THE VAN FULL of hurleys parked outside Munster’s high performance centre in Limerick is the first indication that Graham Rowntree’s side are ready to embrace the novelty aspect of their Croke Park date with Leinster [KO 5.45pm, RTÉ/Premier Sports/URC TV].
Upstairs in the main building, the players have been discussing their own memories of the stadium. Some had the golden ticket for the groundbreaking 2009 meeting of the provinces in Drumcondra, but naturally, most of the group associate Croke Park with supporting their counties.
Jack Crowley couldn’t get a ticket for the 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final, but back then the nine year old had different priorities.
“I thought when I was younger I was going to be Joe Deane with his yellow Cooper helmet on, taking frees up in Croke Park,” Crowley says.
I used to have a yellow beanie and used to pretend I was Joe Deane.”
The Munster out-half has never met the legendary Cork hurler, who won three All-Irelands and five Munster Championships during a fruitful era for the Rebels, but is on good terms with another legendary figure from the same vintage.
“Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, he lives up the road from me and him and his partner have a little coffee shop and he’s just a mad sports enthusiast, so I get chatting to him there. He was one of those fellas I was watching playing, with his stripey socks pulled right up.”
Could Crowley have followed a similar path if it stuck at it with Innishannon’s Valley Rovers?
“No, I don’t think so. I loved hurling, but I was better at football. No, I was good but I wasn’t at intercounty level – to give them lads the respect.
“You’d know when you come up against the team and there’s that one lad who you’re told is the fella who is on fire; the stuff they could do, the control of the ball they had, you knew you were far away from it.”
Instead, rugby took over as Crowley entered his teens. By the end of his school years Crowley was a Munster Senior Cup winner with Cork Constitution. In 2020 he starred for the Ireland U20s in a Covid-condensed U20s Six Nations and that summer, he joined the Munster Academy. The journey since has been a whirlwind. The 2022 Emerging Ireland tour saw Crowley shine at out-half and the following month he won his first Test cap, shooting up the queue to succeed Johnny Sexton as Ireland’s leading 10.
With Sexton now retired Crowley is the man in possession of the Ireland 10 shirt, although there’s a healthy level of competition below, including Leinster’s starting out-half today, Ciarán Frawley.
Yet don’t expect any scenes reminiscent of the fiery Sexton v O’Gara clash from 2009. Crowley tends to look at his own game rather than over his shoulder.
“I guess it’s a competitive edge because it’s Munster v Leinster, it’s in Croke Park and everything to do with that. But no… Of course everybody that’s playing 10 in Ireland wants to be in the 10 jersey and everybody that’s a young fellow growing up wants to be in the 10 jersey. So it’s the jersey that creates the competition, but ultimately you can’t get lost in that.”
Or get lost in the noise and colour that 82,000 spectators will generate. Crowley’s job today will to be keep a cool head amid the chaos and pick apart a Leinster team that tend to offer space in the backfield.
The Munster players had a look at the Croke Park pitch yesterday and Crowley is confident he’ll get the measure of the new dimensions quickly, with the shortened GAA pitch leaving more space between the touchlines and stands.
“I guess when we’re out kicking on any rugby pitch, if I was to kick to open space and was constantly calculating the distance I wouldn’t be able to execute. I think it’s a feel thing. Your body knows, once you see the space, there’s something that happens that you’ve already registered the distance and what type of power you need and stuff like that.
“So I think it’s similar. When I’m looking at space, you’re never looking at the banners on the side, well I hope not anyway because lads would be putting balls out, but you’re looking at the space physically on the pitch and your focus comes a way in.
“I think if you get to that stage where you are trying to calculate it and think and go through all that then you’re never going to be able to execute. So I’ll trust my body.”
Two years ago Munster were URC champions and that’s the aim again this season, but the challenge of repeating that feat looks increasingly difficult as the competition grows year on year.
By dropping points with defeat away to Zebre, a Munster side who lost four from 18 in the URC last season have already squeezed their margins for error.
Zebre was Munster at their worst, but Ospreys last weekend brought the response that was needed. At their best, they are a clinical and exciting side and while it’s early in the season yet, today could provide a more accurate measure of just where this Munster team stand.
“I think there’s a knack in finding a way to win important games, and a team that can do that when it might be going against the flow of play, to do that when it matters in high pressure moments is ultimately what matters in the game,” Crowley says.
“Who knows until we step out there this season, you know? In terms of where we are, your guess is as good as mine. Listen, you just don’t know what happens on big days so, for me, I’m not thinking down the line about if only we won that game or we could get there.
“You know, I think ifs, buts and maybes are the greatest fuck-ups of all time. For me, it’s just as a group we had a great pre-season in terms of the buzz and the energy and there is a belief in the group that we can do something special, so we’ll see, hopefully in 12 months we’ll be sitting here having another conversation a little bit different. That’s probably the aim.”
