Back in July 08, right before this season began I did a post entitled “How Will BO’D be remembered?”
I asserted that our esteemed international rugby captain should in no way be assured of a starting spot on the Lions at the time and the thrust of my argument was in this statement :
…I believe the upcoming season is crucial for BO’Ds legacy. He needs a string of outstanding performances, he needs his name regularly in the back page headlines, he needs to be the inspiration to meaningful silverware for his teams.
Well we had the wonder try against Wasps. A clever little shimmy to go over versus France. A sprint the length of the field in Rome.
And on Saturday, the pièce de résistance to grace Ireland’s Six Nations swansong from Croker – an 80 minute display that was rugby’s answer to cricket’s “a captain’s innings”. So now I can’t see how McGeechan could possibly leave him behind.
Sure, ROG wasn’t at the races with the boot. If his misses had gone over it would have been a 12-point victory just like I predicted. But if this is a team which has its eyes on winning it all, it needs to know it can do so even when we’re not firing on all cylinders.
You didn’t have to be wise enough not to put tomatoes in fruit salads to know that England were going to do all they could to frustrate us on the day, and in my view, they did a pretty good job of it all told.
Our skipper seemed to bear the brunt of their attention. First Flutey rings his bell. Then Armitage gave him a block which had me out of my chair ranting and raving at the television screen, though sadly I wasn’t able to persuade the ref to produce his card.
But despite O’Driscoll constantly holding his head, he wasn’t afraid to put it down and charge at the English defence to touch down for the match-winning score, which turned out to be the difference.
And as for his drop goal…well if the sheer opportunism made it sweet, the execution made it sublime. I don’t get the rules of rugby enough though – seemingly there would have been a yellow card for an Englishman if he had missed? Surely if there’s an infringement worthy of a card it should be issued regardless???
Now…as for overall performance, well, I really hope that Declan Kidney has seen enough of Paddy Wallace to realise he’s not the man to have at centre. To bring home this particular bacon, it’s time to reunite Drico and Darce.
Remember, it was the Ulsterman who coughed up the ball late on and it eventually led to their try which made it so close. So he’s had his 80 minutes now, coach, ok?
Other than that, I see no reason for this team not to remain focused and get the job done in both Edinburgh and Cardiff. And nice and all though the Grand Slam may be, I don’t know about you but the Championship itself would do me just fine.
It looks like my 40th birthday, which is the day the potential Six Nations decider between Wales and Ireland is played, is going to be one hell of a day.
