Inside Track: Slattery played in one of rugby’s greatest games
Inside Track with Joe Carroll
There was no Six Nations when rugby Internationals were compulsive Saturday afternoon viewing.
But there was a championship of another name. It involved Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland and France.
While the game’s been played there since the late 1920s, it wasn’t until 2000 that Italy entered the fray, thus the reason for the competition’s name-change.
The original quintet competed for the championship. All bar France could win the Triple Crown.
This went to the country that beat the other three. It’s still like that, as is the winners of the Scotland/England tie getting the Calcutta Cup.
There’s also the Grand Slam and a trophy for whichever side wins Italy’s match with France.
The game in Ireland was so much different then from what it is today, both on and off the field.
It was amateur, clubs were its lifeblood, and when players were called in to play for their provinces, it was for a three-match competition, similar to the GAA’s Railway Cups, which also belongs to yesterday.
The leagues were big, so much so that the RTE television cameras would take in a game each Saturday and show clips of it on the 6 o’clock News sports section.
As many games were played on pitches suffering from the worst excesses of winter weather – and in that regard similar to some of those that housed English League football, and also GAA football and hurling – it was a hard slog for players.
There was no assistance for players in the line-outs. To win the ball, they had to find their own way off the ground.
And there was no gimme for the hooker. One against the head had a real meaning.
Tom Kiernan was a rock-solid Ireland full-back and good with conversions; Mike Gibson was a flier, skipping past one opponent and then another with ball in hand – and when there was mullocking to be done, Bill McBride, Ray McLoughlin and Ronnie Lamont were your men.
Niall Brophy was the Rob Kearney of the day in that he had a local connection, working for a time in a solicitor’s office in Earl Street.
The new rules have speeded up the game, and there are more scores. Back in the day, a scoreline of 6-3 for an International wouldn’t be unusual.
Ireland has enjoyed unprecedented success since the turn into this century, but back in the time when the players mentioned above were wearing green, success came dropping slowly.
There were no Championship wins between 1951 and 1974, and it was only in recent times that the 1948 Grand Slam was added to.
There was, however, a change for the better in the 1980s, Triple Crown and Championship wins coming this way.
By being part of them, one of the great players of his era, Fergus Slattery, got the reward his talent deserved.
Slattery, who died recently having suffered from dementia, won 61 caps – in today’s game, with its Tests and tours and World Cups, that would equate to well over 100.
He captained his country on 18 occasions, and travelled with the Lions.
It was as a member of the Babarians, a team comprised of Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh players, that Slattery played in the greatest game of rugby I’ve seen.
It also had a try that’s still talked about, and shown on and off on television.
Cardiff Arms Park was the venue, the Babarians playing the All-Blacks in the latter’s final game of their 1973 tour.
The game was rubbished in print by some because it was ‘only a friendly’. If that meant it had no passion, power-play or intensity, the writers couldn’t have been much wider of the mark in his summary.
Slattery scored a try in his side’s win, and was, you could say, an outrider as the other much talked about 4-pointer was being engineered.
Welsh players were all over this one, David, Bennett and Quinnell part of a field-length move of speed, sidesteps and precision passing that led to Gareth Edwards crashing over the line.
The score came after four minutes and was undoubtedly the spark that lit the fire for the classic which followed.
Watch it on YouTube, and see Slattery and his teammates, Gibson and McLoughlin among them, at their very best.