A drop of magic leads to 59 seconds of madness

TV VIEW:TRACY PIGGOTT'S pre-match chat with Mick Galwey in Cardiff on Saturday now seems like, ooh, 61 years ago, and that's roughly by how many years viewers would have aged when the man they call Gaillimh responded to a request for a prediction.

“Ah,” he smiled, “a last minute drop goal from Ronan O’Gara will do us.” The MERE notion of that eventuality, well, eventuating quite probably put the nation’s collective heart crossways in its mouth, the prospect of the agony extending that deep in to the evening inconceivably, horrifically gruesome.

By all means, dropkick us Ronan through the goalposts of life, but do it a bit earlier than the last 60 seconds. Preferably with heaps of time left – like, say, two minutes.

Two minutes to go.

Ryle Nugent: “Horan . . . Wallace . . . Ireland in position . . . this MUST be it . . . this MUST be it for Ronan O’Gara . . . drop . . . at . . . goal . . . Grand Slam . . . at . . . stake . . . HE’S GOOOOOOT IIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!”

“YEEEeeeeEEEESSssssSSSS!!!!!!!!!!,” said Tony Ward, leaving us wondering which side he was supporting.

“WHOOOooooOOO HOOOooooOO!!!!!,” said Ryle, ensuring he’d never again receive a welcome in the valleys.

“OOOOOOOOOH!!!,” said Tony, so high pitched it sounded like he’d actually popped.

“WOULD. YOU. BELIEEeeeeEEEVE. THAT,” asked Ryle.

Us: “NOOOOOOOoooooo!” (“But we’ve still got two minutes to go,” whispered Tony, so hushed it sounded like he’d just fainted).

By our calculations two minutes = 120 seconds, which, in the scheme of things, isn’t all that much, except when it’s 120 seconds of excruciating, unendurable, insufferable hell.

Sixty seconds later.

“No penalties,” pleaded Tony, his voice going all tremolo.

“No penalties now,” screamed Ryle, his voice long since gone tremolo.

One second later.

Ryle: “Penalty to Wales.”

The camera picked out Jack Kyle in the crowd, shaking his head like a dog after a swim. We thought of one of Jack’s 1948 team-mates, Paddy Reid, who had reminisced about that Grand Slam-winning campaign earlier in the day with Keith Wood over on the BBC.

He recalled the game in Twickenham, Ireland were leading 11-5, “we had them beaten,” he said. Then Dicky Guest intercepted an Irish pass, ran almost the length of the field to score, it was converted, Ireland’s lead reduced to a point. “We nearly wet our pants,” said Paddy.

Sixty-one years on and, well, we understood the discomfort that Paddy and his pals had endured.

“Wales have a penalty to win the Triple Crown and break Irish hearts,” said Ryle, so dolefully the nation contemplated flushing itself down the loo. “Aw. I. Don’t. Believe. It,” said Tony, the Victor Meldrew of the RTÉ commentary team.

Not that we were clock-watching, but the penalty was awarded with the time at 79:11; Stephen Jones struck the ball at 80:07; it neared the posts at 80:10. That was almost a whole minute. And during that eternity the birds on the trees stopped tweeting and the nation’s heart, by now firmly slotted crossways in its mouth, stopped beating.

Da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum . . .

Yow know that film The Day the Earth Stood Still? Exactly.

“This will be the final act,” said Ryle, “it’s come down to this. All the dreams and all the hopes and all the aspirations of this Irish Grand Slam effort on Stephen Jones making or not making this kick.”

“Be prepared to have your nerve endings put through a blender,” Ryle had warned us before the game, but little did he and we know then that having our nerve endings put through a blender would have been quite a pleasurable experience compared to this.

But all the while, through that lifetime that was those 59 seconds, you knew, come what may, you’d remember it forever, good or bad.

And as the kick approached the posts you fixed your eyes on the touch judges’ flags because, by now, you couldn’t tell what planet you lived on, never mind whether Jones’ effort had gone over.

They crouched, they studied, they exchanged a quick glance, and perhaps prompted by Tony’s strangled cry of “yeeeeEEEEEeeeessssSSSSssssss” they kept their flags lowered, and you exhaled so violently a hurricane would have seemed like a breeze.

Magical.

“Sixty-one years awaiting, how sweet this moment is,” said Ryle, as the nation reached for its oxygen mask.

“Don’t come back with your cameras because we’re lying on the floor,” pleaded Tom McGurk, “Brent Pope is having cardiac arrest at the moment.”

“We’re nearly in tears, it means that much,” said Brent. “Aw, I thought I was going to have another Seamus Darby moment, deprived right at the death,” laughed Conor O’Shea, the Kerry in him still haunted by that last minute Offaly goal in the 1982 All-Ireland final.

(As Lloyd Bentsen might have put it, “Stephen Jones, I served with Seamus Darby: I knew Seamus Darby; Seamus Darby was a friend of mine. Stephen Jones, you’re no Seamus Darby.”) George Hook, meanwhile, was stretched. Declan Kidney wasn’t. “If you have honesty and hard work, God knows what will turn your way,” he told Tracy, his serenity making us wonder if he’d been off powdering his nose for those last couple of minutes.

It left George concluding that “if Kidney had gone for the priesthood instead of teaching, he’d be Pope”. Not Brent, His Holiness. And come to think of it, yes, ‘His Holiness’ will do nicely.

But next time, our beloved Holiness, tell your outhalf to dropkick us through the goalposts of life a bit earlier. Aside from that complaint, thanks for the majestic memories.