'He is thoroughly deserving of this honour' - O'Mahony the obvious choice as Ireland captain

GIANT FIGURE: Ireland's Peter O'Mahony. Pic: Dan Sheridan

Sometimes the answer is staring you in the face. For months we speculated on the identity of Ireland’s next skipper. We ruminated over names, picked apart candidacies, and scratched our heads when one thing or another didn’t quite add up in the court of public opinion.

If there was one common thread through it all then maybe it came in the form of the idea that an Ireland captain couldn’t, and maybe even shouldn’t, hold a similar position with their province. Too much on one man’s shoulders and all that.

And so it was that Peter O’Mahony got the nod from Andy Farrell on Wednesday afternoon for the biggest honour in the Irish game: less than two months after it was announced that the veteran would be stepping away from the same role with Munster after ten years.

Inspector Columbo would have solved that one during the opening credits.

“To our new captain Peter O’Mahony, he is a born leader and someone who has been an influential figure for Munster and Ireland for many years,” said Farrell on the announcement of his 34-man squad for the upcoming Six Nations and his new on-field general.

“I am confident that the squad will continue to benefit from his leadership skills, both on and off the field. He is thoroughly deserving of this honour, and I know that he will relish working closely with the wider leadership group and squad over the coming campaign.” 

O’Mahony has led his country before, ten times to be exact. He performed the role for the British and Irish Lions once too, so his credentials have never been in question. This is, after all, a player whose presence has so often proven to be a catalysing one for any team he has represented.

Munster’s sensational Champions Cup win away to Toulon last weekend owed itself to many authors but would anyone play down the fact that the upturn in the province’s fortunes happened to coincide with the return after injury of this 34-year-old phenom?

Johnny Sexton, his predecessor in the role, was 38 at last year’s World Cup. It’s highly unlikely O’Mahony will make it that far, regardless of what happens with his ongoing contract talks, but people used to talk about ‘captaincy material’ and O’Mahony clearly has that more than any others right now.

Leadership isn’t a science, it’s an art, an organic cocktail of attributes that mix in varying quantities. O’Mahony is a class player, a man of huge experience, someone with a tendency to contribute with a defining moment in big games and a character with a look that could kill from 20 paces.

Whatever ‘it’ is, he has it.

The other contenders just don’t have that. Not now anyhow. Caelan Doris is a world-class back row entering his prime, but he played down his chances of the captaincy only last weekend on the basis that it wasn’t his time. There are others with greater claims, he said.

Garry Ringrose and James Ryan are members of the leadership group now, but their appointments as co-captains at Leinster this season maybe told its own story in that neither quite has the imprint to match that of a Sexton or an O’Mahony. To be fair, few have.

Dan Sheehan was another name mentioned. The hooker is 25 already but still has the air of youth about him. 

Other automatic picks, like Hugo Keenan and Jamison Gibson-Park, were never part of the wider conversation. Neither was Tadhg Furlong who skippered the side 14 months ago against Fiji.

This is, despite all that, an interesting choice and one that asks other questions. 

O’Mahony openly pondered his future in the Test arena after Ireland’s World Cup quarter-final exit to New Zealand last October and it isn’t so long since his place in the starting XV slipped from his grasp.

The stunning form post-World Cup of Ryan Baird, and the growing claims of his Munster colleague Tom Ahern, serve as reminders that Ireland have other increasingly attractive options when it comes to an impactful hybrid lock-cum-blindside and time won’t stand still.

Ultimately, O’Mahony’s case is made best by those closest to him in rugby. Munster coach Graham Rowntree admitted in the wake of that win against Toulon at the Stade Mayol that it just “feels different” when O’Mahony is around. Special, was a word used.

What does that echo if not James Ryan a few years ago when the Leinster lock admitted that standards in training were inevitably higher with Sexton about the place? Tadhg Beirne, too, said last weekend that O’Mahony is nothing if not a born leader.

These players don’t grow on trees. Farrell’s take is clearly one of making full use of them while in bloom, but for how long in this case remains to be seen.