believes that identity is, in itself, a social imperative.
In a world of moral cynicism and consumerist excess, it is heartening to see a team whose players comprise many nationalities acting as a focus of solidarity for rugby fans of a national province. Heartening, but puzzling. For I, too, wonder at such rapid and massive appeal. I am not for one moment suggesting that Munster rugby loyalty has become a flag of convenience for rugby fans desperately seeking a winning cause. I do propose, however, that inordinate commercial pressure has been exerted to fasttrack an "overnight" fan base.
Local efforts in Waterford (never a strong rugby outpost) to heighten Munster awareness include lining the quay with Munster flags, flying the flag in one primary school and asking pupils to wear something red on Friday. All great fun, I'm sure, and aimed at promoting the game. However, until rugby is properly democratised and ceases to be the prerogative of Dublin rugby schools and their counterparts outside the capital, such efforts to heighten awareness may indeed prove "brittle" and "fleeting".
I attended a so-called rugby school and know how jealously this sport has guarded its exclusivity. Some students became disaffected, feeling perhaps, that the rugby playing fields were, in effect, marking out class boundaries. Happily, the appeal of Munster rugby has challenged class boundaries, but the rugby establishment itself is slow to attract players from outside its own selective borders.
Until that happens, an air of unreality will pervade the Munster phenomenon, and because it lacks the organic communal structure of a more parochially based sport - Gaelic games, for instance - Munster identity will be characterised, as Mr Browne has hinted, by delirious moments of bonding in foreign lands. For, in essence, its support base is an intangible entity, united most, it appears, when separated from its homeland.
And where is this homeland? Munster identity is nebulously connected to an idea of a place, but Munster, as an actual place, lacks a sense of sporting territoriality. Even our national games, as Mr Browne pointed out, cannot galvanise provincial loyalty. True sporting identity is found where socio-cultural roots can nurture a tradition of continuity and permanence. Celtic and Rangers, Cork and Tipp, Dublin and Kerry, Ballygunner and Mount Sion. These rivalries have evolved naturally, if not always edifyingly.
Munstermania can, in some respects, be sourced to the heady consumer optimism of the early Celtic Tiger days, but when the bubble bursts, club success will depend on more resilient values. For affluence can create only a spurious loyalty
It will be difficult for a team misnamed after a province to sustain success in leaner times when pitted against teams such as Gloucester, Llanelli, Edinburgh and Toulouse, places with a tradition of continuity and permanence. If the heartland of Munster rugby is in Limerick, then calling the team Limerick might be worth considering. - Yours, etc,
FRANK FARRELLY,
Dromore Court,
Powerscourt,
Waterford.