How BOD exceeded great expectations
Don’t worry, you won’t have to endure our particular version of the opening of A Tale Of Two Cities. Not yet, anyway.
We’ll spare you any tortured comparisons between the first sentences of Bleak House (“Michaelmas term lately over... As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth”) and the crowd surging along Baggot Street and environs around 2pm yesterday on the way to the Aviva, and Ireland going down, agonisingly late, to Wales in the Six Nations opener.
Bear with us, though, when we talk in Dickensian terms about Brian O’Driscoll, absent from the Ireland line-up through injury for that game, and unlikely to figure much this season in either national green or Leinster blue.
Given the great man’s accomplishments over the last decade, you may think we’re going to reach into A Christmas Carol — somewhat out of season — and talk about the Ghost of Christmas Past, but it’s the future we glimpsed in the Aviva yesterday.
A future in which O’Driscoll doesn’t figure, something inclined to chill Ireland supporters far more than any nocturnal ghost dressed in a cowl and bearing a scythe.
“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many,” says Dickens, “not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
Well, easy for him to say, particularly as O’Driscoll is now close to the end of a terrific career, far closer than he is to the beginning.
He began early with the hat-trick against France in Paris — Sam Goldwyn would have congratulated him on beginning with an earthquake and building to a climax — and improved. Since then O’Driscoll has been instrumental in practically every significant passage of Irish rugby action he was eligible to participate in.
Often he saw the possibility in an on-field situation before anybody else and acted accordingly, creating opportunity and refusing the orthodoxy of methodical construction. “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this,” says Charles. “That a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
Furthermore... [could we have something on the game and a little less of the great novelists of the 19th century, please? — sports editor] If you insist. But even then O’Driscoll threw a shadow across proceedings [sigh – sports editor].
Take Gordon D’Arcy’s subtle hands on 34 minutes for instance, or his decisive intervention in Rory Best’s try a couple of minutes afterwards. There are hardly 12 months between D’Arcy and O’Driscoll, and it’s difficult to imagine an Irish midfield without either, never mind both, given how long they’ve soldiered together.
Take it one stage further: how many players can you credit with improving their opponents out of all recognition? Jamie Roberts of Wales was generally credited with much the same heft, but not nearly as much deftness, as one of Saturn’s moons up to a couple of years ago.
The difference was a few games spent as O’Driscoll’s wing-man with the Lions in 2009, which saw Roberts reach the level he was truly capable of. Surprised (“It’s in vain to recall the past,” says Dickens, “unless it works some influence upon the present”)?
When Tommy Bowe surged over in the corner 67 minutes into the game it was on the back of strong Irish pressure near the Welsh line. Bowe’s touchdown meant Jonathan Sexton’s conversion was taken near the touchline and drifted wide.
If O’Driscoll had been present earlier in the move, when Ireland could smell the whitewash of the opposition try-line, do you doubt he would have gone over a good deal nearer to the posts? If we lived in America there’s little doubt O’Driscoll’s number 13 would have been retired long ago, and sent to flutter in the rafters and the rigging high above the turf in Lansdowne Road.
But we don’t, which is good. It means others can come and challenge our memories. Fergus McFadden did well yesterday, missed tackle aside. Keith Earls will return to dispute the jersey with McFadden. Other players will wear the number 13. If O’Driscoll’s comments are anything to go by, he’ll be one of them, even if it’s not a long-term prospect. Yesterday was a glimpse of the future, as we said: in the future there’s always possibility. At least we thought so until Leigh Halfpenny’s late heartbreaker of a penalty.
The best of times, the worst of times, as someone once said. You were probably expecting that line for some time.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
