SIX NATIONA: GERRY THORNLEY on why the Grand Slam would put the final seal on Paul O'Connell's place among the Irish greats
THERE ARE many reasons underscoring Ireland’s craving for a Grand Slam today but aside from blessed relief from our general woes, the main one would be to see a tangible reward for the so-called golden generation. The players themselves probably hate that description, but approaching the 50th and last game of a decade which has seen Ireland win as many matches as the French, and more than anyone else, two players would assuredly have fitted that description any time, any era, any generation.
If Ireland can’t win a Grand Slam when they have Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll, you wonder if they ever will.
It’s hard to believe Irish rugby has produced a better back or better forward, certainly not in the same generation. But the only way of fully satisfying their own craving for success would be a win today.
That Ireland have a shot at glory today would not have been possible without a whole host of factors and individuals. But none have done more than O’Connell and O’Driscoll, who have produced four big games apiece.
O’Connell has never seemed more of a force of nature than this season. His line-out work has been even more imperious than ever, likewise his ball-carrying, and it’s also clear the extra work spent on handling skills with Tony McGahan at Munster has paid off. He is, as Stephen Ferris said during the week, Ireland’s “go-to player”. If in doubt, pass it to Paulie. If in doubt, throw it to Paulie. If in doubt, where’s Paulie?
Meeting up with him earlier this week, he seemed incredibly relaxed given the week that’s in it, chatting with the same honesty as you invariably get from him on the pitch. He’s a credit to his family and his Munster roots.
Twenty-nine years old, at the peak of his career perhaps, with 60 caps to his name and Heineken Cups with Munster, for the second of which he was captain. So you’d imagine he might not be operating under the same, seemingly almost demonic desire for success. He denies it, but he clearly is.
“I’d definitely rather be younger and have a lot more time left in it, because I’m enjoying it more than ever, which is the most important thing. Yeah, but it isn’t a bad place. People look back and say they’ve no regrets. I wouldn’t look back and say I’ve no regrets. I think there’s things that you just have to accept, that this is part of the process even though they were big disappointments at the time and you would have done things differently.
“But you appreciate that some of the things you’ve done subsequently may not have happened without those disappointments. But I’d like to think there’s a lot more to come.”
Or, as a true disciple of Declan Kidney would put it – “you learn more from your defeats than your wins”.
“That’s what people don’t realise sometimes, that no-one’s career is up, up, up, up, up, up. There are ups and downs, and that’s what makes people good decision-makers and good people to have on the field with you; the people who have been through all the bad times and the good times as well. That’s important.”
So, while he might like to be starting out on the journey and have a longer road in front of him, he also has a far sharper radar for the potholes and the bends. This, after all, is a team man honed, to some extent, by the individualistic drive he took to golf and swimming in his formative sporting years.
“Oh yeah, everything you’ve done up until now is learning for your next game. It’s as simple as that, and it’s strange but I think the more you go on the more you realise how much there is to learn. When I was young, I suppose I was very forthright in my opinions. I still am probably, but I do realise there’s an awful lot left to learn in terms of the psychological part of the game, the tactical part of the game, everything down from fitness, skills. It seems the older you get the more you realise there is to do.”
In his book, Ronan O’Gara occasionally refers to his team-mate as Psycho O’Connell. David Wallace and others talk of being on the end of the O’Connell scowl if they mess up a line-out call in training. You wonder how he feels about his mates portraying him as this slightly demonic or psychotic, ultra-driven professional?
He looks down and laughs. “That’s all a bit of a laugh. With us, if you get a slag and you get ratty about a slag it sticks. Maybe I did at the start, but I find it funny now.”
But, he says, they’re all the same, it’s just that he and [Alan] Quinlan wear it on their sleeves, whereas “people would have the likes of Wally and Dunners down as happy-go-lucky guys; they are competitive, driven, edgy guys at training and on the pitch, but I suppose the public don’t always see that.”
Munster’s first Heineken Cup was formed on a huge reservoir of emotion built up over previous near misses. The second win felt so different, he says, that it gave them a new level of confidence and this season they’ve learned how to peak for nearly each game, without having to dip into the emotional well off the back of a loss, or on a revenge mission.
“For the first time with Munster this year that hasn’t been there, and it’s been very interesting from a sporting concept figuring all that out.”
Now in his third season as Munster captain, he reflects on that first, difficult year and says: “I think I probably didn’t understand the whole way that captaincy worked. I think I had to figure it out for myself and I probably used to take a lot on myself when I didn’t need to.
“I think the more important you think the role of captain is the harder you make the job for yourself. The more you rely on other people and realise their importance, the easier the job becomes.
“So the first year I definitely found the job hard. I probably didn’t think about it enough in terms of what it takes to be a captain, so this year I’ve enjoyed it immensely, really immensely.”
He’s also much more comfortable assuming a leadership role with Ireland, as one of O’Driscoll’s main lieutenants. “He’s very measured and lets me do my kind of thing no matter what.
“Sometimes I lose it and I’d say Brian would look at me and think that’s not the way he’d handle it. But he just lets me off and when he does need to talk his is a fresh voice, and vice versa.”
As for the player, O’Connell says of O’Driscoll: “First and foremost, with so many teams their best player is often the guy you target in defence. So I think when you have a guy whose team need him on the attacking front but also then need him on the defensive front – and he does all the hard work better than anyone else on the team – that’s massive for a team.
“I think that’s why all the old-school kind of Munster guys always respected him. He never struggled to win those guys over because wasn’t just throwing the miss-passes and making the breaks. He was busting his hamstrings doing these ridiculous poaches with 20-stone guys trying to knock him off the ball. So straight away he has respect from everyone.”
In contrast to the great one’s meteoric rise up the international ranks, O’Connell’s was more of a slow burner, but looking back, he still can’t believe how lucky he was, how so many things fell into place at the right time.
He’d played under-10s to 12s with Young Munster, concentrating on golf and swimming until resuming rugby with Ardscoil Rís at 16.
“And if I hadn’t gone back at 16, it would have been very hard to go back at 18 or 19, and I was very lucky to get into Irish Schools and once your name is in the hat there coaching at Irish schools level is class.”
On the back of that came the Munster under-20s and the Ireland under-20s. The way he describes it, it’s a bit like a production line, once you hop aboard the only way is up.
He sat on the bench for Young Munster for a year after school, and cut his teeth in the Munster Junior Cup, which Munsters’ won, and had three pretty full seasons with his club, “important times” on his learning curve, coming up against old-school coaches and players, while still reaping the trappings of the Academy. The makings of him in many ways.
“The AIL has to be a cornerstone for people coming through,” he says with utter conviction. “It was for me. Things like going up playing Ballymena away. Playing against Mary’s, with Mal [O’Kelly] and Trevor Brennan, was phenomenal for me at 19 or 20.”
He came into the AIL at the right time too, when the Munster forwards were all returning to the club game with new ideas, new lifting techniques or whatever, and O’Connell was playing with or against them six or seven times a season.
“I didn’t go in like [Anthony] Foley did at 18 into an absolute bloodbath of an AIL.”
Even when breaking into the Munster pack he found himself surrounded by seven internationals all the while, in time-honoured fashion, biding his time.
“We were chatting about this last Sunday over dinner, and we were talking about what a big jump it is for the Academy guys, and it’s only the guys with real, massive mental strength that really rate themselves.”
He cites Donncha Ryan, Keith Earls, Tomás O’Leary. “Like, you’ve got to be so confident in your ability and so mentally strong to make that jump, whereas for me there were so many little stepping stones.”
Some days that formed him stand out. Of his Munster debut, a friendly against Bath, he says, “I had an absolute shocker” and recalls a restart reception slipping through his hands, bouncing off his knee and travelling forward 20 yards. His competitive debut, as a late sub in the first Celtic League game of the 2001-2002 season away to Edinburgh, he remembers more fondly.
“I stole a line-out, with five minutes to go, made a carry, kind of step-stepped a guy and made about eight or nine metres. I think we won a penalty off it or something and I remember Quinny patting me on the back.
“I think Quinny said something about me in the huddle as we were waiting for Rog to kick the penalty. That for me . . . I remember going in and getting my phone out of my bag before I changed to ring home, because it wouldn’t have been televised or anything. Gaillimh, Claw, Frankie, Wally, Quinny were all playing. Dunners had just come on five minutes before me. I don’t even remember the name of the ground.”
His try-scoring debut for Ireland would follow in February 2002 at home to today’s opponents, but days like that were as much the making of him as the 2003 Grand Slam shoot-out against England. He still recalls coming on with the score 18-6 and it finishing 42-6.
Ireland are, he says, “much different” from what they were that day. “I don’t even remember what I would have been thinking back then. Niallo was probably hoping I’d make an impact and maybe I was just happy to be coming on.” Somehow you doubt it.
“I suppose we’ve grown up. It is a big game at the weekend but it’s just a game still. When you’re young you say in interviews ‘we’ll just take each game as it comes’ without probably appreciating how important it is, but I think probably we’ve been doing that.”
So much of what they do now is player-driven, whereas then, he says, the older guys had to be cajoled into it. And as for 61 years. “There’s just been so many big games now, you know what you have to do and we’ll go out and do it, and hopefully we’ll come out the right side of it.
“I don’t even know how to explain it, in terms of why we aren’t over-awed. Some guys maybe are back in their rooms but there’s just been so many big games and maybe in the past [Irish] teams didn’t have as many big games behind them.
“You need to seize momentum. Their game is about momentum and pressure, and we can’t let that build on us.
“Very often pressure makes you produce big games. I don’t think it’s something that should make anybody freeze, I think it’s a great situation to be in because everybody will be looking to bring absolutely everything they have to the game.
“Y’know, family, the motivation of playing with friends, winning with friends, the fact we haven’t done it in so long, you bring everything you have to the table on these big days and then hopefully because of that you produce a big performance.”
Seize momentum and seize the moment. No better man.
Factfile
Date Of Birth: October 20th, 1979
Birthplace: Limerick
Height: 1.98m (6ft 6in)
Weight: 111 kg (17st 7lb)
Club: Young Munster.
Province: Munster (97 caps). 15 tries. Two Heineken Cups.
Honours: Ireland (61 caps). 6 tries. Three Triple Crowns. British and Irish Lions (3 caps).
