LONG READ Brendan Fanning: 'It was entirely credible an ambitious rugby player would choose Ireland over Australia for his career'

The day before Ireland played New South Wales on their tour of Australia in 1994 us journalists had a few hours to kill, and a beautiful day on which to commit the crime. The NSW game was on a Sunday, leaving Saturday free to take in a local club tie. Checking through the fixtures in the Sydney Morning Herald the clash of full-on local rivals Randwick and Easts, at the Coogee Oval, was the top attraction. Sorted.

It was an instructive afternoon. Despite the absence of Waratah representatives there was lots of quality on view. In lovely sunshine, and on a hard track, this was rugby we weren’t getting back home in the new All Ireland League, then just four years into its existence.

There was a willingness to run the ball that bordered on the reckless. Well, that’s how it looked if you came from a land of catch and kick. The ability of front five forwards to handle and run was a central part of the show. One of that group – in the second row for Randwick – was a big lump of an athlete, mobile and edgy, with an Irish name. A casual enquiry suggested that yes, there was a bloodline back to Ireland.

When we got back to the Ireland team hotel, where the traveling press corps were staying, we pointed this out to the tourists’ coach, Gerry Murphy.

“Gerry, there’s a serious looking operator in the row for a club side here and he has to be Ireland-qualified…”

Mr Murphy was unimpressed. He was thinking less about the medium term future and more about the immediate, intimidating prospect of a loaded Waratahs side at the Sydney Football Stadium. He looked like a man who needed a stiff drink and had just been offered a cup of lukewarm tea. Murphy was right to be anxious. Ireland were run off the park the next day, conceding 55 points.

Owen Desmond Anthony Finegan was born in Sydney of Irish parents. When he was playing in that Shute Shield game for Randwick he was already on Australia’s radar. Later in the tour he would feature for a composite side – a mix of Wallabies coming back from injury alongside promising new talent – in a wilderness town called Mount Isa. It turned out to be a spectacular setback for Ireland in the build up to the first Test.

 Why on earth would a bright talent like Owen Finegan pause to consider that he was qualified to play for the land of his parents, where he had heaps of cousins?

If you laid out the form and fare from the tour to New Zealand in 1992 alongside the Australia trip two years later you had a clear picture of how far Ireland were off the pace. So why on earth would a bright talent like Owen Finegan pause to consider that he was qualified to play for the land of his parents, where he had heaps of cousins? Of course the question was never asked. By the time Finegan eventually washed up on these shores – to spend an unimpressive season with Leinster in 2006 – he had 55 Australia caps and a World Cup medal.

By then he was well over the hill. He would have been wasted in the Ireland of the mid 1990s when there was no will to find the right gear, so we shifted between neutral and reverse.

All this came bubbling back to the surface over the last couple of weeks with the brief tug of love over the young Queensland tight head Massimo de Lutiis. Happy to be caught in the middle between what we understand was actually a modest bag of cash from the IRFU and a revised offer sure to come from Rugby Australia, the 22 year-old prop with the big reputation knew it would all have a happy ending.

If it struck you initially that this was never more than a bump in the numbers from RA then fair enough, but it was entirely credible that an ambitious rugby player would choose Ireland over Australia for his career. Even if the IRFU offer was not life-changing financially, and certainly not on the financial planet occupied by the world’s top tight heads. But the bit of love from RA, and the extra few bob, was enough for him to stay put.

Coming home from covering every mortifying moment of that 1994 tour we never thought such a thing would be possible: a plausible case for a likely Australian Test player to move to Ireland. For context, as we reboarded the long haul flight home after a stopover in Bangkok we fell in step with Simon Geoghegan, Ireland’s Bath wing, who was constantly frustrated at the crap standard of the Ireland rugby set-up.

“Can you ever see a time where Ireland could come back here actually physically fit enough to compete from the start?” we asked.

He laughed before replying: “Not in my lifetime mate!”

The question is: would De Lutiis be far enough along the Irish road by then had he swapped sides? Certainly he would have got loads of game time in Ulster, who were hoping the deal would go through.

Since then, since the great recovery, the path is well worn from Oz to Ireland. Tom Court, Tom O’Toole (repatriation in his case) and Mack Hansen have been the highest profile, all of them delivering at Test as well as provincial level. All of them too have been well served by the move, so you’d imagine their testimonials would be positive.

As for De Lutiis, who was described by scrum guru Mike Cron as “a generational talent”, you’d expect he’ll be capped by the Wallabies by the time they face Ireland in Canberra in a warm-up for the World Cup next year.

The question is: would De Lutiis be far enough along the Irish road by then had he swapped sides? Certainly he would have got loads of game time in Ulster, who were hoping the deal would go through. Their progress under coach Richie Murphy has been remarkable. If Ireland were expected to have an ordinary Six Nations then Ulster were budgeting for a battle to make the qualifying spots in URC, never mind a run at the Challenge Cup.

Ireland have just come through a Championship that started badly enough to prompt a few obituaries to be written. By the time we rolled into Easter week the resurrection was complete and the four provinces were looking forward to opening the door to European competition once again.

What they found there has been strange. Leinster, the only representatives in Europe’s premier competition, explored new ways to self-destruct before settling eventually for a home win over Edinburgh. It was bizarre. Over in the Challenge Cup Ulster dodged a hail of bullets against Ospreys to set up a home quarter-final with Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle. Connacht have found real momentum and will take that on the road in their quarter-final against Montpellier. That leaves Munster, the only province with time on their hands and too many awkward questions to answer.

So if you were on the IRFU’s recruiting team, and Mr De Lutiis asked for a synopsis of the Irish system and what it had to offer, you’d pause before answering. Yes, we are ranked third in the world, five places ahead of Australia. Even our women – unlike their Aussie counterparts – are in the top five, despite having a miniscule base. And yes, unlike Australia, we cope well with being ranked number four in the pop charts for field sports in our own country. All of this was unthinkable back when Owen Finegan was making his way in the rugby world with Randwick. It worked out well enough for both parties.