O’Brien ready to put a halt to Gulliver’s travels

HE’S a powerful back-row and an explosive runner who has become a cult figure among his supporters and the subject of tribute videos on the internet.

No, not Sean O’Brien. Meet Mamuka Gorgodze.

Fans in Montpellier call him Gorgodzilla. Followers in his native Georgia prefer Gulliver. Though 6’4” and over 18 stone, he has a mean turn of pace and good hands but his popularity is built on a penchant for confrontation.

Postings on YouTube are replete with images of the 27-year-old boxing the head off some poor unfortunate or other, although the scariest scenes are those where he flings opponents to the ground like skittles despite being stationary.

Kevin McLaughlin has seen the footage and is duly impressed.

“We have done a fair bit of homework on him. He’s huge, he’s a little bit taller than me but he’s 120 kilos, so that just shows how fucking huge he is,” he said.

“On top of that, he is very important in the lineout to them and he’s one of their main restart takers so he is fast and he is quite agile.

“He is a very destructive runner when he gets a run-up at people as well, but we are very keen to close down the space and chop him down early. That’s the only way to play him, you have to play him on the ground.”

The prospects of Gorgodze going up against O’Brien in Leinster’s European opener at the Stade de la Mosson tomorrow are giddying.

It is a case of, to butcher an old phrase, an irresistible force meeting an unstoppable object. O’Brien hit the nail on the head when describing the Georgian giant as the heartbeat of Fabien Galthie’s team. In one sense, Gorgodze is similar to Montpellier’s Sebastien Chabal but he is far more of a ‘Beast’ than the hairy Frenchman who is more of a one-trick pony.

More than one team found it took only one big, early hit on Chabal to land a blow of critical proportions to Bourgoin, Sale, Racing Metro or France but O’Brien described Gorgodze as a player who can’t just be shut down.

Such players can, however, be curbed. The European Player of the Year knows only too well after the disappointment of defeat in last month’s World Cup quarter-final when Wales applied the brakes to his and Stephen Ferris’s blockbusting form with tagged tackles, high and low.

“There are a couple of things [you can do],” said O’Brien.

“You can use your feet a bit more and your evasiveness but it’s a hard tactic to get away from or combat. If someone chops your ankle you’ve nothing left and that’s what you have to do nowadays.

“When a line is coming at you and the tackler himself is going to come and chop you it’s harder to chance an offload maybe because there’s other people round and it’s maybe a 50-50 pass if you do let it go.”

There is one more way.

As Leinster and Ireland have found through the years with Brian O’Driscoll, gaps tend to appear when a team’s defensive efforts are concentrated on one man.

O’Brien saw another example of that in New Zealand when South Africa’s Schalk Burger offloaded the ball to an opponent before making contact.

“I don’t think he ever passed the ball before this year,” he joked.

It is all part and parcel of the challenge for a player who has raised the bar for himself with each passing week. With O’Driscoll sidelined for the foreseeable future, there is room for his influence to grow off the park as well.

“It is a role I like. I like that type of leadership role. Brian is a big loss there but it gives the younger lads a chance, I suppose, to step up to the mark. The likes of Fergus and Eoin O’Malley, they are both good at talking as well.”

Tomorrow, it will be action that counts. Not words.