reached their first Heineken Cup final, 24 years ago now, their centre partnership was a pair of players born in New Zealand: Mike Mullins from Auckland and Jason Holland from New Plymouth. Neither of them had arrived as stars, and in professional rugby’s fledgling transfer market, nobody saw Munster as hawks. They didn’t have that kind of money, or status.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then but over the last few months, Munster’s season has been energised by another unlikely partnership in the centre. Antoine Frisch arrived at the beginning of last season, French-born, with an Irish grandmother, cradling an ambition to play for Ireland, he said.
When Frisch was called into a France training squad during the Six Nations these questions bubbled suddenly to the surface. If Frisch was capped by France he would obviously be no longer available to Ireland. For Munster to have two non-Irish qualified players in the same position would be against the IRFU’s recruitment policy. In that case, something would have to give.
Between them Barry Murphy and Scannell have seven international appearances and Chris Farrell was capped in the centre while he played for Munster too, but Farrell was signed from France, having been a product of the Ulster academy. He was another imported solution.