The world is watching
We Irish are accustomed to being the underdog. If our rugby team brings global success, it will be the f irst time it has been delivered from the position of top dogs
IT is Saturday 20 October 1991 and I’m on the terrace at the Havelock Square end of Lansdowne Road with my friends. We are watching the quarter-final of the Rugby World Cup and with four minutes to go, as we trail by a point, the atmosphere is electric. Suddenly, Gordon Hamilton scores a try and we’re 18-15 up. The elation is like sherbet on the tip of my tongue, except my entire body is fizzing. We’re going to the semi-final.
Jubilation spreads around the stadium, Heads are bobbing up and down like the balls in a Lotto machine. Seldom, before or since, have I been present to witness an atmosphere like it.
And then, in slow-motion, it happens. Australia get a scrum, the ball breaks to David Campese, he almost makes it to the line, but is pulled down. He manages to flick the ball backwards, though and Michael Lynagh is there to snatch it and make the last couple of metres count. The try, worth four points at the time, puts the Wallabies at 19-18 and our disappointment is like a physical pain.
For the second World Cup in a row, we haven’t made it past the quarters.
Ireland have got that far five times since, but never further, despite stellar line-ups, or line-outs if you prefer, of world-class players. In its own cruel way, this feels like the rugby equivalent of Mayo’s All-Ireland curse, a hoodoo we cannot shake no matter how hard we strive.
This year, though, we dare to dream. We’re No.1 in the world rugby rankings, but we ended up on the dangerous side of the draw. To even escape our group, we came up against No.2, South Africa last night. Next weekend, we face the world No.5 Scotland.
Depending on whether we move to the quarters at all, we will come up against either France, No.3, or New Zealand, No.4. And it is only if we were to get to the semi-final that we might face a lower-ranked teams like No 7 or No 8 in the world. But even they would be respectively our old enemy England and more recent rivals Wales.
So make no mistake, it is a massive hill to climb. Heading into the competition in the past, the fates seemed to have aligned and we thought we had the Midas touch, but it proved to be fool’s gold.
This time, everything feels different. There is a confidence in the squad, and in coach Andy Farrell, that inspires. As a naturally pessimistic race, optimism does not come easy to us. But over the past year, we have beaten all the teams we’re due to face, so there is none of the naked fear that haunted previous tournaments.
We are the top dog and were we to succeed, it would be from a position of strength that very few Irish teams or athletes have competed from – outside perhaps of rowing superstar Paul O’Donovan and the untouchable Katie Taylor.
Now, to be honest, I’m a bit of a hex. I’ve been to away internationals only twice, once in Murrayfield in 2017, when Scotland beat us 2722, and in 2013, when the unthinkable happened.
I had been sent to Rome to cover the election of a new Pope and when Francis duly was announced by the white smoke on the Wednesday, I decided to stay on until Saturday. A friend had a spare ticket, so we walked out to the Stadio Olimpico, where I basically expected an entertaining rout followed by a lap of honour, only to see Italy beat us for only the fourth time and the first in 16 years. Ten years later, they haven’t repeated it.
So when I went to Bordeaux two weeks ago for the first match in this World Cup campaign, I was nervous. Yes, it was Romania, a Tier 2 nation ranked 19th in the world, though even that flatters them and we despatched them with ease, my presence unable to exert its usual malign effect. Typically Irish, we became uncomfortable with the mild humiliation of it and, for the last ten minutes, it was mostly Irish fans cheering the Romanians because we know, in almost every sport that involves a ball, what it is like to be the underdog.
No one took us seriously in 1990, when we set out for Italy and the soccer World Cup and look what happened.
Again, we came within a whisker of a semi-final, only to be denied by Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci, but the national mood was elevated to hitherto unseen levels. The entire country went mad, even though the team did not represent the entire island.
That’s one of the things that makes rugby special. Yes, we might all cringe a little when we have to sing Ireland’s Call (or, as has been the case in France, listen to a choir carve it up like a tough côte d’agneau), but the line about the four proud provinces of Ireland touches a deeper part of us than we might care to admit. At a time when the talk is of an idle Stormont and a teetering Windsor Framework, the rugby team is a force we all can get behind.
That doesn’t just extend to tribal lines, Catholic, Protestant, dissenter, or nationalist versus loyalist, because rugby has often been scorned for its perceived middleclass appeal, the white-collar alickadoos cheering for the ‘goys’ from private schools, as they down their pints of Heino.
In truth, its appeal is much broader, as viewing figures on television surely prove. There were multiple factors in play, mostly of a historical nature, but the Six Nations game against England in Croke Park in 2007 attracted a peak audience on RTÉ of 1,207,000.
I was born and reared in south Dublin, a heartland of rugby, but it played no part in my young life. CBS Eblana in Dún Laoghaire was a soccer and Gaelic school, feeding into the Cuala club in Dalkey. So rugby wasn’t on my radar at all until I made friends beyond the school gates and came to love it.
Over the years, I’ve been to Lansdowne more times than I can count, often reliant on the ubiquitous hip flask to stave off the February and March chill. I have experienced elation watching Ireland and Leinster alike and on occasion queued for the Dart with my heart in my boots too. Sport will do that to you.
This year, though, everything feels different. You won’t find the rugby crowd serenading babies on train in Paris, or fixing punctured tires, or kicking footballs up to balconies on the Boulevard de Clichy. That’s the soccer fans’ job, and they are, and always will be, our greatest ambassadors.
Where it really matters, though, on the pitch, we have the team of the century representing us. We have a script written, one that sees Jonathan Sexton end his career by lifting the Webb Ellis trophy and the country given such a lift. Mount Everest’s record will be threatened.
It is, of course, a dream, but even they come true. And, if we actually do it, if we actually make the final, I promise I’ll stay at home.
Now to be honest, I am a bit of a hex at away matches