Paul O’Connell: The Colossus who came to epitomise a golden generation

Alas and alack, there will be no Indian Summer on the Côte d’Azur. Regrets, he’ll have a few, right until the anti-climactic end and that is indeed a shame. But Paul O’Connell can ride off into the sunset and reflect proudly on a 14-year professional career that assuredly established him as simply the best Irish forward of the professional age or perhaps any age.

For sure, there will indeed be those regrets, most notably four World Cups in which Ireland never once progressed beyond the quarter-final stages.

This was up to and including his own cruelly ill-fated denouement as captain at last year's World Cup when he sustained the hamstring injury in the victorious pool decider against France which ended his tournament and, ultimately, his career.

There were also three Lions tours, including a series defeat under Brian O'Driscoll (briefly!) in New Zealand in 2005 and as captain in South Africa in 2009, before his contribution to the winning series in Australia in 2013 was confined to one Test.

Even then, Warren Gatland’s appreciation of O’Connell’s leadership qualities was such that he insisted O’Connell remain on for the remainder of the tour.

But no career is complete without losses and setbacks and in an injury-bedevilled career, he resiliently returned for more each time, until yesterday. Having reached the Holy Grail of Ireland's first Grand Slam for 61 years in 2009, there was the entirely fitting reward of captaining Ireland to back -to-back Six Nations titles in his final two seasons at the helm under Joe Schmidt.

O’Connell gave such a tour de force in his final campaign that he was, deservedly, voted the 2015 RBS Six Nations player of the tournament at 35.

There were also three Triple Crowns before that Grand Slam and having been an integral part of Munster's breakthrough Heineken Cup triumph in 2006, he was captain for their second cup two seasons later as well as two league titles that followed.

Indelible imprint

More than anything, he left an indelible imprint on the

Munster

and Irish number five jerseys. He was a colossus, a wonderful lineout exponent, an unstinting carrier and tackler, who led defensive lines into battle, cleared out rucks, poached and came up with all manner of big plays at big times.

Thomond Park was his coliseum, and driving back Sebastien Chabal always springs readily to mind.

Mindful of that set-to with Jamie Cudmore as well, O'Connell was as tough and hard as they get, but fair and sporting.

Inspirational for crowd and team-mates alike, he was a natural born leader of men in deed and word. If that didn’t work, as Ronan O’Gara once said, “one look from those eyes” usually did the trick. Packs and even teams gelled so much more when their ‘daddy’ was amongst them. As an aside, he was also a truly honest interviewee.

His timing was pretty good too, arriving on the international scene in 2002, just as the emergence of a golden generation helped to transform Irish rugby.

Although they will lament that they didn’t achieve more, O’Connell was in the vanguard of Ireland’s rejuvenation and ala Brian O’Driscoll, he helped to generate a new found global respect, which applied to both of them individually and collectively for the Irish team.

But time waits for no man and even Superman eventually was forced to give in to his body. Yet, even at the age of 36, that still came as something of a shock. That was the word used by O’Driscoll himself yesterday when speaking on Newstalk at lunchtime.

“He was the sort of person and character that nothing was impossible, and even at 36 years of age and with a hamstring tear off the bone you thought that of all the people who could come back from it, it was definitely Paul O’Connell.”

Reflecting on the turnaround in Irish rugby with the emergence of a new breed of player in the 2000s, O’Driscoll added: “When Paul then came in I just think he drove that standard to another level altogether. What set him apart was his constant need to get better every single year on year; always trying to hone skills, his physical attributes.

“He was such a stickler for taking the right things on board and he was away ahead of everyone else in Ireland when supplementations starting coming into it, even things like multi-vits and making sure he wasn’t getting common colds like everyone else. He was professionalism personified and I think he brought that through until the very last when you saw him in a green jersey back at the World Cup.”

“He was a tough, tough player but he always shook your hand afterwards. He had a really nice demeanour about him, a humility, and not a forced humility or a fake humility. It was a proper humility and I think you can see that in the semi outpouring of love for him over the course of the World Cup and now again today because he was a really likeable personality on top of being a phenomenal rugby player.”

O’Connell thus misses out on the financial bonanza which would have come with his two-year sojourn to Toulon, as well as the cultural and rugby-playing experience he’d always wondered about.

Presumably, there is some kind of insurance cover for the way his career ended, especially as it was on Irish duty, although his age profile means the maximum pay-out is believed to be €35,000.

There will also be the Government tax refund on the ten most remunerative years of his career.

More experience

Coaching one day? One always had the feeling that his intended Toulon sojourn was, akin to Ronan O’Gara, a means of accumulating more experience with a view to stepping into coaching.

For the moment, he might well take a break from the game now. There are sure to be television punditry and corporate speaking gigs if he is of a mind, but ultimately it would be no surprise if he brought his knowledge and exactingly high standards into coaching.

As a captain of so many teams for so many years, he was something of a quasi-coach anyway. And what player wouldn’t run through a brick wall for him any less than when he was a player.

“Did you put the fear of God into anyone?” O’Connell once famously intoned. Well, he certainly did.

Some man. Some player. Some career.