It’s history now, we
Umaga and O’Driscoll call truce over that infamous spear tackle
Emotions were high and we’re very proud men
THE spear tackle which ended Lions captain Brian O’Driscoll’s tour to New Zealand in 2005 was one of the most controversial incidents in rugby union history.
O’Driscoll, competing at a ruck in the first minute of the first Test, was lifted into the air by Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu and dumped head first towards the ground. He was left with a dislocated shoulder and invalided out of the tour.
The incident sparked outrage when the two All Blacks involved escaped sanction. O’Driscoll accused Umaga of a deliberate attempt to injure him; Umaga called O’Driscoll a sook, a cry baby. The bad blood between the two icons has run for 13 years. Until now.
Our rugby correspondent reports on a truce called over a pint in a Dublin brewery. Neil Squires: Why now, gentlemen?
Tana Umaga: It has happened maybe a bit late but we’ve been able to talk about things and say what’s done is done, reconnect and move forward. You get older and look back in life about things that have affected it. It’s something that will always be in our history but we have finally moved on from it.
Brian O’Driscoll: In the environments where we have met up in the past there has always been other people around, so maybe to be able to properly close it off has been difficult. We got to meet up properly and chew the fat. We went to the Guinness Storehouse for a few samples and it was a good environment to catch up without prying eyes. To not have that for three or four hours was great.
You can’t change history. You’d do things differently if you could do them over again but you get one shot at most things. That’s life. We had a great laugh and picked up from before it all happened. Better late than never to put it to bed once and for all. NS: All over a pint? TU: We were able to share a few pints actually. It was a good time.
NS: Did you go into the detail of the incident again? Brian told Eddie O’Sullivan [Lions assistant coach] the day after that he thought he was going to break his neck and die on his way down to the ground.
TU: We didn’t have social media in those days. If we had there would have been photos of the incident and it would have been done. These things happen in the game we play.
BOD: I don’t know what is to be gained from going into the minutiae of exactly what happened. I’ve squared it away that it was an unfortunate incident. As has he. The game and the rules changed thereafter – I was a guinea pig in that. It was going to happen to someone at some stage; it happened to me so, as a glass-half-full merchant, some good did come from it.