AS the World Cup kicks off in New Zealand, I must reluctantly agree with reader Peter Glennon who wrote to me during the week questioning the wisdom of our rugby analyst in suggesting (September 2nd) that the Irish team “must plan for the unexpected”.
Yes, in a perfect world, that would be a good idea. But as Peter says, “considering the difficulties they have with the expected”, Declan Kidney and his squad might risk over-stretching themselves if they devote training time to anything else.
Never mind the unforeseeable, for a reminder of the dangers posed by the fully predictable, one only has to think of Brian O’Driscoll’s misfortune when leading the Lions in New Zealand some years ago.
There was, everyone knew, a 100 per cent chance that the All Blacks would perform the Haka before the game. And preparing for this eventuality, the great man decided he would respond by throwing a blade of grass to the wind. It was a poetic and – so he thought – respectful acceptance of the Maori challenge.
But somehow, the gesture got lost in translation. Choosing to interpret it as an insult to their dead forefathers (or something), the home team reacted – seconds into the match – by planting O’Driscoll upside down into the pitch, in an apparent attempt to replace the missing grass. The result was a broken collar-bone and the end of his tour.
I strongly suspect that it was in preparing for the unexpected that, in a different sporting code last Tuesday, the Russians went wrong. Perhaps their canny Dutch coach devoted training sessions to the possibility that Ireland would abandon all caution in a 3-2-5 attacking formation, or that Glen Whelan and Keith Andrews would turn into Johnny Giles and Liam Brady overnight and pass the home team to death.
Whereas of course, tactical genius that he is, Giovanni Trapattoni wrong-footed his opponents by doing exactly what he has done in every other game of his 35-year-long management career, and opting for arch-conservatism.
Worse still for the Russians, Ireland proved just as inept at holding on to the ball as could have been expected – if only the expected had featured in the home team’s preparations. Instead, having clearly not rehearsed a scenario in which they enjoyed a near-monopoly of the ball and unlimited attacking opportunities, they couldn’t find the composure to score.
Back during the Cold War, the Russians mastered a tactic called the “honey-trap” in which a beautiful spy would seduce a well-placed foreigner and steal his military secrets. Well, seduced by Giovanni “Honey” Trapattoni on Tuesday night, the Russians’ offensive capacity was fatally undermined. They woke up Wednesday in an empty bed with two of their World Cup Points missing.
Which is why, getting back to rugby, and Ireland’s group-stage opponents, I think we too should concentrate on the expected: dealing with which – God knows – we have our work cut out.
To this end, it can be reasonably predicted that Australia will run at us from everywhere, trying to exploit their superior flair, and that the other three teams will just try to beat us up. This latter tactic will be good practice if we reach the quarter-finals, where we will probably play South Africa, who will also try to beat us up, only worse.
Should we make the last four, then we will have to play New Zealand. But for the moment, that is still in the realms of the unexpected, and it would be a waste of time worrying about it. If that game does come to pass, however, I predict only two things with complete certainty: 1. the All Blacks will perform the Haka beforehand; and 2. no Irish player will throw grass.
SPEAKING OFhoney traps (sort-of), eagle-eyed reader Paul Clancy has questioned – with alarm – my claim in Wednesday's diary that the 18th-century Franco-Irish soldier Thomas Arthur Lally suffered a "grizzly execution".
“Was he eaten by bears?” asks Paul. And yes, now that I examine the adjective in the cold light of print, that is its appalling implication. But no; I’m happy to report there were no bears involved. Rough job that he made of it, Lally’s executioner was fully human, at
least as anthropologists define the term.
I could pretend that in suggesting an element of grizzliness in Lally's demise, I was referring to the word's root meaning – "grey-haired" – and thus to the condition of the body part he lost in the operation. In support of which plea, I could even call as a witness Shakespeare, who had Mark Antony (in Antony and Cleopatra) say: "To the Boy Caesar send this grizzled head".
Poor Lally was, after all, 64 years old when he died. So I might plausibly have meant it was his head that was “grizzly”. Unfortunately, however, that would be a bear-faced lie. Besides which, a late portrait of the man shows him to be almost completely bald.
No, I’m afraid I meant “grisly”, which is a different word altogether. But in my defence, I plead exposure to a recent news story from Yellowstone National Park, about the first incident of its kind there for 25 years. It happened in July and in case you missed it, it concerned a hiker who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. To a cut a long story short, he did indeed meet a grizzly end.