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29 CHAPTER 2 Overview since 1880 In the three and a half decades from the formation of the Munster Branch of the IRFU in 1879 to the outbreak of the First World War, rugby in the southern-most province of Ireland developed a durable club and competitive structure. By 1914, rugby had become enculturated in the province insofar as certain clubs had become ‘traditionally’ strong and competitions such as the Munster Senior Cup had garnered significant prestige. The position of Munster in the overall schema of Irish rugby had by then also taken root. From the post-war period through to the transition to professionalism in the mid-1990s, rugby was remarkable for its lack of ostensible change. The middle of the century, however, had seen the beginning of a slow and insidious process of change that would eventually render amateurism obsolescent . Before tackling the issues that comprise the thematic body of this book, a narrative sketch of how Munster rugby developed from the 1880s through to professionalism is necessary. We have already seen in Chapter 1 how the game evolved in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century into the country’s first properly codified and bureaucratised variant of football. At the beginning of the 1880s, when the current chapter takes up the story, rugby was the most sophisticated strand of football activity in Munster. This chapter will concentrate, then, on accounting for the development of the club game, the spread of competitions and the administrative politics of Munster rugby from the 1880s through to the dawn of the professional era. The early evolution of the club game By 1880, rugby in Munster had seen significant expansion both in terms of club numbers and geographical appeal. In his report of that year’s rugby activity in the province, the previously mentioned W.J. Goulding claimed that though it had been a disappointing season, ‘year by year the game has been making rapid strides in Munster.’ Though impressive expansion was evident in Cork, the same could not be said for Limerick where the game had seemingly regressed: ‘lawn tennis has taken its [rugby’s] place, owing to a lack of courage to sustain defeat, which has been their lot for the last few years . . . no energy has been displayed during the past season, and we fear that next year it will be a game of the past within the city of the “violated treaty”.’1 The early promise shown by Limerick FC had evidently given way to apathy, with the club’s efforts in 1879 amounting to a mere two matches, with both resulting in defeat to Cork FC and Queen’s College respectively.2 The adoption of the game in the local grammar school had seen the spawning of the Clanwilliam club in Tipperary, while in Clare, the presence of a football club at the elite Ennis College had possibly inspired the establishment of Ennis Town FC.3 Incidentally, the respective headmasters of both institutions, R.H. Flynn and W.A. Lyndsay, were graduates of Trinity College Dublin and may have been exposed to the game in their alma mater.4 In Cork, Goulding claimed that there were seven distinct clubs. Among them were the newly founded Cork Bankers (forty of whose sixty members were officials in local banks),5 Queen’s College, Blackrock, Knight’s School (staffed by more Trinity graduates), Bulldogs, and Cork FC. Queenstown FC and Midleton College, both from towns infrastructurally well connected to the city, were the county’s other official clubs. Other Munster clubs mentioned in R.M. Peter’s Irish Football Annual of 1880 included Waterford FC and The Abbey (Tipperary). Taking that publication as a guide (the comprehensiveness of which is not fully established), rugby was comparatively weaker in Munster than in Ulster and Leinster. The province’s total of twelve clubs represented a mere 14 per cent of the overall total of eighty-eight listed in Peter’s Annual.6 Leinster, Ulster and Connacht had forty-three, thirty and three clubs respectively. The level of activity engaged in by Munster clubs could vary sharply. Cork FC, for instance, played sixteen matches in the 1879–80 season, a total greater than the combined tally of matches played by the neighbouring Queen’s College, Queenstown and Knight’s School clubs in the same season.7 The absence of formal competitions left the arranging of fixtures to individual clubs – a process that was clearly dependent on levels of interest, communication and time that fluctuated...

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