Blood And Thunder: Rugby and Irish Life: A History, by Liam O’Callaghan

You might be forgiven for thinking that life has always been this rosy for the Ireland’s men’s team. Sure, that pesky record of never winning a knock-out tie at the Rugby World Cup remains, but the feat of most Six Nations wins since 2000 and three Grand Slams in that timeframe is founded on the most successful domestic set-up in the northern hemisphere, one to rival the All Blacks. The conveyor belt of talent keeps producing and supporter interest at a grass-roots level is at an all-time high.

Rarely has the sport in Ireland looked in ruder health – that is the endpoint of this rugby saga which recounts rigorously just how those pieces fell into place. Vital reading for those Hibernophiles concerned for the island’s recent past, Blood and Thunder is the natural culmination of Liam O’Callaghan’s research interests which often tie together the strands of identity, society and sport. An Associate Professor at Liverpool Hope University, he tracks the course of a moral-instilling colonial practice into its modern-day guise. This is a contemplation of the country’s oval-ball occupation not solely in light of matters religious and political, but also through a lens of class and culture too.

Anecdotally told, it is by zeroing in on individual protagonists that the overarching themes are advanced. Starting with the early espousers of the sport who imported it from the fields of English public schools to Trinity College, Dublin and wider Anglo-Irish society, the narrative races through to the rights and wrongs of shipping in the foreign ‘project’ players who line up in green today.

Familiar tropes rear their heads, in particular the interference of politics in sport, or not in the eyes of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU). The middle chapters see the book at its flowing best and the cross-jurisdiction administrative body’s ‘apolitical’ pose probed and scrutinised, particularly its response to, and impression on, partition, the genesis of the Free State, the Troubles and the dawn of the professional era.

Rooting out the origins of rugby’s current talking points does lend a contemporary relevance, especially the affecting narratives regarding player welfare and a spotlight on the unheralded achievements of the Irish women’s team. However, criticism of administrators can feel overly brusque, perhaps indifferent to the spirit and thinking of the times and predominantly amateur circumstances behind decisions. The IRFU executives’ perceived perennial bungling often ends up rendering them the chronicle’s underdogs.

Political reservations of one team representing two states, the sport’s exoticism when juxtaposed with Gaelic football and hurling, sectarian barracking about matches played on a Sunday –  despite all of this, rugby across the four provinces is now ‘standing tall, shoulder to shoulder’ as the oft-disparaged anthem Ireland’s Call demands. Blood and Thunder lives up to its epic billing, documenting that trajectory and undeterred by the dissent and clamour.