Nobody saw it coming. Ireland hadn’t won a Triple crown since 1949 and the team entered the 1982 season having lost their previous seven Tests, including a whitewash in the 1981 Five Nations. But then Ireland beat Wales in the first match of the 1982 championship and a new era in Irish rugby started that day.
The film is set against a backdrop of unemployment, mass emigration, hunger strikes and an island teetering on the brink. As the dole queues lengthened and the atrocities escalated to ever-bloodier depths, the exploits of an unlikely band of amateur sportsmen was the only good news story in town. Suddenly there was a glimmer of light in the darkness enveloping the island.Where’s Your Pride? is told exclusively by the players who were on the pitch. Every try, penalty, conversion and crucial drop goal is recounted as if it was yesterday. In a post-Good Friday Agreement shoulder-to-shoulder world of Irish rugby teams routinely picking up Triple Crowns, Championships and a Grand Slam for good measure, Where’s Your Pride? is a reminder that it wasn’t always so.
Produced by D4 films and funded by the BAI through the Sound and Vision scheme, Where’s Your Pride? recalls a glorious chapter in Irish rugby history. Set against a backdrop of mass unemployment, wholesale emigration, sectarian murders and hunger strikes, it brought much-needed cheer to a nation on the brink