Leinster's journey from D4 elitism to the broad church fans worship ...

This is in stark contrast to Leinster’s first European home game on December 6, 1995, when 4,000 people rattled around the old Lansdowne Road to watch them beat Pontypridd by a solitary point. In the 1990s, average gates struggled to reach 5,000 for European matches, and the Leinster fans turning up were mainly residents of South Dublin suburbs, for so long the game’s primary bastion.

In the space of a generation, rugby has travelled far beyond its origins in terms of both playing and spectator interest. The Leinster organisation has a broad church of support, with over 70 clubs across every county in the province. It is these clubs’ volunteers, youth and amateur players, and their wider local rugby community, who will come from throughout the province to support Leinster across the busy festive fixture schedule.

Yet, the story of rugby in Leinster is complicated most obviously by class and location. Its deep roots in the private-school system meant rugby initially took on a specific geographic idiosyncrasy. Since many of these private schools were located in, or close to, the wealthiest neighbourhoods of south of the Liffey, the earliest senior clubs were founded near the homes and former schools of those privately-schooled players.

It is in this context that the game of rugby has always been directly linked to the wealthy D4 suburbs, where the so-called traditional clubs were founded and remain. The privileged elite of the private-school system and Leinster society’s wealthier classes of doctors, business owners, government employees, bankers and solicitors for a long time called the sport their own. They also made it difficult for others to participate.

Rugby’s first administrators utilised political, economic and religious differences to mediate who could and could not play. The rule of amateurism, for example, was introduced to ensure that rugby remained a game for the wealthy. The rule stated that no one was permitted to play rugby if they ever received any payment “whatsoever; actual or prospective, for services to the club for which he is a member. Any player who receives any compensation for loss of time. [Or anyone who was] a mechanic, artisan or labourer, or engaged in any menial activities.”

For all intents and purposes, this amounted to a ban on the working classes. An amateur was, from 1875 onwards, identified as a ‘Gentleman’ and therefore no “mechanic, artisan or labourer” could be an amateur sportsman.

​This is where Michael Cusack, a one-time advocate for the game of rugby, differed with its administrators. You could argue that the emergence of the GAA in Irish sports history was as much to do with the prohibitive nature of British-orientated rules and laws as it was to do with the Gaelic revival.

As Trevor West explained in his book about sports at Trinity College: “Cusack wanted the mechanic, the labourer and the artisan to play their full part in Irish sport. He intended to break with the Sabbatarian tradition [a ban on Sunday games] and arrange his matches and athletic meetings on the only day suitable for country people and the working classes …”

No wonder Brendan Behan called rugby “a game for the Protestant and shop-keeping Catholic, and I never thought it had anything to do with me ... We used to see the boys from Belvedere Jesuit School, and from Mountjoy Protestant School, going down [to Jones’s Road to play] on Wednesdays. We persecuted them without distinction of religion … We only knew they were rich kids … They were toffs, college boys, and toffs’ sons. I certainly never thought of rugby football as having anything to do with Ireland or with Dublin.”

While Behan’s take on the game reinforces one perception, the fact is that rugby in Leinster was played across the province for longer than many realise. Clubs in Carlow (1873), Dundalk (1877), Athy (1880), Kilkenny (1885), Enniscorthy (1912), Mullingar (1924), Navan (1925) and Tullamore (1937) have long histories.

As more and more rural Irish clubs grew, they became much more reliant on social, cultural and religious intermixing. As sports historian Paul Rouse explained, those “who played sport did not necessarily belong to the tribe they were said to belong to by virtue of their sporting choice”.

Nothing is black and white, and there were plenty of fascinating crossovers between GAA, soccer and rugby — notably the amazing feats of Dr Kevin O’Flanagan. He captained Synge Street CBS to an All-Ireland Gaelic football title and won sprint and long jump titles. He also played soccer for Bohemians, Home Farm and joined Arsenal in 1945, while working as a doctor in a hospital in Ruislip. At the same time, he lined out for London Irish on the rugby field and represented Ireland and Leinster on several occasions.

Efforts were made after World War 2 to widen rugby’s attraction. Leinster administrators like Ernie Crawford and GPS Hogan enticed Dublin touring teams to play exhibition games against junior clubs across the province. But it wasn’t really until the 1990s that the Leinster administrators focused on spreading the gospel.

The advent of professionalism, coupled with the perseverance and expansion of Leinster junior rugby beyond the capital, meant the game was played by many more people from all walks of life. And, in turn, the province-wide fans got to watch ‘some of our own’, with the Kearney brothers, Trevor Brennan, Gordon D’Arcy and Seán O’Brien lining out for the province at the highest levels. Today players like Tadhg Furlong from Wexford and Ciarán Frawley from Skerries continue to represent that change and are a sign that the evolution continues.

​Transformation in Leinster rugby and across the entire island, has proceeded along an evolutionary arc, perhaps most aptly reflected in Behan’s Borstal Boy. The fictionalised Brendan, while in prison, is introduced to playing rugby, one of the few experiences of enjoyment, which reshapes his earlier perception. The sheer exhilaration of playing leaves its mark. Finding former Irish rugby international Robert Collis’ memoir, Behan relives his own experiences on the prison rugby pitch.

“Reading Collis’ book was like meeting someone from home, and I could see rugby football not as a winter meeting of cricketers, but as a battle fought in the churning mud and myself in the forward line charging for Ireland.”

Something many of today’s Leinster fans in the sea of blue will have dreamed of too.

A History of Rugby in Leinster by David Doolin is published by Merrion Press, available in bookshops and online