Ireland's greatest sporting moments and events

Ireland is a country of barely four million people. Creating sporting giants is not easy with such meager resources. Irish sporting moments tend to be bittersweet or just plain bitter. Precious few victories stand out. And, being Irish, controversy abounds. So, For better or worse, the top ten Irish sporting moments:

1) Leinster v Munster

Fifteen years ago, before Irish rugby went professional, it was watched by a bunch of private school blazers and a few crombie coats. Now, it’s the hottest ticket in town. Whether it’s the Celtic League or the high profile European competition – which both sides have won in recent years – the meeting of Munster versus Leinster makes Irish rugby fans salivate where before they could not have told you when the two sides played.

The presence of Ireland’s rugby heroes, surely now more popular and well-known than many of the country’s soccer players, is surely the reason. Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell, Ronan O’Gara, Gordon Darcy, Peter Stringer … the list goes on. Not to mention the apparent dislike when the two sets of players, who put their bodies on the line for each other in green, line out in their respective strips of red (Munster) and blue (Leinster).

Surely the greatest meeting between the two was the 2009 Heineken European Cup clash in Croke Park. 80,000 fans – the world record attendance for a club rugby match, from a pairing that had, just ten years before, attracted a few hundred midly interested observers – watched Leinster, the underdogs, put Munster to the sword, with the fatal thrust coming in the form of a cheeky intercept try from Brian O’Driscoll.

2) Sean Kelly/Stephen Roche

During the last recession in the mid-eighties, Ireland was starved for sporting heroes. Jack Charlton’s army was not yet imaginable and Barry McGuigan had lost his world title after on his third defense. But Ireland was not short of global sporting superstars. Sean Kelly, a teak-tough farmer’s son from Waterford, and Stephen Roche, a more urbane city boy from Dundrum, south Dublin, were at the top of their careers. Sales of racing bikes had gone through the roof and kids all over the country went haring around the country roads imagining they were pro cyclists. In 1987, Roche won the Tour de France and the Giro D’Italia and Ireland went cycling crazy. The Taoiseach went to France to bask in the glory, there were victory parades through Dublin City, and Ireland had a new hero.

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Nster.com