PRESENT TENSE: TWO TEAR-RELATED anecdotes from Ireland's Grand Slam win. I've heard three stories so far of men who made their children cry, such was the pleading, snarling, ecstatic, animalistic performance many fathers put in at various points during the last five minutes of the match against Wales. With the exception of one traumatised 10-year-old, the children in question were toddlers for whom this was an experience they can store up and reveal to their therapists in 20 years time. "I've been thinking about what you said about my fear of my father. There is one thing I remember . . ." writes SHANE HEGARTY
The second tear-related story comes from a journalistic colleague who was at the Millennium Stadium and at the final whistle turned around in the hope of finding a particularly emotive Irish fan who could typify the experience. When he looked all he saw were men in leprechaun hats and rugby jerseys, tears running down their ruddy cheeks. It was a wailing wall of green.
The match didn’t matter to everybody. It didn’t matter to everybody on the island, and certainly not to most of those coming to the island. At the airport on Sunday, newly arrived tourists were stopping flag-carrying Irish and asking just what exactly was going on – you know, just to rule out their initial bemused thought that perhaps the Irish, revelling in the “land of a thousand welcomes” stuff, had taken it to a literal extreme for every Yank that walked through the sliding doors at arrivals. Their queries were a reminder that most of the world not only didn’t care about our achievement but was so ignorant of the game and tournament that to explain it to them with any degree of success would require a flip chart, models and a half-hour slideshow.
But the result of the game, and the extraordinary manner in which it was achieved, meant a lot to enough people that it became one of those precious moments of common experience. Similar to Italia ’90, but extended to the entire island, and far more inclusive than Munster’s European wins or any All-Ireland, during which 30 counties’ worth of people become spectators not supporters (unless its the hurling, for which that applies to most of the country from day one, round one).
Saturday was something to be cherished: a moment when much of nation felt wildly happy at exactly the same moment. And almost slipped a disc simultaneously. I know of one person who hurt her back when jumping on her husband as Ronan O’Gara drop-kicked the winning points. Her doctor told her that he’d already treated someone else who had done a leg injury at that same moment. And I know of someone who, immediately after the match, passed an ambulance in which they could see someone being treated for what they presumed was a heart attack. It may have had nothing to do with the match – and let’s hope that the patient had nothing more than a lash in their eye – but the story fits.
In the hours and days following the final whistle, a number of match-related videos were posted on YouTube. Most of them were clips from the game, but there were several videos of people watching the game. So, you can observe the crowds in the Bleeding Horse in Dublin, Fagan’s in Galway, Bar Lusana in New York’s East Village, the East Village pub in Douglas in Cork, Burswood Casino in Perth, Australia and the Cloth Ear in Belfast. There are people in their sitting rooms too.
You could run all of them together, the screen split into a dozen images, and although the decor in the rooms will vary, the reactions of the people in them will not. In each, people grip their beers tight, lean forward as Stringer passes to O’Gara, explode as he scores. There is murmured disgust and deflation as Wales are awarded their penalty; the atmosphere desiccated for a minute as Stephen Jones lines it up. Then there is a slow rumbling recognition that the ball will fall short; and the sound is a locomotive of joy bursting into the rooms. Bedlam follows.
And then, in several of the videos, the loose pandemonium slowly coalesces into a chant. “Olé, olé, olé.” Ah, olé, olé. For a few years there, it had become something of an embarrassment: the anthem of the bandwagon jumpers; a reminder not of the great days of Italia ’90, but a leitmotif for the loser lurking within the Irish; a celebration of mediocrity, of failure dressed as moral victory, of Joe Duffy welcoming back a beaten team at Phoenix Park, of our acceptance that a sound plan for Irish sport involves buying enough inflatable hammers and beer to get us through the month.
But it was always there, lurking in the subconscious, and when Ireland won, in bars across the island, across the Irish world, it was reached for quicker than the pints. And for the first time in almost two decades it was acceptable, for a few hours at least. Because it was a celebration of success, silverware, planning, honesty and effort as much as it was of leprechaun hats and beer and euphoria. Olé to that.
shegarty@irishtimes.com