It’s inevitable that it’ll happen one day. Someone will spot Paul O’Connell and approach him.
They won't say: "Aren't you the fella who won 108 caps for Ireland, captained your country, Munster and the Irish (and British) Lions, won two Heineken Cups, three Six Nations, a Grand Slam and four Triple Crowns and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of rugby union?" Instead it'll be: "Aren't you the Borussia Mönchengladbach lad?"
He went viral and is now known in parts of the world that might still not be aware that a game called rugby even exists.
Lest you missed one of the finest moments in television history, up there with Katie Taylor's London gold and Roy Keane's 2001 tackle on Marc Overmars, Paul was on A Question of Sport when the teams were asked to identify "a sporting venue, team, person, term – anything to do with sport". The answer had 23 letters, but only two were supplied, an i and a g – and from that our Paul guessed, yes, Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Celebrated
His team-mate AP McCoy celebrated like he’d won the Grand National, Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle rolled into one, while his captain Phil Tufnell rejoiced as if he’d made a catch at midwicket (or anywhere) or 10 with the bat.
Matt Dawson
led the standing ovation, Paul tried to look his usual humble self, but it was hard – Borussia Mönchengladbach from only an i and a g? Epic.
Until this moment, many would have put Paul as our joint first greatest sportsman alongside Pádraig Harrington, but he has now, surely, overtaken the golfing man. But Pádraig has been written off before and made mugs of his doubters, so don’t rule out another comeback.
Appearing on The Ray D'Arcy Show, fresh from his Portugal Masters triumph, Pádraig gave us an insight to his extraordinary attention to detail, like ensuring that when he sticks his tongue out when he's putting it must go to the left and not the right.
“There’s a lot in my head,” he said, explaining his need for a lengthy debrief after each and every round of golf he plays. So he rings his wife or his ma, “one of them gets it”, he said, his chat along the lines of “I was unlucky on this hole, three-putted that, I played great, can’t believe this happened, why me, I got a break here, it could be anything like that”.
You’d half a notion that his wife or ma might place the phone on the table and go off and do other stuff, returning half an hour later to ask “So you were happy enough with the round?”
Sacrifices
It was a reminder that great sportsmen don’t just make sacrifices to be great, their loved ones do too.
“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” he said, he’s bored, especially when he’s in America where loneliness sets in. Ray suggested he needed a hobby to alleviate the boredom, like knitting, but you got the sense that Pádraig would endlessly question why it was “one purl, two plain”, and not “two purl, one plain”.
At least there's a fun date up ahead, after his recent success he gets to pay for a night out with his fellow Irish professionals, like Shane Lowry.
Las Vegas? “No – last year we went to the races in Dundalk and the year before we went to the dogs in Harold’s Cross.”
Ray didn't feel that was very rock and rolly, but if he'd seen Tiger Woods's chat with Stephen Colbert, he'd have concluded that it's Pádraig who's the party animal.
How has Tiger passed his time while not being able to play golf? "I applied the same intensity, focus, to Call of Duty. I would spend eight hours a day, I'd get a 30-minute lunch break . . . And when seven-year-olds are beating you from around the world . . . humbling."
Paul would probably say: “Lads, you need to get out more”. To which Pádraig and Tiger might respond: “Says the man who figured out - - - - - - i - - - - - - - - g - - - - - - - .”
