Two clubs separated by 600km and a body of water, none of which runs under the bridge.They are your two similarly-minded friends from separate social circles whom you excitedly unite at a party only for them to ruin the whole fecking night arguing about something that nobody can remember. The following morning, neither is willing to accept even partial culpability. Congratulations, you’ll spend the rest of your life ensuring they don’t come within an ass’s roar of each other again.
Peter Clohessy would be its protagonist, a reluctant hero whose previous infractions on the rugby field would absolutely constitute a ‘checkered past’. Among its primary antagonists, meanwhile, would be future Glasgow head coach Gregor Townsend, then a player for French club Castres. Clohessy was cleared of any wrongdoing. Lassissi received a year-long ban but this was later overturned on appeal.
Castres’ whole case fell apart, however, when neither Townsend nor Spreadbury could recall any such interaction. It’s surely no coincidence that the atmosphere between Munster and Glasgow began to turn bilious just as Townsend got his feet under the desk at Scotstoun a decade later. Consider the Munster figures who spilled over from 2002 into the early 2010s: Anthony Foley as forwards coach; Paul O’Connell, Donncha O’Callaghan, Peter Stringer and Ronan O’Gara as agenda-setters among the playing contingent.
O’Callaghan was magnanimous during the hearing and the independent disciplinary hearing found that “while Niko’s teeth had come into contact with Donnacha O’Callaghan’s arm, causing injury, this contact was accidental and therefore not an act of foul play”. Sure enough, Murray was also cleared as the sides appeared to settle outside of rugby’s mock court.
Glasgow had become a decidedly better team than Munster by 2015. The Irish province would have known as much even when Ian Keatley’s 77th-minute penalty eked out a two-point league victory over the Scots at Thomond Park five months later; Warriors had been left without 21 players who were on World Cup duty, Munster just six.
Captains Peter O'Mahony and Jonny Gray arguing during 'The Axel Game' in 2016. Tommy Dickson / INPHO Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO The Ireland wing’s public retraction and apology that December was brutal in its honesty but it frankly came too late to mend that particular bridge. The news cycle had long since moved on.The power dynamic between the two clubs, though, had tilted dramatically back in Munster’s favour. Fraser Brown himself recently remarked that the best All Blacks team of the last 20 years wouldn’t have beaten Munster in that Axel game. His side had been left shellshocked.