It is no accident that if we charted the rise of the Irish national team alongside the introduction of our indigenous provincial club competition, the two lines would almost overlap.
In the amateur era, the AIL club competition was dominant in Ireland, with the provincial teams playing only a handful of representative games.
This structure placed Irish rugby and the national team in an extraordinarily weak position during Ireland’s transition to professionalism in the late 1990s.
While I am a great supporter of our AIL clubs and believe that today, they are our rugby community’s lifeblood, in the late 1990s the AIL structure spread Ireland’s elite playing talent far too thinly across the many clubs.
It was the introduction of the original multinational provincial competition in 2001, titled the Celtic League, that created a meaningful season-long playing programme for our provincial teams, which triggered the sudden rise of Irish rugby.
For over a century, South African provinces competed for the Currie Cup. Since 1904, the New Zealand provinces had fought over the Ranfurly Shield, which eventually evolved into their National Provincial Championship competition.
In France, winning the Bouclier de Brennus in the French championship has always been regarded as the pinnacle of their sport. While in Australia, before the formation of the Brumbies in 1996, the contests between Queensland and New South Wales not only spilled a lot of blood but produced the Wallaby players who won the 1984 Grand Slam and the 1991 World Cup.
When I arrived in Ireland 25 years ago, Irish rugby desperately required a meaningful, season long, provincial competition and the Celtic League delivered that.
Today’s United Rugby Championship is the grandchild of the Celtic League. Since its conception, it has morphed into a unique rugby polyglot competition containing an extraordinarily diverse array of teams from Italy, South Africa and the three Celtic nations.
Extraordinarily, the URC spans both hemispheres. So it is being played simultaneously in summer and winter. In the same round, games can be played in the heat of a southern summer, at altitude on the South African Highveld, with another game being played on a cool crisp evening in Milan, or a contest under a torrential lashing from an Atlantic gale in Galway.
Supporters who journey to follow their team could be sipping magnificent wine from the Constantia Valley while enjoying the culinary wonders of a South African Braai. Or perhaps sampling the delights of a local restaurateur’s Italian Nonas recipe from northern Italy. Or the gastronomic joys that can be found along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way or in the mist of the Scottish Highlands.
So, with all of these unique points of difference, why does the Irish rugby community not hold the URC in far more prestige?
Many in Ireland are clinging to the memories of an era that has now passed, wrongly obsessed with the bisected remains of the once great Heineken Cup. Today’s Champions Cup is a competition that has been designed by British and French administrators to limit the possibility of Irish provincial teams’ success.
In creating the Round of 16, the Champions Cup has failed to ensure the most basic of sporting competition principles, that teams actually need to win games before they make the playoffs of the competition.
After a rigorous 18 rounds of hard fought, high-quality home and away fixtures in the URC, the rigorous competition has required the Scarlets, who are the lowest qualifying team for the quarter-finals, to accumulate 48 competition points, made up of nine wins, a draw and 10 bonus points.
The lowest qualifier in the URC is required to have a winning record of 50 per cent across an arduous 18 games.
The Champions Cup provided Ulster with a place in the Round of 16 with a winning record of one win in four games. A 25 per cent gets you into a Champions Cup playoff. What a joke.
The URC has created a competition structure of the highest quality, which has empowered Irish provinces with the opportunities to select the next generation of players like Jack Crowley and Sam Prendergast.
While at the same time it has enabled our great players such as Peter O’Mahony, Jonny Sexton and Conor Murray to prolong their careers.
They would not have enjoyed the longevity of playing for Ireland into their mid-thirties if their careers had been spent under the heel of owners in the Top 14 or the English Premiership.
There is no doubt that the addition of the South African teams has created logistical difficulties. Last week, Munster played at home. This week they are in Durban. Next week, they could remain in South Africa or be back in the north. That is problematic for all involved.
However, the inclusion of the South African teams has lifted the standard of play inside the URC by a considerable margin. The quality of rugby that has been played across this season in the URC has been exceptionally high.
In today’s URC, winning away from home against Benetton, Glasgow or in Pretoria or Llanelli is exceptionally difficult.
There is also no doubt that the defection of the South African teams to the URC has significantly weakened the standard of the Super Rugby competition.
The South Africans would be welcomed back to the south in a Super Rugby heartbeat.
Here we should take a leaf out of French rugby’s play book. To the French, the Top 14 remains their pinnacle. Several French players have told me they regard winning the Top 14 above winning the World Cup.
Even as Bordeaux are still celebrating their Champions Cup success, those players will tell you that trophy remains a significant step below the Bouclier de Brennus.
Irish rugby needs to respect, nurture and value the URC above all else because it is the fuel that is powering rugby across the island.
