Enjoy the ones you have, not what got away
The story of last weekend might have been Ireland emphatically denying England the Grand Slam but the story of this year’s Six Nations is that it was a championship Ireland let slip out of their hands and into England’s.
Only for a couple of silly penalties conceded against France and a farcical line call in Cardiff, Brian O’Driscoll and his team should have been celebrating a fifth Triple Crown and second Grand Slam and championship in eight years.
But then a thought dawned on us: thank heavens they won that Grand Slam and championship at all.
One of the most recurring refrains and regrets you’ll hear from players and supporters alike is the sense that their team “should have won more”. Ken McGrath and other wonderful Waterford hurlers will always be pitied as much as celebrated for never winning an All-Ireland. For a long time some Armagh footballers seemed as if they’d be forever scarred by never winning that second All-Ireland.
Probably the most extreme example we’ve encountered of this phenomenon was at an otherwise run-of-the-mill Galway-Roscommon pre-match press conference three years ago when the Rossies’ stand-in manager, Michael Ryan, declared that the core of the county team that won the 2001 Connacht final with a dramatic injury-time goal “should have won more”.
They “should have won more” when Padraic Joyce and Ciarán McDonald were at the height of their powers out west? Every team can say it “should have won more”. You can argue only for those upstarts from Galway and Cork, Cody’s Kilkenny would have run up 10 in a row; that had Man United earned one more point in both the 1994-95 and 1997-98 seasons, they’d have won nine Premierships on the trot; that the current Kerry team “should” have had a couple of more All-Irelands while they were at it.
In truth, Darragh Ó Sé retired hugely content with the six he finished up with. Those Armagh footballers were blessed to win that All-Ireland, as deserved as it was. Waterford should take comfort and pride in the fact it’s their quest for an All-Ireland, rather than a Munster title, that now preoccupies supporters. And Roscommon’s Naked Pool generation should be eternally grateful that they won a provincial title when John Galvin seems set to retire without winning any.
Imagine the millstone that would still be around the necks of O’Connell, O’Gara and O’Driscoll if, two years ago this week, Stephen Jones’ penalty in Cardiff had carried itself over that bar. It could easily have been the case. In 2007 the team produced its most exciting spring rugby of the Brian O’Driscoll era; if only he had been fit against France, or the team had played someone, anyone, in Croke Park previously, instead of a championship decider doubling up as a venue familiarisation exercise.
It’s sad that ‘failure’ to land that championship has often been levelled at Eddie O’Sullivan since. But it would have been the biggest shame of 21st century Irish sport if his former charges were to have been likewise diminished.
Three years ago it was claimed O’Sullivan’s tenure had been a failure because Wales were just after winning a second Grand Slam while Ireland had yet to win one.
Ric Charlesworth, who has coached the Australian men’s and women’s hockey teams to a string of world and Olympic titles, once said that a coach’s primary challenge is that of either establishing or maintaining the team’s prominence; in other words, being consistently there or thereabouts.
O’Sullivan achieved that. Only in his last year did Ireland fail to win at least three matches in a Six Nations campaign whereas only twice in his seven-year tenure did Wales win more championship games than they lost — the two years they won the Slam. Outside those snatch-and-run campaigns, Wales have struggled with prominence. Not Ireland. Last week’s display was about pride and prominence, as much as offering promise ahead of the World Cup.
Anthony Daly once said the greatest source of annoyance for Clare’s critics was they didn’t “just feck off back across the Shannon” after winning their first All-Ireland. It was Clare’s greatest achievement too, and Armagh’s, that they didn’t just run off delighted with their one All-Ireland, even if a second eluded them. Brian O’Driscoll might not yet have won a second Slam like Gavin Henson did before skipping off to the Strictly Come Dancing set. Yet 11 years on from that hat-trick in Paris; six years on from Tana Umaga’s spear tackle; three years on from his critics claiming he was finished; two years on from winning his Slam and Heineken Cup; and only three weeks after a tweeter advised him to retire “while we still have good memories of how good you were”; here O’Driscoll still is, that beat-up body creating further great memories and promising more in New Zealand.
Maybe he “should have won more”. But be grateful to have had him at all especially for this long.
* Contact: kieranshannon@eircom.net
