Monday 17 October 2016 20:16, UK
The initial weekend of European action was overshadowed by the death of Anthony Foley. It was two o' clock French time when I heard the news. Miles Harrison and I were basking in the Parisian Sunday sunshine, final preparations for the forthcoming commentary to come in two hours or so.
All was well with the world. The French hosts had produced a superb four-course lunch. There wasn't to be another chance to eat that day with one of those mad rushes to the station post-match to catch the train to St Pancras. It had been an early start from London too but the sun was golden and all was good with the world.
Then my mobile rang and a colleague at Sky, sombre-toned, told me that the match was going to be postponed, that Anthony Foley was dead and the day darkened for all connected to rugby. Anthony Foley was not a friend, there are many, many better qualified persons to pay the personal homage that was clearly his due.
He was a Munster man, I an Englishman. We knew each other for a chat, a word about the game, the state of Munster, life in general, rugby in a bit more detail. But what I do know about Foley are the deeds and the giant heart that tragically no longer beats.
Munster is a rugby region made by the deeds of its great men. One of them, Ronan O'Gara, was ironically enough in Paris preparing to plot his old team's downfall in the capacity of a Racing coach. The fly-half turned up at the ground only to hurriedly leave in distress at the news.
A distressed Alan Quinlan had to leave our Sky studios. Munster goes deep and nothing deeper than the bond between those characters that made up the mightiest of their sides, which won two Heineken Cups in the first decade of this century.
It was Foley himself who had the honour of first grasping the Holy Grail of Munster rugby in 2006 in Cardiff. An ugly final against Biarritz but the vast swathes of red didn't care, Foley and friends had finally done it. And Anthony had his hands all over those triumphs, all over the rise of Munster.
Arguably the two greatest players of that era were Paul O' Connell in the second row and Ronan O' Gara at fly-half. Yet there was no part of the game more fundamental to the Munster game than the breakdown where they were quite simply the European masters. Two from three of Wallace, Quinlan and Leamy were constant influences on the game but the man at No 8 who held it all together was Foley.
Heart and soul was an oversimplified and at times insulting form of compliment. There was so much more to the Munster game, huge hearted as it was. There was a grasp of detail every bit as firm as the grip with which Munster would pin their opponents down. Foley knew every trick in the book, the master of the minutiae.
It was no surprise to see Thierry Dusautoir among the early condolers. The Frenchman, a great back rower himself, came out the wrong side of Munster and Foley in 2008. He knew a good forward and a great rugby man when he met one. Foley didn't find it easy as Munster's Director of Rugby but as head coach with Rassie Erasmus taking the broader perspective, reports were positive, Foley's friends saying how much happier he was. At 42 he had a long and distinguished future ahead of him as a coach.
That future was brought to a premature end sometime between going to bed Saturday night and dawn rising on Sunday. Earlier that week Declan Kidney, the Munster coach that saw them to their momentous triumph, lost his wife. It has been a harrowing week for the rugby folk of Munster. To Declan, Anthony's wife and two children, our hearts go out. I think I can say that not only on my behalf but all of us from Sky's rugby department.
Next Saturday Munster will play Glasgow at Thomond Park. I hope they will. Playing the game rather than postponing it would be the more fitting tribute to their great man. The stadium, if the game goes ahead, will be a packed house, a tribute from Munster to one of their most illustrious sons. Glasgow's role will be to come to what was THE rugby fortress in Foley's day and steal the points. He would expect nothing less from a team aspiring to follow in Munster's European footsteps.
Munster will strive for victory with everything they have at their disposal. Winning will, of course, not make any difference to the tragedy that beset the Kidney and Foley families but it would be a fitting way to honour them.
For the record Glasgow were very good against Leicester. Saracens even better as they took Toulon's home record with a commitment Foley would have both recognised and admired. But maybe if one team should be praised on the first week it is Connacht, near rivals who claimed the Celtic crown last season.
Their European season began with a comeback victory of some magnitude against Toulouse. That was a performance in the spirit of the No 8. To Connacht, congratulations, even in the midst of all those commiserations.
Finally, can we head back to that Sunday afternoon in Paris for one final reflection? The sun still refused to withdraw; it was a dappled afternoon, the game should have kicked off by now. I was being interviewed by an Irish radio station when in the distance, outside the stadium, I heard the dying fall of a fans' version of the Fields of Athenry. No more words are required. The warrior has been honoured.
