Donncha O'Callaghan turned up on The Ray D'Arcy Show on Saturday night and talked about life at Worcester Warriors. He's their resident dinosaur, he said. At 37, he has more in common with the fathers of some of his team-mates than the players themselves.
Malcolm O'Kelly, he told us, asked him "why are you still doing it? Why would you still want to put your head between two asses and push?" And his brothers saw his last game and said "it was like watching the last 20 minutes of Marley & Me – 'somebody just put him down'."
But he’s squeezing the last drop of rugby out of himself before he has to call it a day. He admitted, though, that having watched that afternoon’s tussle in Dublin, he was kind of relieved that his international playing days are done.
“Unbelieeeeeeeevable,” he said, “second half I felt like putting in my gum shield – and I was just watching it.”
It was, indeed, quite competitive. But not since November 24th, 2013, had the All Blacks beaten us, so not one little Kiwi three or under had ever witnessed their countrymen getting the better of Ireland. It was inevitable enough, then, that they would come here hungry, super intent on ending that one-match losing streak.
Ominous
“I don’t think focus will be a problem,” Steve Hansen told Claire McNamara pre-match, in a slightly ominous, threatening way, like the price our lads would pay for Chicago would be a highly hefty one.
Talk is cheap, though. The only thing that surely mattered going into the game was that Joe Schmidt’s lads weren’t complacent against opponents they had mullered so recently.
The RTÉ panel, literally frozen to the spot on the side of the pitch, didn’t quite view the contest in that manner, guessing that the visitors would prove quite formidable this time around. And when Beauden Barrett found his inner Wes Hoolahan and located Malakai Fekitoa rampaging in a forwards direction, a bit like a James McClean on the loose, that was us a try down after four minutes.
After that, Donncha was in danger of being asked to tog out, so many of our men having been eliminated, with Robbie Henshaw, Johnny Sexton and CJ Stander hobbling from the scene when the clock hadn’t travelled that much past 20 minutes.
By now you started wishing the undersoil heating had failed so that the pitch would have been frozen. That way we could have finished 2016 with a 100 per cent winning record against this lot.
“It’s a real barnburner,” said Eddie O’Sullivan at half-time, he, Brent Pope and Shane Horgan struggling to catch their breath. That could have been the hypothermia, though.
Big naughty
Over on Sky, icicles began to form under Gordon D’Arcy and Sean Fitzpatrick’s noses too, so James Gemmell directed his chief query to Paul O’Connell, he being a man who laughs in the face of sub-zero temperatures. Had the All Blacks been a bit naughty, James wondered, in terms of eliminating opponents and doing fouly things whenever Ireland were in danger of scoring a try (we’re paraphrasing here).
Paul grinned. And purred. “I think it’s a really respectful performance from New Zealand,” he said. “Two of the penalties they gave away were really cynical, they were brilliant – they led to six points for Ireland, but it could have been 14.”
“Brilliant?” James chuckled. Gordon and Sean would have too, but by now they felt cryogenically frozen.
The TMO must have too because the referee opted not to disturb him to check for a forward pass in that third All Blacks try that tied up the game.
“We poked the bear in Chicago, and gave it another right yank here – but not to be,” said Daire O’Brien, our two-in-a-row hopes dismantled.
There was one last meaty Irish tackle to come, though, Claire asking Hansen about his side’s discipline issues and edgy tackling. And she asked again. And again. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” he said, “do you want me to tell you we’re a dirty side, or something?”
Claire missed her chance, she should have said “you don’t need to tell us, mister”.
Oh well. How about a best of three? With a defrosted TMO next time?
