Connacht’s remarkable journey from the edge of extinction to the brink of something truly special

For Connacht captain John Muldoon, the roller-coaster ride has had sharp rises and low, lengthy, painful plunges. Not any more.

Connacht face Glasgow Warriors in the Guinness PRO12 semi-final with Leinster awaiting in the Edinburgh finalé. In an extract from The New Breed, Muldoon recounts joining the Connacht team in 2003, the same year the IRFU threatened to wind up the club.

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The union was facing a deficit of €4 million by the end of 2002/03, and €6.9 million the following year. The late-autumn scheduling of the 2003 World Cup meant the usual home Tests in November were off the table, while the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 had led to the cancellation and rescheduling of Six Nations games. The feast and famine had not been kind on the unions coffers. Seeking to redress the balance, Philip Browne declared that a major issue for the IRFU was the number of professional players the country could afford to pay. By this stage, Connacht had a number of full-time pros on its books. As they were the weakest of the four provinces, the union zeroed in, and an almighty fight for survival – carried out in public and in print - began. Muldoon was just breaking into the senior team as it faced the threat of being snuffed out. He says:

"You’re hearing all these rumours coming towards the end of the season. I was playing with the Irish Under-21s at the time, which was coached by Michael Bradley. There were all these rumours about Connacht being disbanded. "I was training with these fellas at the time – Duffy, O’Connor, Colin Rigney, Rowan Frost, Ronnie McCormack – and they all start jumping ship. You start going, 'Hold on. What’s going on here?. I don’t want to sound cruel here, but everyone that could jump ship did. "At the same time, you had all these people going to Connacht and marching [on the IRFU offices]. "As they say, one man’s misfortune is another man’s fortune. I have no qualms about saying that I certainly wasn’t good enough, back then, to be on a full-time contract. But the fact that all these people left suddenly opened up opportunities for other people to come in. "Thankfully, I was one of those people ... For someone who, at 20, would have usually been on an academy contract, to get a full-time contract was huge."

The march Muldoon referred to included the crowd of more than 2,000 supporters and ‘Friends of Connacht Rugby’ on 24 January 2003. Club captain Eric Elwood was part of the group that strode towards 62 Lansdowne Road to let the union know what they made of their plans to cut Connacht loose. With a banner with the words ‘Connacht Fans Say I.R.F Off’ fluttering outside the union’s front gates, Danno Heaslip was accompanied by young rugby fans Cassandra Deegan, Michael Farrell and Mark Rapple into its headquarters to deliver a letter of protest. The IRFU backed down six days later. Muldoon says: "All those people that walked and put up a fight against the IRFU – at the time I probably didn’t realise how significant it was – Connacht has to be eternally grateful to them. "When you look back at footage, it is not just people from Connacht that walked. There were a lot of people from outside Connacht that got involved and showed their support. They’ll have to be remembered."

Feeder province

Michael Bradley, the former Munster and Ireland scrum half, was appointed Connacht coach for 2003/04, and took the team to the brink of the Challenge Cup final. Harlequins’ Will Greenwood denied them with a late try in the closing stages of their semi-final second leg, and Gavin Duffy, who had departed eighteen months previously, left the pitch in tears after helping his new team conquer his former club. League form was patchy, but, in the words of Muldoon, Connacht were proving to be ‘a good FA Cup side’, capable of knocking over top teams on their day. The idea of Connacht being used as both a feeder province and staging post for young talents from Leinster, Munster and Ulster was suggested almost as soon as the game went professional and IRFU officials arrived back from Paris in 1995. With each province trying to grow their own player bases over the early years of professional rugby, the concept was stagnant. That began to change when Bradley was in charge, and continued during Elwood’s tenure. Muldon comments:

"Proving to teams we belonged at the top table was our first major achievement. One memory that stands out from our first season in the Heineken Cup was that the standing ovation we got from Toulouse after losing 24–3 showed us we deserved to be there. "A lot of their fans wouldn’t have known too much about us, and would have turned up expecting their team to trounce us. For them to give us a standing ovation long after their players had left the pitch meant so much to us."

Just under two years on from that night, Connacht were back at Stade Ernest Wallon. The French side were captained by Thierry Dusautoir and were infested with world-class talent. The likes of Louis Picamoles, Hosea Gear, Clement Poitrenaud and Yoann Huget – part of a €31-million squad – took to the pitch on 8 December 2013, with talk in Toulouse revolving around the time the home side would claim their try-scoring bonus point. The hosts ‘started with a bang’, but were repulsed by white jerseys. Veteran Connacht out-half Dan Parks kicked two penalties to make it 6–0 before Jean-Pascal Barraque’s try and conversion, right on half-time, made it 7–6. The second half onslaught never materialised; instead, Marmion sniped over from close range after Carr went close in the right-hand corner. Dusautoir’s converted try put Toulouse right back in the contest, but the westerners held firm in a fraught closing period. Never had the Sky Sports red button been pressed so much in such a short period of time on the island of Ireland. Most came late to the party, but were eager to catch up. They were rewarded with a 16–14 win. Toulouse gained revenge the following weekend in Galway, but that loss did nothing to cheapen a weekend Muldoon will never forget:

"A few days before the game, a friend told me Toulouse were 200-to-1 on. I asked what we were, and it was twenty or twenty-five to one. "I remember thinking, 'Jesus, in a two-horse race that is ridiculous.' "I told a couple of people that we were quietly confident, and there were a few quotes from Pat that were quite bullish. I think that’s the beauty and the frustration of Connacht Rugby – we always believe we can beat anyone on our day. "We did well to get through that fast Toulouse start, and they were very fortunate when Robbie Henshaw’s score was called back. "I was talking to Michael Corcoran [of RTÉ] recently, and he told me he thought we were going to lose it. "The way we had played and the way it was going, I didn’t think at any stage we would lose."

In a rare occasion of largesse, the players flew back to Galway that evening on a charter flight. Beers were sipped from plastic cups as the match was replayed during the journey.

"There were some bleary eyes at the Monday morning video-review session, but no one wanted to miss the playback. ‘It was a nice moment. A lot of people were looking around that room, taking it in. The feeling was that we didn’t want to be the whipping boys of Irish rugby any longer."

*This extract was taken from The New Breed: Irish Rugby's Professional Era (Mercier Press), by our very own Pat McCarry.