An accessible tale of Ireland’s transition from staunchly amateur mediocrity to fourth in the world. Beginning with the disastrous Australian tour of 1994, the book revisits milestones of the next dozen years, demonstrating their resonance in the mid-2000s. Typically, each chapter treats one story as it unfolds over the course of a given season: the 1999 World Cup debacle, Eddie O’Sullivan’s rise to head, Munster’s 2006 Heineken Cup championship. Players, coaches, administrators often reflect on events in their own voice, complemented by Fanning’s vernacular. He is sympathetic to their views yet level in his evaluation, a noteworthy achievement. For the

Sunday Independent

columnist, the real antagonists are management and administrators who haven’t thought their plans through, or don’t realize what is required. Why, for example, did the Irish union consider excluding Connacht from the program while continuing to spend hundred of thousands of pounds to send its leadership (and their wives) to away Six Nations games? Of course, most of Ireland’s hurdles have been more complicated. Fanning moves briskly, and like many journalists he is the more certain with the passage of time. The final chapters lose something of the work’s overall verve. This is a principal difference between news writers and historians, sometimes more willing to draw conclusions of events which the journalist views as still in progress. Should Ireland make an unprecedented run to the 2007 World Cup semifinals, it may be seen as the definitive account.