By NZPA
November 11th 2009 @ 2:44am
O’Driscoll buries hatchet with Umaga
Ireland’s Grand Slam rugby captain, Brian O’Driscoll, says he has buried the hatchet with former All Blacks captain Tana Umaga.
This is despite the New Zealander’s refusal to apologise for his part in the alleged spear tackle at Christchurch in June 2005, which put the Dubliner out of the game for seven months.
O’Driscoll’s magnanimous gesture to end the feud took place in France, the Daily Mail reported.
They met by chance during the Leinster team’s pre-season trip to Nice.
“He happened to be in the ground seeing someone and I was on the side of the pitch at the time,” O’Driscoll said.
“I thought, `Maybe, this is the time when you need to be the bigger man and go over and shake hands’.
“I went over to him and did just that. We chatted for a while and that was the end of it.”
At no stage during their conversation did Umaga refer, however obliquely, to the events in Christchurch when the Irishman’s captaincy of Sir Clive Woodward’s ill-fated Lions ended in the first minute of the first Test.
Neither did O’Driscoll.
“To have done so would have been to re-hash the whole thing,” he said. “We didn’t talk about it. It was very much swept under the carpet.”
Their previous conversation, during the heated aftermath of Christchurch, broke up in some acrimony.
At the time O’Driscoll was hurt, the citing commissioner, South African lawyer Willem Venter, decided neither Umaga nor fellow All Black Keven Mealamu had a case to answer over a joint tackle dangerous enough to have dislocated O’Driscoll’s right shoulder as he fell from a considerable height.
Over the years, Umaga has been adamant that he has nothing to apologise for despite the Lions’ anger.
“The sustained personal attack they launched against me was hard to believe and even harder to stomach,” the New Zealander wrote in his autobiography.
“You don’t want to take it personally but it’s almost impossible not to when another player, a guy you had some respect for, attacks your character in the most direct and damning terms.”
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(26)
jus de couchon said | November 11th 2009 @ 6:35am | Report comment
It was clearly seen by anyone who witnessed it to be a criminal assault. To justify it as being part of the game is a nonsense and a custodial sentence should have been given to Mr Umaga and friend as it was an unprovoked assault .
Dean Pantio said | November 11th 2009 @ 6:52am | Report comment
Troll noted. It was a clear-out at a ruck that went wrong. Both Mealamu and Umaga should have been cited for dangerous play, but Willem Venter decided otherwise.
What followed was a disgraceful character assassination and spin doctoring by the Lions coaching and management in general, orchestrated by Alastair Campbell to deflect from the pathetic display by the Lions, who had already lost to the Maori.
It appears that Brian’s self serving personality is brought to the fore again; why would he feel the need to share this with the media if he was “being the bigger man”?
pothale said | November 11th 2009 @ 7:16am | Report comment
It came from a single interview that he did with Brendan Gallagher of the Daily Telegraph. It got nicked and amended/hyped by other papers. If you read the full interview, it puts his comment in perspective. A journalist, writing about his career over last ten years as he gets his 100th cap, was always going to ask him about it.
Whether he should have simply said – no comment – and potentially implying that it was still festering between them, or tell that they shook hands on it and why he did it – is up for debate.
Let’s face it, two A type personalities squaring off to each other, who’s gonna blink first? There’s a pair of them in it.
The topic is dead and buried now – hopefully.
Llew said | November 11th 2009 @ 6:56am | Report comment
Jus – its a hoary old chestnut, and maybe a good illustration of the film cliche that an event can be seen and interpreted differently by everyone who sees it, but I think your depiction of the BOD tackle as a ‘criminal assault’ is just plain daft.
I clearly saw it too – ad nauseum thanks to the Lions PR efforts – and what I saw was two All Blacks clearing a Lions player out of a ruck, each lifting a leg of the player (as is common) as part of the clear-out method, lifting him well off the ground, and then as the ball is cleared and the game moved on, very carelessly letting him go over their shoulders – without even glancing at the player – and moving off towards the play.
To interpret this as ‘criminal’ would suggest that many such instances in a game are ‘criminal’ – for example in the same game when an All Black lock is carelessly tackled mid-air in a lineout by his opposite number and lands heavily on his back and shoulders.
JamesB said | November 11th 2009 @ 10:07am | Report comment
It was a simple clean out at ruck time, which we see in every game, but unfortunately O’Driscoll got injured on this occassion. 99 times out of 100 it would have gone unnoticed, but because he got injured and he was such a key player, it became a huge issue. I have to say they way O’Driscoll carried on afterwards, no doubt egged on by the media, seemed rather childish. You’d never hear a NZ player harping on about this type incident. In NZ we accept these things are part and parcel of a physical sport with huge impacts at the collison area. Last week Brendan Leonard was kicked in the head, but not a word from the AB management. Now lets imagine that was a Welsh player…!
Frank O'Keeffe said | November 11th 2009 @ 11:00am | Report comment
Sadly, New Zealand has a habbit of sweeping matters like these under the rug as JPR Williams noted in one interview a few years ago.
If you criticise a player who complains of foul play you automatically get egged on and called ’soft’. The Dan Carter incident on the weekend was an example of this. It wasn’t a dirty moment and my opinion of Carter hasn’t gone down. But it was a reckless tackle, and as Bruce Sheekly rightly said in another thread, when you throw you arm across someone’s chest like that, it’s likely it’ll slide up and hit someone around the neck. But the defensive manner of some New Zealanders over the last few days has been disappointing, and they’ve quickly started saying so much has been made out of this issue because Wales lost and they feel robbed, which is all crap.
The same thing happened when O’Driscoll was dumped on his head. New Zealanders claimed too much was being made out of it and that the Lions camp were making a fuss about it so as to deflect attention from their terrible 1st Test performance, which is utter rubbish. You can watch what happened to O’Driscoll on youtube and see he’s up-side-down and his shoulder (nearly his neck!!!) makes contact with the ground first. That’s incredibly dangerous.
Call it enthusiasim or whatever, but you have to say responsibility for being reckless.
Good on O’Driscoll for being the bigger man than Tana (who should have apologised).
Frank O'Keeffe said | November 11th 2009 @ 11:11am | Report comment
Gosh the stomach churns when I watch this. He could have broken his neck like that. I’d rather take a Jerry Lawler piledriver than go through what BOD did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsXJyDHFKn0
Jerry said | November 11th 2009 @ 12:25pm | Report comment
That video is laughable. It drips with hypocrisy and sanctimony.
It’s that sort of pious holier than thou crap that leads people to resort to the ‘harden up’ and ‘if you can’t stand the heat…’ arguments.
Darwin hammer said | November 11th 2009 @ 11:22am | Report comment
Give it a rest FFS …. no need whatsoever to to rehash this – if it’s a small part of a larger interview – then ok – but to isolate it and magnify again is against his very quote “To have done so would have been to re-hash the whole thing,” he said. “We didn’t talk about it. It was very much swept under the carpet.”
PastHisBest said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:11pm | Report comment
However DH, he is by the very nature of speaking about it, opening it up to a ‘re-hash of the whole thing’.
I think Umaga couldn’t give a flying f*** if O’Driscoll never spoke to him again, and in my opinion O’Driscoll lost waaay more credibility and respect than Umaga during that saga.
pothale said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:30pm | Report comment
“I think Umaga couldn’t give a flying f*** if O’Driscoll never spoke to him again, and in my opinion O’Driscoll lost waaay more credibility and respect than Umaga during that saga.”
I don’t believe that’s true. If they shook hands on it, and neither spoke about it, that’s the end of the matter. As the reporting headline on the story goes, O’Driscoll buries the hatchet. Story over. Move on. That’s as much a message to media, as anyone else.
Jerry said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:36pm | Report comment
God, I hope so.
PastHisBest said | November 11th 2009 @ 2:07pm | Report comment
Why would he care pothale?
pothale said | November 11th 2009 @ 2:12pm | Report comment
Past – to be honest this discussion is giving more oxygen to a non-story than it deserves. So without intending to be rude to you, this is my last comment on the matter. Story over as far as I’m concerned.
Viscount Crouchback said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:26pm | Report comment
Credit to O’Driscoll for taking such a magnanimous approach. The Alastair Campbell nonsense was always a red herring: he handled it poorly, but if you have done something wrong, you front up and apologise. You don’t run around screaming that the victim is making too much of it.
I am always struck by the deep-seated immaturity of the Lions’ host countries. The behaviour of the New Zealanders in 2005 was embarrassing, and the behaviour of the South Africans in 2009 was little better. I hope that, come 2013, the Australians judge the rugby on its merits rather than view everything through the filter of “Let’s Bash The Empire”.
Jerry said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:30pm | Report comment
VC lecturing anyone for being immature is like Ronan O’Gara lecturing someone for being a crap tackler.
Viscount Crouchback said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:38pm | Report comment
No need for personal insults, old bean.
Jerry said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:41pm | Report comment
No need to be a troll either.
Viscount Crouchback said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:52pm | Report comment
I’m always bemused by people who are quick to label others “trolls” merely because they disagree with them. If you don’t think that wearing white armbands in Johannesburg or Peter de Villiers’ ranting about tutus or New Zealanders reacting hysterically to Alastair Campbell weren’t all pretty obvious examples of “immaturity”, then fair enough – but let’s not label someone a troll merely because he holds a different opinion.
It doesn’t take a sociologist to perceive that the desperation to get one over on the Brits when the Lions come to town is an obvious consequence of colonial hang-ups. There’s a definite “atmosphere” around these series that isn’t always particularly pleasant.
Darwin hammer said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:59pm | Report comment
Come on VC … Woodward and Campbell did more damage to the Lions “brand” than anything the host countries have supposedly got up to … the concept was nearly terminal leading into the most recent series …
Jerry said | November 11th 2009 @ 1:59pm | Report comment
I don’t hold your opinion of the NZ and SA rugby public against you, and that’s not why I called you a troll. I called you a troll cause you rarely contribute anything meaningful to a discussion and instead pop in with your faux imperialistic paternalist patronising failed attempt at a bon mot.
Dean Pantio said | November 12th 2009 @ 12:10pm | Report comment
Troll, troll, troll youir boat.
pothale said | November 12th 2009 @ 12:17pm | Report comment
Now that’s funny.
Can I use that, Dean? With due acknowledgement to its author, of course.
fox said | November 11th 2009 @ 2:05pm | Report comment
Shame on whomever published this story! It is a gratuitous attempt to envoke more outrage over an incident best banished to the dark recesses of history! If any forum contributors suffer a heart attack today how will you ever live with yourself?!
Viscount Crouchback said | November 11th 2009 @ 2:12pm | Report comment
Darwin – Woodward and Campbell made a balls-up of the tour, no doubt, but I did think the reaction of New Zealanders was absurdly defensive and prickly. BOD had every right to be upset, and it seemed to me that the All Blacks cleverly used Campbell’s idiocy to escape all culpability for the incident. A quick apology from Umaga was all it needed; but instead even the great centre himself instead resorted to: “What about Grewcock?”
The one thing I noticed in both SA and NZ was that the locals reacted very fiercely against the great noise and influence of the British media. At times it seemed to become a case of: “Our lads right or wrong”. That’s sport, I suppose, but it left a sour taste nonetheless.
Jerry, I’m not quite sure what you are trying to accomplish by entering the debate seemingly with the sole intention of starting a slanging match, but let’s leave it there. It’s an interesting enough topic without unnecessary and unprovoked insults clogging up the thread.
ohtani's jacket said | November 11th 2009 @ 4:23pm | Report comment
This news is months old. I have no idea why it showed up on the NPA wire or the Roar website now. I can sleep better knowing Brian O’Driscoll has buried the hatchet.