By their deeds are the greats remembered
LET me tell you what victory sounds like. It is a beautiful noise. It is the foxy-headed young lad sitting below me in the west stand roaring out The Fields of Athenry with the wind belting into his face and tears that might be cold and might be joy streaming down his cheeks.
It is all of us who claim belonging to this small island singing with him in the stands or from our armchairs in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Belfast, Newtownmountkennedy, Ballymena, New York, Sydney, Ballina, Athy, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, South Lebanon and numberless other places where green was worn.
I am typing these words into a mobile phone with snow-chilled fingers as the energy of all those Irish voices embraces a team that gave its blood, sweat and tears.
But we are celebrating something more than an adventure of the heart. No longer, not for a long time now, have we been the plucky losers who, in the immortal words of Roy Keane in another place, turn up “for the sing-song”.
We have become the canny Irish, the clinical Irish, the clever Irish, strategic warriors under the guidance of a New Zealander of few words who has brought us to the top ranks of world rugby.
I came to Twickenham as a fan. I am not required to be objective. By God, what a relief. For a glorious 80 minutes the shackles of objectivity could be cast aside.
Like most of the rest of you I was ‘narked’ — in the Cork parlance — with Eddie Jones’s reference to the “scummy Irish”. Only a man deaf to history could have come out with that remark. No coach who had grown up on these islands would have uttered such words. Nor have I ever heard the like from an English fan.
I went to this game in the company of English friends. They are around me now, offering warm drinks and even warmer congratulations. When Eddie’s comments were leaked, I remembered the one fact we all need to recall — especially in this moment of national triumph: in January 1973, as the North drifted deeper into sectarian violence, and after Wales and Scotland had refused to travel the previous season, the English team put fear aside and came to Lansdowne Road. They were given a standing ovation. By their deeds are the greats remembered.
I have been going to international rugby matches since the late 1970s. Back then, I was a schoolboy at Presentation College Cork and we contributed our share of players to the Munster, Irish and Lions sides. One of our boys, Peter O’Mahony, was a Titan yesterday.
But in those days you needed a vocation to keep cheering Ireland sides. Faith in impossible dreams. We were dimly aware that way back in the shadowy Celtic mists along with Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna an Irish side had won a Grand Slam. Myths and legends and the fire not quite extinguished. But our diet was disappointment.
My first game was Ireland v France at Lansdowne Road in 1979 when Dick Spring played at fullback and the great Jean-Pierre Rives led Les Bleus to victory.
Rugby back then was Fred Cogley’s voice on the television. Manly normality and wintergreen in the Spartan Pres dressing rooms on the Mardyke, and the tedium of life in a Republic where nothing was changing for the better. I was a poor player but an enthusiastic cheerleader. Rugby was long trains to Dublin on a match day Saturday. All of Cork, it seemed, crowded into the carriages, joined along the way by the men of Limerick and Tipperary.
I had organised to bring 30 or so of my school comrades to Dublin on the train. We lost several early on due to the effects of strong drink. They wandered into the Bermuda Triangle of pubs along the route from Heuston Station to Lansdowne Road. Two got off the train in Ballybrophy, believing they had reached the Big Smoke.
We have all grown up since then. Porter is still consumed in gallons on match day. But expectations have changed. For a few years after that Dublin expedition, I was a young rugby reporter on the Limerick Leader watching Ireland win the Triple Crown when Mossy Finn from Pres crossed the try line twice, and in 1985 when Mick Kiernan — a classmate of mine — dropped the goal that sealed victory over the English. We missed the Grand Slam when we drew at home to the French. It took another 24 years to claim that mantle. And now we have it once again.
I am frozen and hoarse. I am facing a long walk back to the train at Richmond Station among thousands of other fans. But tonight is time to defy the laws of physics. Our feet will not touch the ground. Watch out for us, the happy band in green soaring in the night skies above Twickenham.