AFTER years of being fully integrated into the mainstream — to the point where slights had to be either invented or imagined — the Rebels from the south-west once again have a cause.
Joe Schmidt provided it, guiding Ireland to a Six Nations championship with a squad packed with his former Leinster comrades, albeit one captained by Paul O’Connell.
For so many others, however, events in Dublin, London and Paris over the spring became an irrelevance. And down in Munster Simon Zebo quickly got installed as the cause celebre, Tommy O’Donnell and Donnacha Ryan there to keep him company.
“What rankles with Munster people,” wrote the former Munster and Irish flanker, Denis Leamy, “is that guys who aren’t first choice in Leinster are still good enough for the national squad.
“It is one thing losing your place on the team to a player coming back from injury or something like that, but Tommy O’Donnell lost his place on the bench. I can’t see what he did wrong in the short roles that he had against Scotland and Wales and, in any event, I think he is a better player than Jordi Murphy.
“Also, I would argue that Donnacha brings more to the table than Rhys Ruddock.”
And yet on this Thursday afternoon, in a slick Dublin city centre bar, the only thing Ryan brings to the table where we sit is a smile. If there is an axe to grind, he keeps it hidden.
“From a maturity aspect, four or five years ago I would have been throwing the toys out of the pram whereas now I am just delighted to be back playing rugby and seeing the lads performing brilliantly,” Ryan said.
Still, despite convincingly delivering a diplomatic address which could justifiably see him parachuted into Crimea, Ryan knows he has a point to prove when Munster meet Leinster this Saturday. Too much is at stake — not just his reputation but also his club’s.
Three years have passed since Munster last won anything — which, after a decade of success, is too long, especially as bitter rivals Leinster have delivered three Heineken Cups, an Amlin Cup and two Leagues since 2008.
“Last year we were pretty poor,” says Ryan, “but now there is more depth in our squad to the point where everyone feels comfortable about stepping up into the first XV.
“And if we want to win silverware we have to produce big performances in the next while. Toulouse in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals is a massive task and Leinster in the Aviva will be a huge game — two top teams, both going for the League.
"This will be a big decider in how the League finishes up, determining who gets home advantage for the semis and the final.
“The fact is that Leinster are the top team at the moment and the rest of us have to raise our standards. These games are like trial matches [for the Irish team] which adds to the spice. They [Leinster] are doing the business. We have to match them.”
As well as the sporting reasons motivating him, there is a tribal element at play here too. Nenagh [where he is from] and Limerick [where his base is] both have a hold on him.
“Being a Munster player is positively insular,” he says. “Meeting fans on the street every day, interacting with them, provides a pressure in itself.
“The best example I can think of is the week of the 2008 Heineken Cup final when I went in to buy a packet of biscuits from the local shop and yer man behind the counter said, ‘are you going to eat that? You have a big match at the weekend’. I was thinking, ‘he’s probably right’. But that’s an example of the uniqueness of the Irish club scene.
“The parochialism is a great thing. If you go to France or England, not many of the players representing their clubs are from the area.
"I find it so rewarding on a pitch looking out and seeing your neighbours there and then after the matches seeing them in the bars or outside the stadium, half-cut, having the craic. It is another reason why these inter-pro games are so big. You’re desperate to play in them.”
That desperation caused his Six Nations downfall, though. Nursing a knee injury, he tried to fast-track his recovery to play in the corresponding fixture just after Christmas and ended up delaying his recovery.
“Everyone wants to play big games, especially the matches against the other provinces,” Ryan said.
“You are doing yourself more harm than good coming back too early. Another week or two recovering would have worked out better. I ended up getting set back a month-and-a-half by returning so quickly.”
And so Ireland’s first-choice lock last year became the first-choice onlooker. That said, he wasn’t alone — Iain Henderson, Dan Tuohy and Mike McCarthy all watched Devin Toner and O’Connell establishing themselves as Schmidt’s first choice partnership in the second-row.
“The depth of talent in Irish rugby right now is incredible,” says Ryan. “I see good years up ahead.”
Not too long ago, however, he saw very little brightness as his knee continued to play havoc. “Rugby is an aggressive sport,” he says. “Anyone who plays it enjoys the contact element to it. That’s an outlet for the aggression.
“So when the games aren’t there for you, it can be hard. Certainly it was difficult for me when I was injured. I was kind of disillusioned there at one stage wondering when I was going to come back.
"While it wasn’t a massive injury, that was actually the most frustrating thing, because you want a timeframe to work towards. But with my injury there was no clear awareness of when I’d be fit again.”
By last month he was fit, yet his return went largely unnoticed. In spring-time, League games fill the undercard while the Six Nations top the bill. But Leinster-Munster? “It’s huge because everyone wants to prove themselves the best team in Ireland.”
It is a while since Munster laid claim to that title. And yet, despite Schmidt’s opinions and selections, Ryan believes his side can reassert their dominance.
“We are good enough, there’s no doubt about that. And the other thing is we are hungry. As a player, you strive for success because the fear of failure is always there, always eating away at you.
“Playing top level sport is strange. When you lose, the lows are far lower than the feeling you get when you win. The best way I can explain it is by saying that it is like parking your car on a double yellow line.
"If you come back and see it is still there, you think ‘nice one’. But when you get clamped, you are feckin’ distraught. That is exactly how I equate it to. Win a game, you think, ‘grand, let’s move on to the next one’. But lose and you are bloody sickened.
“It’s crazy in a way but you do it because of the Cups at the end of the season. That is when you get your highs.”
After three years of lows, the desperation is there to once again get dizzy from the altitude.
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Leinster versus Munster, Lansdowne Road
Saturday 7pm, TG4
