Paul O’Connell: our greatest ever rugby player and possibly Ireland’s greatest ever sportsman.
These Rugby World Cup warm-ups carry all the heft that the Waterford Crystal and McGrath Cup campaigns have in relation to determining the outcome of the GAA Championships.
The one thing they crystallise for coaches ahead of next month’s jamboree in England is which fringe players make the cut – and which ones don’t.
But if anyone is watching these matches in the hope of seeing something tactically innovative from any of the Webb Ellis Cup contenders, I’d let that breath out now in case you’re still holding it!
The one guarantee elicited from Ireland’s 16-10 defeat to Wales in Lansdowne Road last Saturday is that we’ll never again see one of the game’s greatest ever players line out on home soil in green again.
That Paul O’Connell was half-embarrassed when taking to the field at full-time (with son Paddy in his mighty grasp) to take the acclaim of both teams and a grateful stadium is in keeping with this great man’s acumen.
I was talking to a friend of mine last weekend about the humility of Kilkenny’s hurlers (a quality I’ve noted in many of Waterford’s emerging talents over the past year, incidentally) and how that humility has served them as critically as their hunger and skill.
No more humble man, in my view, has ever worn the green of Ireland in any code than Paul O’Connell, who, if fate had taken him on another path, could well have seem swum in an Olympic pool for the island he has brought such honour to.
That he will depart the scene in full throttle as opposed to winding down his illustrious career, says as much for O’Connell’s awesome talent as it does for his dedication.
For this is a man whose granite-like determination to eke every ounce of his mighty frame puts him in the same bracket as the worldwide greats of rugby: Colin Meads, Serge Blanco, Martin Johnson, Willie John McBride, David Campese, Richie McCaw, Jean-Pierre Rives, Brian O’Driscoll, Gareth Edwards etc.
In Irish sporting terms, O’Connell is monolithic. I can think of no-one who eclipses him now, not even his magnificent team mate Brian O’Driscoll, and should ‘Paulie’ lead Ireland to something special in the World Cup, then the question of our greatest ever rugby player shall surely have been settled.
I was fortunate enough to have stood just yards from O’Connell (then fully follicled!) when he charged over the line for a try in his test debut against Wales all of 13 years ago.
No-one then could have foreseen that he would emerge to prove as prominent a leader of his team as Martin Johnson did of that all-conquering England side, or as McCaw has proven for the All Blacks.
Yet, for me, O’Connell was at his most inspiring when he returned from injury in 2013 as Munster ground out a famous European Cup win away to Harlequins they surely would not have earned were it not for their totemic Limerick leader.
Irish sporting heroes come no greater than Paul O’Connell, and his namesake Daniel should not be the only man immortalised by a statue on Limerick’s main thoroughfare. And who knows, despite a career full of trophies, and the unique distinction of captaining Munster, Ireland and the Lions, Paulie’s greatest achievement may yet lie ahead of him.
