‘Playing with the Lions is like the Olympics' – Nick Popplewell on being part of last amateur touring side
Proud Wexford man Nick Popplewell, has been in the property industry with Sherry Fitzgerald Radford for the best part of a quarter of a century. Before that he was one of Ireland's greatest amateur athletes.
In 1993 he was selected for the British & Irish Lions tour of New Zealand, where he played in all three test matches. That year, the Lions lost the series 2-1, but Nick became the only Irishman to play on a victorious team against New Zealand since 1978, a record he held until 2016, when Ireland finally did beat New Zealand in Chicago.
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New Ross boat club member rows for Ireland in international regatta
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
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Jim Williams recalls Munster move: 'It was one of the best decisions I ever made'
A visit to Australia by the British & Irish Lions always offers former Wallaby Jim Williams an opportunity to reflect, both on his experience of playing against the tourists and the doors it opened for a career-defining move to Munster. It is 24 years ago that Williams captained a Brumbies side including Stephen Larkham against a Lions team featuring Munster icons and soon-to-be clubmates Ronan O'Gara and David Wallace and then tasted victory over Graham Henry's 2001 tourists in an Australia A jersey. Two months later, having been overlooked for the Test series after 14 caps and a place in the 1999 World Cup-winning squad, the No.8 was making his debut in red in a pre-season friendly for Declan Kidney's side at Musgrave Park against London Irish. Williams played 74 times for Munster, became the province's captain before transitioning to an assistant coach under Kidney in the historic 2005-06 season at the end of which the Heineken Cup was lifted for the first time. By the time he left for home to take up the same role with the Wallabies at the end of the 2007-08, 'Seamus' was a Munster icon in his own right and now 56 he has not forgotten the impact his seven years in Ireland has made on him. Williams is no longer involved in rugby, choosing lifestyle over coaching professionally with a career change to a government job and moving south of Sydney to Woolongong. Yet the 2025 Lions tour drew him back in once more, if only from his sofa. "It's been excellent," he told the Irish Examiner before settling down for the final Test last Saturday. "I mean I love the Lions tours, doesn't matter where they are and where they're playing, it's always something that I try not to miss." Shane Horgan, Leinster, in action against Munster's Jim Williams, 6, and Ronan O'Gara in the Celtic League Final 2001. Pic: Matt Browne, Sportsfile Playing against the 2001 Lions was a significant moment for Williams. "It was my first introduction to Ronan O'Gara and guys like that. It certainly holds special memories, and the game down in Canberra (with the Brumbies) was excellent. "We got really close to beating them that night, great atmosphere, and all those special memories certainly of that Lions tour when they came out in 2001. "And I joined Munster straight after that Lions tour.' Williams credits a young adult life as an amateur player for helping him to settle so successfully at Munster. He joined the Australian Army at 17, also worked as a plumber and had a season in English club rugby at West Hartlepool in the mid-nineties. "I didn't play professional rugby until I was 30, with the Brumbies. I suppose that might have helped a little bit, being a little bit more mature, and moving with my partner at the time wasn't a big deal because it was the two of us. "So it wasn't a massive move, but I certainly did take the time, and I had a lot of advice from John Langford at the time about Munster. "I did have a few other offers in France and I just thought basically going to an English-speaking place over in Europe was probably on my mind. "And the fact that it was Munster and John Langford had been there and had raved about it an had been so well accepted and had been successful himself, it really wasn't an issue about where I was going to go after that. "It was always going to be Munster from there on in, and certainly it worked out that way. It was just a wonderful time of my life." For Munster supporters, memories of Williams the powerful ball carrier and tackler with excellent leadership qualities tend to stand out, yet the man himself equally cherishes the dressing room camaraderie he felt as a player and his time as a coach under Kidney, when the province finally lifted the Heineken Cup. "Winning those from a coaching perspective, my first year of coaching and having the likes of Declan Kidney back and that kind of thing, that was wonderful from that perspective. And to be able to do it in 2008 as well, that was very special. 'Obviously as a player, you always want to win those titles, but I think from a coaching perspective, it was extremely rewarding. "It's not easy to go from a playing environment to a coaching environment, especially with guys that you've just done so much with. "As a player, I just had the right environment around me, I had the right coaching, I had the right players, and the right support outside of rugby as well to be able to succeed while I was there. "I can't pick out one game. I mean, people pick out the Gloucester game, the Miracle game and all that kind of thing but I think every time I got on the pitch with those boys, the likes of Ronan O'Gara, Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan, Anthony Horgan, those type of guys, it was always something that I was going to try my best at. "I didn't need to think about it. I didn't need to do anything different from what I normally do. I did the work during the week and I knew all these boys would. "You didn't always win games, things didn't always work out, but I knew the effort was always there and I think that was probably the most enjoyable thing from a playing perspective. "I always knew these guys were always going to put it in every time they went out and from a coaching perspective, I think to coach that and see that from outside was just as rewarding. "I suppose just the experience that I had playing with the guys and being able to coach them, I think it's probably the most special thing that I can take away from my time at Munster. "I had success playing with them. I probably had more success being part of the coaching staff and being able to be a part of those two titles that we got, I think it was just wonderful. It's just something that I'll never forget." Williams thinks Australia should send more of their players overseas to experience different environments, conditions and team cultures and cites Will Skelton's current spell under O'Gara at La Rochelle as a prime example of the benefits to Wallaby rugby. And he cited his only visit to the redeveloped Thomond Park with the Australians on the November tour of 2016 as the perfect example of a collective lack of experience as Munster defeated the touring Wallabies 15-6 on a typically wild cold and stormy winter's night in Limerick. 'I've been back to the stadium once with Australia which wasn't a happy hunting ground That was a wild night. I've seen conditions like that before and I wasn't surprised. "The team that went out that night, the coaches that went out that night, the looks on their faces, they hadn't been a part of conditions like that. 'I had no illusions about the conditions that were going to happen and full credit to Munster that game, they just played the conditions perfectly and that's more or less what won them the game and they thoroughly deserved it. "That's the beauty about playing overseas and going overseas and playing. Obviously playing in different countries but playing in different environments and playing in different conditions. "You've got the likes of Nic White who have come back and guys like Will Skelton who I think is a better player for the fact of playing overseas and understanding what it's like to play in different conditions and different arenas and different styles of football. "It should be a wonderful learning experience to go overseas with the Wallabies on the Spring tours. Yes, they want to play and they want to play well and they want to win but they want to learn from those aspects about playing overseas and playing in different conditions and weather that's not conducive to running rugby and adjusting your game and adjusting the mentality about what you do and how you do things to win games. 'It's certainly an honour playing over in Europe and playing in different conditions and it's just something that I'm so glad I did, when I had the opportunity to do it. It was one of the best decisions I ever made."
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
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When Shamrock Rovers moved lock stock to Boston
I think it is fair to say that football has finally taken off in the United States. With a World Cup on the horizon and steadily increasing attendances, the sport that always eluded the adoration of the US sporting community has begun to embed itself in the culture of young sports fans across the Atlantic. A lot of effort and some strange ideas have gone into the countless attempts by different individuals to get the world's most popular sport into the heart of the US public. There has always been a very American approach to the philosophy around growing the sport in the US. Get the big stars in and surround them with pageantry and hype and the celeb-crazed American public will lap it up. In 2025 it is Lionel Messi, in 2007 it was David Beckham. Some people of a certain vintage will remember in the 70s when it was Pele. However, in the 1960s it was Shamrock Rovers. Well, not quite, but stay with me. Following the fanfare around England's 1966 World Cup triumph, there was a growing interest in the US around building a professional football league in a country where the sport barely registered with the general public. Two rival football associations emerged - The National Professional Soccer League (NPSL) and the United Soccer Association(USA). The United Soccer Association, otherwise known as The USA (confusing, I know) took an audacious shortcut to build up their league and their credibility. Instead of spending years registering teams, building squads and recruiting players they decided to import entire clubs from Europe and South America and gave them new identities in order to kickstart their new league. Some recognisable names set sail to the United States for the inaugural USA League in 1967 including Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aberdeen, Cagliari and Shamrock Rovers. Teams were renamed and placed in a city relevant to them which led to Shamrock Rovers being stationed in Boston due to Boston's large Irish community. They were renamed 'Boston Rovers'. Boston Rovers pin badge. 'Going to the States in the sixties was fantastic,' according to Mick Leech, the Shamrock Rovers legend who was just 20 when he boarded that transatlantic flight. 'Dublin and Ireland at the time was a dreary, gloomy place. The whole trip was Disneyworld.' Rovers played their home games in the Manning Bowl in Lynn, a suburb 10 miles out of downtown Boston. It was a baseball stadium that was not necessarily decked out for soccer due to its square playing surface. Around 7,000 spectators went to see Rovers nab a 1-1 draw in their opening game on May 28 against the Detroit Cougars, better known to you and I as Glentoran FC from Belfast. The following week saw a 3-1 victory over the Houston Stars but things quickly went downhill after that and positive results on the pitch were few and far between. Rovers suffered a heavy 5–0 defeat to the Chicago Mustangs and a 4-1 loss to Dallas Tornados. The glamour of a trip abroad to America would not have been complete without a few celebrity encounters. Leech talks about an encounter with a young musician in an elevator in Toronto who turned out to be a 17-year-old Stevie Wonder. The squad also met with Maureen O'Hara, the Irish film icon from Dublin who was a diehard Rovers fan her entire life. Boston Rovers finished dead last in the league with two wins, three draws and seven losses. At the same time the whole project was failing quite spectacularly. 'They were interested in promoting soccer, but it was a business situation,' Leech says. 'The crowds were poor, there was no money to be made.' The players began to notice the quality of their food and accommodation diminishing as well as their spending money being reduced. The league received modest coverage in the American press but was basically not reported on at all back home in Ireland. The plug was pulled and the project was over only a couple of months after it had begun. Of the 12 teams who competed in the league, only the Dallas Tornados (Dundee United) would exist to see the beginning of the next decade. In 1968, the USA and NPSL merged into the North American Soccer League which would later use the same guiding principals to draw in global stars such as Pele, Cryuff and Beckenbauer. The Rovers squad returned home to Dublin and the Boston Rovers renamed themselves the Boston Beacons before folding one year later. In hindsight, it was always unlikely that a country with no interest in football was going to have its passion for the sport ignited and set ablaze by the likes of Shamrock Rovers and Stoke City, but the efforts of the USA league was the first attempts of a tactic that would remain as a means to increasing the sports popularity for decades to come and one which has ultimately worked. In other words, Shamrock Rovers walked so that Inter Miami could run. Though there were few great on-field moments or iconic games to talk about, it was an opportunity for young Dublin footballers such as Mick Leech to travel to America and see the world at a time when this was unaffordable to most. It also gave somewhat of an international reputation to clubs like Shamrock Rovers and, who knows, maybe there's a few fifth generation Irish Americans who retained their interest in the hoops long after Boston Rovers were gone.
