As a case study in the superiority of the rugby culture in Ireland generally and Munster in particular, the life and times of young Rory Scannell are educative.
The midfielder, who was born in Cork in 1993, is too young to recall his team’s breakthrough win in Europe, their defeat of French giants Toulouse in the final in 2000. Ever since he can remember, then, there has been a level of expectation within a province that had previously been Irish rugby’s Borders, just as Leinster was its Edinburgh, Glasgow its Ulster and Connacht its North & Midlands in the old pre-professional days with their provincial and district championships and cross-Irish Sea clashes.
While Scottish rugby bickered endlessly about preferred ways of addressing professional rugby, the Irish got on with it and Scannell’s first clear recollection of what that brought about was another that will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
“My first memory of Munster in Europe was when they played Gloucester at Thomond Park in 2003 and won by 27 points to get through to the knock out stages,” he said.
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“Since then I have been watching pretty much all of Munster’s games and obviously playing for them is an honour and I enjoyed watching them growing up as a child.”
“It is something I always wanted to play when I was younger. It is such a big sport here. A lot of kids play it growing up and you want to push on into the age grade stuff then if you are selected for representative teams then that is when you think you could go on and play professionally for Munster.
Yet, even imbued in that understanding of what it meant to represent Munster, it seems that the youngster was also fortunate enough to be growing up in an environment which, again unlike Scotland, recognised that specialising too early was potentially damaging to the development of a sportsman as a whole and even to his capacity to perform in his chosen discipline.
“I was 18, 19 when I fully packed in other sports and decided to concentrate fully on the rugby and luckily I am here a few years later and playing for Munster and really enjoying it.
“I played Gaelic football, hurling and soccer as well. It was only when I was 18/19 that I fully backed myself for rugby.”
An under-20 internationalist, Scannell played his first match for Munster as a 20-year-old. Last season he played every minute of every Champions Cup match as they worked their way to a semi-final where they were edged out by a single score by Racing 92 and he played in every pool match this season too, albeit he laughingly admits to some relief that a strengthened squad has meant he has not had to play the full 80 minutes every time.
All systems go as we prepare for Saturday's Champions Cup quarter-final against Edinburgh, see the best training pics here > > https://t.co/tm38vqh1jr#EDIvMUN #SUAF 🔴 pic.twitter.com/iNzXvaXd7L
— Munster Rugby (@Munsterrugby) March 27, 2019
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He knows what it means to play for Munster, but again there are lessons for some in the Scottish rugby community to learn, in his explanation that the same applies to those who have been brought into the squad, as well as those raised in the traditions.
“I was born here and watched Munster a lot when I was younger and the club is part of the community,” he said.
“When lads from abroad or the UK comes across they are definitely made aware. This is a massive occasion for the club this weekend in Europe.”
All the more so because Scannell’s time at the club has coincided with European performances that may have continued to out-strip anything that Scotland’s representatives have ever achieved, but has been considered abject failure by Munster standards.
“When I broke into the squad four seasons ago we went through a bit of a tough patch when we did not get out of our group for two years in a row,” he explained.
“We pushed on from there but fell short in the semis and a lot of the squad now have got that experience of playing in semi finals.
“Keith Earls is the only one in the squad that has any silverware. That is something we are really ambitious about and we want to push on this year. We have a great opportunity to push on and hopefully get into a final, but we are not looking past the big challenge at the weekend.”
In the way he outlines the impact of those failures on every day life, there are distant echoes of how Borders players used to explain what it meant in their communities if they failed to perform as expected for their clubs in the glory days of the likes of Hawick, Gala and Melrose.
“You do feel a bit of pressure from the community. Walking down the streets, there would be comments here and there. When you see it's not a full house at Thomond Park it can be quite tough,” Scannell admitted.
“The last two seasons have definitely been a lot better for us, getting into the play-offs, that's where we want to be and that's where the club has been in the past. That's the aim going forward so hopefully we can push on this year, hopefully get a win on Saturday and take another step towards getting a bit of silverware.”
As he anticipates Saturday’s Champions Cup quarter-final at Murrayfield, then, there is considerable respect expressed for the home team, most particularly for the vast array of international forwards they can select from and the way they have been drilled since Richard Cockerill took over as their head coach.
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Edinburgh have meanwhile earned home advantage with the way they performed in the pool stages, but Munster topped their pool too and, as Scannell pointed out, have the counter-advantage of vast experience of this stage of the competition.
“Having a large number of the squad who have played in the quarter finals in the past will be a big help on the day,” he reckoned.
As Cockerill recognised from his earliest days in the Scottish capital, his task was to try to create a rugby culture that could match Europe’s best.
Tomorrow’s match consequently provides an opportunity to measure where he has got to in that process.
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