Argentina 1999 etched in our memories, says O’Driscoll

IRISH rugby has experienced more than its fair share of low points. Forget a dark night of the soul, the men in green have been through enough black moments to put them back to back and form an annus horribilis.

Twickenham in March was the most recent debacle but ask most of the current squad now deservedly glorying in the success of recent weeks and they will tell you that the one utterly godawful matchday moment they have had to stomach was on the night of October 20, 1999.

The venue: Lens. The match: World Cup second round. The opponents: Argentina.

Forget what you hear about professional sportsmen having short memories. Forget what Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan said on Tuesday about not being into grudges. He wasn’t there that night when Ireland’s World Cup ambitions were brought crashing down around their boots.

We lost 28-24 that night in Lens and it still hurts players like Brian O’Driscoll, who will lead us into battle against our nemesis at Lansdowne Road on Saturday afternoon.

“We lost and it was a bitter pill to swallow,” O’Driscoll said this week.

“In those sorts of games you have to take some sort of positive out of it. The positive was knowing that I don’t want to feel like that again.

“It’s probably the worst I’ve felt after a match. The fact that it was a World Cup and there’s only one every four years. If you’re lucky in your career you might get two so to go out as badly as we did was a serious low. It was early on in my international career so it wasn’t easy to take.”

As O’Driscoll hinted, it was not just the defeat but the manner of the reverse that still pains him.

Fly-half Gonzalo Quesada had kept the Pumas ahead in the battle of the boots with David Humphreys until a 72nd minute try from winger Diego Albanese put a knife through Irish hearts.

Quesada sent over his seventh penalty with a minute of normal time on the clock but then a massive hit by front row Mauricio Reggiardo on O’Driscoll handed Ireland a chance to kick for the corner and drive on from the lineout for a match-winning try.

Deep into time added on, Warren Gatland’s side put all 15 players into the lineout. The Pumas pulled it down but a second attempt was equally unsuccessful and, as the referee blew the final whistle, the Argentina side leapt for the skies.

“Of course we should have done things differently,” the Irish centre continued. “I don’t think 13 or 14-man lineouts are the way forward.

“Hindsight’s a great thing but if you look back at the video the obvious place to have gone would have been to go out wide where the numbers were probably less compact than they were when we were trying to maul them over the line from five or 10 metres out.

Another Lens survivor is O’Driscoll’s Leinster team-mate, second row Malcolm O’Kelly and he has equally painful memories.

“It was like a funeral afterwards, one of the worse feelings I’ve ever had as a player. The game itself was very tough and I’d like to think that if we there again we would have won it. But it was just one of those days.

Panic? “Definitely with five minutes to go. Panic was setting in, everything was setting in. We did everything to try and score. We were doing the job well that day it was just that they scored a try and that was the big difference.”

Straying slightly from the management line, O’Kelly said he thought revenge could be a positive influence on Saturday’s rematch, especially since the Pumas beat Ireland a second time and by a bigger margin on 34-23, in Buenos Aires in June 2000.

O’Kelly said: “If you take on board the fact that you’ve lost a couple of games against them you can look at it two ways. You can be negative in that you don’t think you can beat these guys.

“Or you can look it at that for us we’ve developed as a side. I’ve tasted the bitter pill of defeat against them twice so I’m really looking forward to personally lifting my game and playing well against these guys and seeing what it’s like to actually beat them.”

O’Kelly is convinced getting Argentina back to Lansdowne Road can only help the Irish cause. “Buenos Aires was a fantastic experience, it was like being at a soccer game, the crowd was just so vocal and things were being thrown at us.

“I think it was about a half a mile walk up from the dressing room to the pitch, up stairs and around by barbed wire fences before we finally got out into a big bear pit.

“It was very exciting. These are the experiences we have to take in and now let them experience what it’s like to be at Lansdowne Road.”