Ireland calls to Chicago for unforgettable Soldier's song
“I have seen this movie before and it’s bloody horrible.”
So said South Africa’s iconic flanker Schalk Burger after his side lost by two points to the All Blacks in the Rugby Union World Cup semi-final in Twickenham a little over a year ago.
Words to that effect (and, yes, significantly more vulgar) flashed through this columnist’s mind when New Zealand reduced the deficit to 33-29 with a full 16 minutes left on the clock in last Saturday night’s historic 29th encounter with the Kiwis.
“Sure if we couldn’t hold on to a five-point lead in the Aviva with the clock gone into red three years ago, what chance is there of us holding on to a four-point lead with 16 minutes left?”, I queried in my most Doubting Gerry voice, amidst Mullingar’s rugby-loving fraternity in the town’s undoubted number one oval ball hostelry. Oh me of little faith!
Oh to have been in Soldier Field, Chicago last Saturday afternoon as 111 years of pain (Payne?) belatedly healed.
And what an especially magical moment to see our very own Westmeath man Robbie Henshaw score the 'no-way-will-we-blow-this- lead’ match-winning try.
However, I can claim to have attended the only other Test match when the All Blacks failed to defeat Ireland back in January 1973 at what then just plain old Lansdowne Road (and, in hindsight, it was a very plain arena when compared with its ultra-modern replacement).
An awestruck teenager almost witnessed history at his first international. Indeed, reviewing brief clips of that game over the weekend would suggest that a TMO at the time would have needed a few minutes to determine whether Tom Grace’s try was legal as his touchdown was a matter of inches in play.
'Inches’ is also the word used to this day relating to the margin of Barry McGann’s subsequent missed conversion and the scoreboard remained at 10-10.
Any of the games between the two countries in the intervening 44 years which I have managed to witness in the flesh have seen the men in green hammered, and the fear of another mauling by a team who had won an astonishing 18 straight Tests prior to last Saturday meant that I chickened out of even a modest bet at hugely attractive odds of 10/1 (minimum).
That mini-regret, however, is very mini when compared with the Kiwi punter who lost 100,000 NZ dollars at 1/2 on his side remaining unbeaten for the rest of 2016!
Of course, mention of Burger above inevitably brings back memories of Rugby Union’s amateur days when pints and burgers were often part of the regular eating habits of even international players.
Nowadays, the gap between small rugby-playing nations like Ireland and obsessive countries like New Zealand has undoubtedly narrowed due to professionalism and all the preparation (including dietary advice) which goes with that.
I once saw some foreign sports guru or other on an RTÉ chat show suggest that we play too many sports here to be really competitive at the top level in anything other than Gaelic games!
This text arrived from another sports fanatic on my phone on Sunday: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the past two years you have seen three events which you thought you would never see in your lifetime – Westmeath defeating Meath in the SFC; Westmeath U21 hurlers beating Kilkenny; Ireland overcoming the All Blacks.”
Spot on – and in less than two years, in actual fact - 17 months to be precise. And if you extend that to 19 months, Westmeath’s minor hurlers went down and defeated Wexford on their own patch in May 2015.
If you have patience, sporting dreams actually do come true!