DUNGANNON is the last place you want to spend your weekend in, but that’s where I was coming from when I heard the news. The terrible news.
The paper had sent me to the dark bowels of Tyrone to cover a hurling match which left me little option but to listen to the Ireland v France rugby match on the car wireless on the way home. It sounded like a bruising encounter. Turns out it was a war.
Usually I get to watch the rugby if not at a stadium then on a swanky big TV with my father, my brother or some drunken middle class friends. But last Sunday I was alone, cut adrift from the world. And helpless.
We all knew it was coming. But just like with any other tragedy, we clung to the last fibres of hope, praying that Paul O’Connell would spring a dramatic recovery and drive on for the World Cup glory his legacy deserves. Please not Pauly, not the big man. I half expected the rugby colossus to cut off the bad leg at half-time and come hopping out for the second half. “It’s only a scratch,” he would have scolded at the medical team.
Unfortunately however, it wasn’t to be and the merciless domain of sport has claimed yet another warrior. But the memory of his contribution in a green jersey will endure forever and we won’t forget the memories.
A few days later Paul O’Connell lifted himself out of Ireland’s hotel into the Cardiff sunshine on crutches with the rest of his team-mates shuffling behind him as though they were following the funeral cortege. This was no way for it to end but at least he went out fighting; he went out as a winner in a war with the French.
The old saying goes – don’t cry that it’s over, smile that it happened, and an emotional Warrior’s Code has clung to that philosophy all week.
Most of us will have far more vivid memories of O’Connell winning the European Cup with Munster and the Grand Slam with Ireland. We will not easily forget his battles against Victor Matfield in the bruising and cruel series defeat the Lions suffered against South Africa in 2009 or of him playing valiantly as, four years later, the Lions won the first Test against Australia. O’Connell broke his arm that afternoon. He played on and he missed the last two Tests. But he remained a cornerstone of that victorious Lions squad. Remember that notorious video clip of O’Connell urging his team mates to put the ‘fear of God’ into their opponents, and meaning every word?
His international career would have ended on a glorious World Cup peak if he could have led Ireland to the final at Twickenham on 31 October. Instead there will be no fairytale in this unforgiving sport. “I don’t really believe in fairytales,” O’Connell once said, “even though it feels like I’ve been lucky enough to live through a few. However it ends, I’ll feel lucky.”
The luck turned against the mighty Munster man at the end. But when he rises from his hospital bed and the hurt fades, I think he will feel fortunate to have enjoyed such a remarkable career. The rest of us are privileged to have watched him from a distance. As for me a mere mortal, I just count those O’Connell memories and feel lucky all over again. Argentina wouldn't have happened on his watch.
The Viking
Anyone who has ever played team sports has had a player in their team that, maybe not quite in Paul O’Connell’s league, but a man they’re glad they are playing with and not against. A man that when the going got tough, he’d produce his best. A player who’d put his head in where you wouldn’t put a shovel. And if things threatened to get feisty, he would be in the thick of the action.
For me it was always my brother Simon. Technically younger than me by a year, I always looked up to our ‘Sig’ on the soccer or Gaelic football pitch. Sig had no shortage of skill, but what he always brought was a blazing passion for the game. Even at 5-0 down in a match my brother would still be looking to empty an opponent for a short cut, and the yellow cards were never far away from the referee’s hands.
With his mane of long blond hair, his beard and his all action style, my brother soon got the nickname ‘the Viking.’ And you’d always walk out onto the pitch with your chest out if the Viking was by your side to do battle. He was the beating heart of our team for a decade and more, and while the need for a hip operation brought an end to his career, at 42 he still hasn’t ruled out a comeback if he ever gets that old hip sorted.
Footballers across the North West are bracing themselves for such a day.
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