Fergus Finlay: Little bit of heaven in West Cork as Irish rugby flows and Boris goes

Looking down on Dunlough bay and Mizen head on a beautiful sunny afternoon in West Cork. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

God is in his heaven, and all’s right with the world. I know it’s not appropriate for a humanist like me to be quoting Robert Browning’s little hymn to nature, but right now there may be nothing else that quite sums it up.

For three reasons. We beat the All Blacks, in Dunedin of all places, a city where foreign rugby players fear to go. Boris is gone — not folding his tent and slipping away, but thrown out by his own, who finally summoned up enough gumption to figure out what a disgrace he is.

And I’m in West Cork. There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky for the last seven days. It doesn’t get better than that.

We’re in West Cork, a few of us in the family, thanks to the generosity of my sister and her husband, who have vacated their house with a clear view of the Fastnet Rock to give us an affordable holiday. It’s a wonderful place, whose only drawback is the lack of access to Sky Sports. That wouldn’t bother me normally, but at 8 o’clock on Saturday morning Sky Sports was the only place to be (if you couldn’t make the trip to Dunedin).

There is, it transpires, at least one streaming service that was carrying the match and could be Chromecast to the telly. Frantic figuring out enabled us to sit and be enthralled from start to finish by an Irish performance for the ages.

Tadhg Beirne of Ireland celebrates their win over New Zealand in their second rugby union international match in Dunedin, New Zealand.

I’ve seen some commentary in the aftermath that was critical of Ireland’s failure to score more points. But I never thought I would see the day when an All Black team in front of a home crowd would be so completely dominated. They scored a fluky try at halftime, and a consolation try just before the end. Apart from that, Ireland owned the pitch. They were never ever going to let New Zealand win.

I have to record my own bias (not for the first time!). The first time Ireland beat the All Blacks in Dublin was the second time they had ever been beaten on Irish soil. I’ve always been proud of the fact that I’m one of the small and dwindling band of people who were present on both those historic occasions — in 1978 in Thomond Park and that unforgettable day in 2018 when Jacob Stockdale’s try was the difference on the scoreline. Of course, if Ireland keep making a habit of this, we’ll all be able to claim we’ve seen Ireland beat the All Blacks.

I recorded that match in 2018 and watched it back several times. Peter O’Mahony in that game played the finest twenty sustained minutes of rugby I’d ever seen, right up to the moment when he was virtually carried off. He’ll never repeat that, I’ve often thought. But my heavens wasn’t I wrong! He’s one of those players — actually one of those people — who you’d always want on your side, especially when everything is on the line.

Bye-bye Boris

Boris Johnson, not so much. Robert Browning’s poem 'The Lost Leader' works here too — “just for a handful of silver you left us …” The great riddle of Boris Johnson is that it took so long to find him out. For as long as his face worked on an election poster his craven party was willing to put up with any lie, any piece of corruption little or large, any greedy or narcissistic gesture.

It was “Partygate” that changed that. Initially, it confused the political simpletons that were letting him get away with murder, because it took them too long to realise how disgusted and betrayed the electorate was by his self-indulgent behaviour.

I wrote here not too long ago — before Partygate — that the British people seemed “willing to forgive Boris Johnson almost anything. All the lies, all the mismanagement, all the self-indulgence. His country is at serious risk of economic collapse, and they’re buying his line that it’s all just part of the transition to greatness. He’s already been re-elected once and looks likely to be re-elected again.” 

I asked readers at the time to send me a postcard if they could explain it. Because he was a charlatan with an appalling economic and social record. Despite the claims he still makes about his wonderful management of the pandemic, the truth is that his feckless approach at the time — at the very start and also in the face of the second wave of Covid — cost tens of thousands of lives.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, outside 10 Downing Street, London, formally resigned as Conservative Party leader.

I got dozens of messages after that column from people who had read it in the UK, and they were all utterly confused too. But he’s gone now, and if there is one thing certain, it is that he won’t be missed. His place in history is surely secure as one of the worst Prime Ministers of all time. The splenetic side of me can only think good riddance.

It’s hard to be splenetic though when you’re in West Cork. When you drive over the hill on the road from Bantry to Bellydehob and see the whole of the Atlantic spread out ahead of you, or take in the views from Mizen Head, or swim in crystal water at Ballyrisode, you know there’s simply no place on earth quite like this.

I have a feeling though that West Cork is putting a brave face on things. There’s lots of traffic to be sure but they’re all Cork-registered cars. Some of our old haunts are only open three nights a week now. There are new attractions for kids in places like Rosscarbery, but none of them are hard to book (and all are very expensive). There’s a sense of a place struggling with the aftermath of Covid and the current economic situation.

Power of the people

One thing that will never change, I hope, is the people. I’ve written here before about our daughter, Mandy, who has Downs Syndrome. One of Mandy’s obsessions is that she cannot come home from a holiday without a tee-shirt honouring the place she’s been. That’s all she wants this holiday — a west Cork tee-shirt to add to her collection. But they’re not to be found. Not in Schull, nor Skibbereen, nor Clonakilty nor Rosscarbery. Covid, it seems, has killed the entire seasonal souvenir industry stone dead.

Our last hope was Bantry, and we looked everywhere. The very last shop we found was called Wisemans. Mandy’s face crumpled when the owners told her that there were none to be found anywhere.

The owners, it transpires, are Eddie and Emer. They took one look at Mandy’s face and announced that if we could wait a while, they’d find a way.

And so we waited, while Eddie went upstairs and set to work printing a red tee-shirt. It took a while because the connection between the computer and the printer depended on wi-fi and bluetooth, and I guess broadband in Bantry is as reliable as everywhere else. But he arrived down eventually with a beautiful red tee-shirt, CORK emblazoned on the front, Mandy on one shoulder and West Cork on the other.

And he charged my proud and delighted daughter a tenner for a €40 item. That’s West Cork for you.