The time has come to think the unthinkable

YOU can stand there on the strand.

You can shout and you can wail, you can implore and command and not one difference will it make. The waves will keep on coming and the tide on with them. What King Canute learned all those years ago we know only too well.

That time – and the tide – is set and that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. We can rationalise and long finger unpalatable truths, delaying until another day that which we’d prefer not to confront.

That’s the position Irish and Munster rugby have long found themselves in. We think of him as an immovable part of the landscape, hewn of granite, worthy of all the Superman-wears-Paul-O’Connell-pyjamas gags.

The trouble is the only place Paul O’Connell is truly immutable is in our imaginations. The forces which Caunte failed to tame apply to him just as equally as everybody else, as hard as that might be to imagine or accept.

Accept it though we must for in six months time O’Connell will likely have played his last game in the green of Ireland and another eighteen months after that again (if not sooner) his last game of professional rugby.

We as fans and observers are simply not prepared for that. O’Connell himself isn’t prepared for it – no sportsman or woman operating at that level is ever full prepared for the end – but the question has to be is Joe Schmidt prepared? Or for that matter is Anthony Foley?

Both are and both are not. Both know the end is nigh. Both know they have to plan for it. By the same token neither can be fully prepared for it when it finally does happen.

Schmidt can develop other Irish second rows. Foley can fast track academy players or possibly sign back somebody like Tralee man Ultan Dillane – a product of the Munster Academy and a great prospect – from Connacht at the end of next season once O’Connell’s contract at the province expires.

He can do that and have his plans in place and, yet still, none of it will compensate for the void O’Connell will leave in the dressing room. The guy is a born leader, in deeds and words he inspires.

In the build up to this year’s Six Nations The Times of London carried a profile of O’Connell with the claim that, on occasion, the Limerick man reached such rhetorical heights and stirred such passions before games that grown men openly wept.

We don’t doubt it, you can easily imagine being inspired by Munster’s number five. That kind of passion and drive – and sheer raw ability – has made him feared and respected in equal measure across Europe.

And coveted too? Surely he must have been over the years. Throughout it all he remained that rarest of creatures in top level sport, the one club man. It’s hard to imagine him in anything other than the red of Munster (or the green of Ireland).

His achievements with Ireland and Munster vindicate his decision to remain on Shannonside. He reached the top. He won Grand slams and Six Nations and Triple Crowns. He won Pro 12 titles and Heineken Cups.

Staying close to home, training in the grounds of the college he attended, he became the best he could be. He became an icon, an inspiration, a man who teammates would walk through walls for because he walked through walls for them.

On Tuesday morning it was reported that O’Connell was the number one target of French super club Toulon – winners over Leinster in the European Cup semi-final last weekend and now on the cusp of a remarkable third European title in-a-row.

Would it break your heart to see finish his career in sunnier climes than rainy old Limerick? It shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t. The hoary old chestnut about the man owing the club nothing has rarely been as apt as in this situation.

Whatever about that a move for the big man to the south of France has to be considered unlikely. He’s got a contract with Munster until the end of next season and has already hinted that he may yet hang up his boots at the end of the World Cup, by which time he’ll be thirty six years old.

Meaning that by the time he got to Toulon – or any other number of French clubs said to be interested in his services – he’ll be almost thirty seven years of age. Fair enough he’s playing remarkably good rugby for his age (or, indeed, any age), but it cannot continue forever.

We can’t be greedy and expect him to carry on and neither can he. He’s an incredibly brave man and there’s no doubt he could continue to play until that age. Whether or not it’d be wise for him to do so is another question entirely.

Fourteen or fifteen years in the pack for club and country is long enough for any man, even one as hardy as O’Connell. For that reason, and for no other, we hope he remains a one club

man.