Paying tribute to Ireland’s centenarian

 

Roar Guru

By pothale, 11 Mar 2010 Pot Hale is a Roar Guru

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 Brian O'Driscoll, Ireland, Rugby Union, Six Nations

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This Saturday afternoon, Brian O’Driscoll will captain Ireland for the 63rd time and earn his 100th cap for his country as he runs out onto Croke Park to play against Wales.

The Irish centre has been playing for over a decade in the professional era, and has won many plaudits (and some brickbats) for his performances on the rugby pitch for Leinster, Ireland, the Lions and the Barbarians.

Of course, he’s a fellow countryman of mine, but he’s also a highly-regarded player globally by players, coaches and fans alike. Since he emerged into the Six Nations spotlights with his hat-trick performance against France, and into the wider floodlights of global rugby during the Lions tour of Australia, he has gone on to win over thousands of Irish fans in the last decade, and has been one of the best recruiting forces for putting rugby at the heart of Irish sport in the last decade. Ask any Irish kid who plays rugby, who they want to be like, and nine times out of ten it’ll be O’Driscoll they name.

Australian great, Tim Horan, who O’Driscoll rates as one of the best players he’s every played against, had this to say about him this week:

“As soon as he touched the ball you could see how much talent he had. In my time playing rugby and watching rugby he was certainly the best centre — by far. Jeremy Guscott was one of the best attacking players I ever played against but Brian O’Driscoll had the all-round package. He understands the game. The great players seem to have a lot of time to make decisions on the field and he has that. He reads it better than most guys. You watch him in a game — he doesn’t run to where the ball is going, he runs to where it’s going to end up.”

O’Driscoll’s trademark swerving runs, grappling defensive tackles, and eye-catching tries are captured in countless YouTube videos. Defence coaches and videos analysts readily admit that they spent hours watching how he performed in a game to work out how to neutralise him, often at the expense of using two players to cover his slippery tracks on the field.

He became a target for special treatment – and not the caring kind. As one former Welsh defence coach said this week, “We kicked off to Brian just so that we could give him a bit of treatment — and I don’t mean illegally. You want to make him work, take some juice out of the tank. They do it in cricket, don’t they? Go for the captain…. but he’s a tough player. Multi-skilled and a great attitude. No quarter asked or given.”

Tana Umaga might be another who would nod in agreement to that defensive objective after his infamous tackle during the Lions tour of NZ which led to a lot of bad blood between the two, though O’Driscoll eventually patched things up with the Toulon-based assistant coach last year.

Umaga has long left the international scene, but O’Driscoll has remained in place with the World Cup 2011 fixed in his sights before he retires from the game.

On the pitch, he’s single-minded in purpose, his reading of the game is second to none, and is always ready to put his body into the mix, no matter the danger of injury to himself. Some would say, he dragged his team-mates over the line during last year’s Grand Slam, scoring the critical try when no one else looked like getting the job done – as England, France and Wales know to their cost.

In the week’s that’s in it, I thought it worthwhile to doff my hat to one of Ireland’s most illustrious sportsmen, as he dons his 100th cap for his country.

Slainte! Mr. O’Driscoll.

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