Presidents Message

March the month of Mars the God of war, also known as Gravidus, or Silvanus, when patron of agriculture, or Quirinus, when patron of the state.

March the month of Mars the God of war, also known as Gravidus, or Silvanus, when patron of agriculture, or Quirinus, when patron of the state.

There is also another appelation relating to March, which is “as mad as a march Hare”. This statement relates to March being the rutting month of the Hare in which they are in an excited and violent state. Personally I find March to be a month of relative relaxation and enjoy it as such.

The Rugby consists of Six Nation conflict which is slightly removed from my particular area of responsibility and I certainly enjoy supporting Ireland from a more relaxed perspective than that of our own provincial performances.

The Celtic League continues to provide great experience for our non-international panel. Unfortunately we have lost two games to Llanelli and the Ospreys. This should put our league ambitions on the back burner but it was a great pleasure to watch Christian Cullen playing so well for his first game in three months (I thought that that nickname was excellent).

On the domestic front the Schools Senior Cup is proceeding apace with Pres. facing Rockwell in the remaining semi-final and Munchin’s awaiting the winner. All other competitions are coming to a gradual head and they are available on the website.

We wish our national team well in the remaining six-nation matches in particular the “old enemy”. We now certainly expect good performances as we try to remove the unpredictability of us Irish in this Professional era. However there will always be some element of the unexpected in all sport, which is what keeps us all interested.

Our Munster Publicity machine has gone into overdrive supervised by Pat Geraghty. I find it difficult to follow how he does this as I have had the experience of being driven by him when he was extremely careful for all other road users. Maria is performing heroics for our supporters club and Judy, Claire, Karen, Sara and Catherine are running the day to day matters in the Provincial offices extremely well. John Coleman and Gerry Moore are keeping our heads well above water in administration and Garrett is giving our Province extraordinary service in all sorts of areas, many of which we could not expect him to do as they take up so much of his free time (I wouldn’t blame him if he were to ask me what is free time?).

During the time around the Welsh match I met the other Provincial Presidents and was delighted to find that Louis Magee also has a granddaughter (Alison) as has Stephen Hilditch (Madeline). Which brings me on to Lucy. She is now teething hard and keeping Marie and Michael on their toes day and night. I certainly have great empathy for them but I don’t think I would particularly like to swap places at this time.

Thanks for all your interest and support and please enjoy the now short run into the quarter-final. I see that Stade are doing very well at present and they will certainly put it up to us next month. Accordingly our lads will need all the support that we can muster between now and then. So keep the faith and keep smiling.

Len Harty.