US team to be inspired by players lost in 9/11
Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick may never have been capped by their country but they served it nonetheless when hijackers took over the cockpit of flight United 93 as it flew towards Washington DC.
Bingham, a former University of California, Berkeley, rugby player who won collegiate national championships with his team in 1991 and ’93 had gone on to help found the San Francisco Fog club as well as the Gotham Knights in New York, while Glick had played for the University of Rochester in upstate New York.
Bingham, Glick and two other people rushed the cockpit in an attempt to regain control of United 93. One of the others, medical research company executive Tom Burnett, told his wife the four men had come up with a plan as he said his goodbyes during a mid-air phone call. “I know we’re going to die. Some of us are going to do something about it.”
No one survived the crash that ended United 93’s flight over Shanks-ville, Pennsylvania, but the victims, and those who died in Washington DC and New York city that day, will be remem-bered in New Plymouth tomorrow morning during a special church service to be attended by the American squad.
And at Stadium Taranaki later in the day, both teams will wear armbands as a mark of respect to the victims of 9/11, while the Rugby World Cup venue will fall silent to commemorate that day.
Some are more directly affected than others. Eagles scrum-half Mike Petri was in his final year at Xavier High School in Manhattan when the attacks occurred and he recalls the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center being there when he went to school and seeing a smoking pile of rubble when he returned home to Brooklyn that day. He would later learn that his friend’s father, a fire-fighter, also died in the attacks.
“Ten years ago, that was a dark day for everyone,” Petri said. “You never forget something like that. It’s a huge honour for us to represent our country on that day. Hopefully we can do justice, in more ways than one, certainly, and connect with a lot of the rugby community in America that was affected,” Petri said.
The 9/11 attacks affected families far beyond American borders, with people from 70 nations among the 2,977 victims killed that day, including six Irish citizens.
This reporter was at Donnybrook that night as the full horrors of the attacks continued to unfold and, somehow, Leinster and Pontypridd had to concentrate on winning Celtic League points.
Ireland’s centres tomorrow, captain Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy were both playing for Leinster that night and O’Driscoll yesterday re-called the “very strange” atmosphere caused by events 3,000 miles away.
“I remember it well. I remember when it happened and my ignorance as a young man in my early 20s, not knowing what the World Trade Center was, when it was the Twin Towers. I knew what they were but the World Trade Center I wasn’t aware of. I remember watching the whole thing unfold and then playing that night in Donnybrook and it being very strange because you could tell that the world had changed in a big way.”
It had to be business as usual, though, for the Leinster players and their Welsh visitors although O’Driscoll said he was not so sure his current self would have been able to put those awful events to one side.
“That night? I think you have to be able to separate your emotions from life and your rugby. I think that is the beauty, whatever’s going on in your life, it’s something quite unique to be able to go out onto a training pitch or a game, for most part that is, it’s not in every case, and forget those negative thoughts to a certain degree.
“But I’d say maybe more so in my younger days. As I’ve gotten older I’d say probably the emotions of outside life has more of an effect on you. It’s harder to shake that.”
Eddie O’Sullivan, America’s coach, will desperately be hoping that even if his young players cannot match O’Driscoll in terms of playing ability, they can at least be as adept at compartmentalising their emotions.
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