BOD - The Hero!

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BOD - The Hero!

Next weekend while nine front line Welsh players rest, Declan Kidney will once more ask the same players to do duty against Scotland. If Ireland accomplish the Grand Slam and do it with the same fifteen on duty then it will be a tribute to luck, conditioning and courage. In what one hopes will be the deciding game in Cardiff, the home players will have had three weeks of rest, or what passes for rest in professional sport. In contrast the Irish hopefuls will have to drag weary bodies for the fifth physical contest in seven weeks.

If Brian O’Driscoll physically survives to lift the coveted trophy then it will be a testament to physiotherapy, medical and fitness talents amassed by the IRFU for the care of their prized assets. However, more than anything it will be a tribute to the extraordinary courage and commitment of the captain.

For everybody in possession of a bus pass, Jack Kyle remains the greatest player ever to wear the green shirt of Ireland. In 2009, the Ulsterman may not only lose the membership of the last Grand Slam team but hand over the palm of the finest exponent of the art of rugby union football. Modest as ever, Kyle will probably say that it is about time, but like Mohammed Ali, the “the greatest” is a job for which many are called but few are chosen.
The O’Driscoll career has not been a succession of highs and perhaps it is the lows that have defined the man not for playing the best football of his life but rather making the greatest contribution to the Irish cause.

Great Irish players have invariably reserved had their finest moments when on tour with the Lions. Kyle mesmerised the All Blacks in 1950; the teenage Tony O’Reilly burst ion the world stage in the South African odyssey of 1955 and repeated the feat four years later in New Zealand; and Keith Wood gave his most disciplined and physical displays for the Lions under Ian McGeechan in South Africa.
O’Driscoll ripped Australia apart in the first test of 2001 and came home to adulation and fame. His elevation to the captaincy for the ill-fated tour under Clive Woodward was a certainty but unlike the coach who parlayed the disaster into fame and fortune, the captain returned injured and with his future in doubt. Many players might never have recovered not so much from the physical hurt of the injury, but rather from the mental damage of courting possible catastrophic injury and a life in a wheelchair.

However he also displayed immaturity by staying on the tour and allowing himself to be used by the coach to deflect criticism from the dreadful selection and awful displays of the team. Woodward and his PR guru shrewdly kept the story of their captain in the headlines as the team imploded to the worst defeats in Lions history. The media gobbled up the news and pictures of the stricken captain, the beautiful girl friend and the unsporting All Blacks. Not for the first time in his career one wondered to whom was the young man listening for advice.
Doubts about his captaincy skills have persisted throughout his time in charge at Ireland. He has always been unthinkingly loyal to his coaches. Following the Woodward debacle, the captain clearly failed to stand up to the excesses of Eddie O’Sullivan. As the Irish team moved inexorably towards monumental failure in the Rugby World Cup in France, O’Driscoll simply tried harder to win the matches on his own, rather than lead the team. There was no sign of maturity as he berated Peter Stringer for an intercept pass in the full glare of the floodlights. Many of us wondered whether the captain would go down with the sinking coach.

For two years, O’Driscoll failed to fire for Leinster and Ireland. Watching him during the Heineken Cup before Christmas it was obvious that the appetite for risk and responsibility was absent. All too often he hid on the narrow side when the ball was likely to travel to the opposite wing. He remained defensively superb but there was no cutting edge. Without O’Driscoll at his best, province and country suffered.
O’Driscoll is the heaviest man in the Irish backline and dwarfs his centre partner Paddy Wallace by almost three stones. In fact amongst the forwards, he rivals David Wallace on the scales. The work in the gym has allowed him to survive the awful physical punishment to which he exposes himself, but the extra avoirdupois may have taken the edge off his pace No sprinter has won the 100 metres sprint at the Olympic Games weighing over 15 stones. Then again Usain Bolt did not have to survive the equivalent of three car smashes on his way to the victory rostrum in Beijing.
Last November, Kidney’s decision to reappoint the Irish captain smacked of the coach playing politics; instead the he was part of the rehabilitation of the centre as he had been for out half, Ronan O’Gara after the horrors of France.

Kidney saw sooner than most of us that there had been a sea-change in the maturity of his captain. Gone were the trendy haircuts, the wispy beards and the crass product placements at after-match interviews. Gone too was the “Posh and Becks” images in the glossy magazines; O’Driscoll was growing in to the role of the professional sportsman and keeping his private life in perspective. However for Kidney to succeed in his desire for a Grand Slam, his captain had to play and to lead. The Irish coach was prepared to subjugate his own place in the spotlight and allow his captain to regain his confidence.

O’Driscoll now leads as opposed to captaining Ireland not by virtue of his playing skills which were obvious when O’Sullivan first appointed him but by his commitment to the cause, his courage above the call of duty, and his willingness to place his own ambitions on hold for the good of the team. Not only is his position secure under Kidney but he has forced his way into McGeechan’s thoughts for leadership of the Lions.
In just two weeks Brian O’Driscoll may take his place in Irish sporting history. He may also supplant Jack Kyle as our greatest ever player, replace Karl Mullen in the captaincy leader board and assume the iconic warrior status once the prerogative of Fionn McCumhaill. I for one will be delighted to have been wrong.