Easy to pin hopes on just one sport!
Last Saturday's 45-7 annihilation by New Zealand in Lansdowne Road rounded off a miserable four weeks for Irish sports fans. A new dark age for Irish sport, suitably inaugurated by the blackest jerseys in any code?
Looking at the last month in isolation could give the impression of irreversible and hopeless decline for a country that prides itself on its passion for sport, but therein lies the point. Last Saturday showed the difference between a country with a passion for sport, and a country with a passion for a single sport.
New Zealand provide a good comparison for Ireland because of the two countries' relative similarity in size, yet Ireland were vaporised by the All Blacks, though the latter were 12,000 miles from home. As we're told with numbing frequency, rugby is "part of the New Zealand psyche" "whole nation depressed when losing" you know the drill. The flip side of that equation is a lopside sporting culture. After rugby union in New Zealand, there's, ah, rugby league; after rugby league, there's . . . Michael Campbell. And maybe Edmund Hillary.
Ireland is different. Consider the sports mentioned at the top of this article. We know how New Zealand feel about the Webb Ellis Cup, but how many times have they qualified for the Jules Rimet version, even allowing for their qualifying group including the Solomon Islands? (Once, by the way). How many indigenous sports are played on the North and South Islands, sports whose amateur practitioners set against professionals on an annual basis? That isn't to resurrect the tired old saw, 'if there was no GAA we'd win the World Cup in everything.' There's no GAA in Wales, where the Six Nations champions lost to New Zealand by exactly the same margin that Ireland did; furthermore, the all-dancing Welsh backs of this year's Six Nations didn't cross the All Black try line once.
Those comparisons won't give the Irish team much comfort. Professional rugby is Darwinism in a scrum cap. Excuses aren't entertained. But for everyone else there should be a lesson.
THIS WEEK Paul McGinley, Europe's new Volvo Masters' champion, heads off with Padraig Harrington for the World Cup of golf at Vilamoura. Brian Carney will try to score more tries for Britain in the Rugby League Tri-Nations, so the stadium PA will play "The Wild Rover" when he touches down. Damien Duff will turn out for the most successful football team in Britain, while Steve Finnan will line out for the Champions League winners.
Pat Burke will throw on the singlet of the Phoenix Suns in the NBA. Heavyweight Kevin McBride will continue to work the heavy bag and do his roadwork; home and abroad Irish horses, jockeys, basketballers, athletes, sailors, fishermen, hockey players will all continue to compete and excel.
New Zealand can expect continued success in rugby, but they could do worse than casting a sideways glance. Australia were undisputed kings of sport a few short years ago, unbeatable in practically any endeavour they turned their hands to. However, in rapid succession they lost at rugby league, International Rules and the Ashes, a poor run that seemed to start, oddly enough, with the Rugby World Cup loss in 2003.
Which brings us back rather neatly to our Kiwi friends. For a country so obsessed with rugby to have won one World Cup seems a little underachieving, shall we say.
Then again, the Kiwis seem to have overdone the advice of the man who said the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Most people construe the proverb as favouring the hedgehog, but focusing on one thing can lead to deterioration of the peripheral vision.
Concentrating on rugby to the exclusion of all else makes New Zealand a great rugby nation; is that necessarily better than being a great sporting nation?
Maybe the Irish sporting public are foxes, with an interest in everything. It would be no insult to think them hedgehogs who appreciate the one big thing: variety.
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