Victim of His Own Success

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Irish Voice Sport

Victim of His Own Success

March 19, 2008

By Cathal Dervan

THE habits of a lifetime are there to be broken to be fair, so Monday’s trip to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, the first in over 35 years at a conservative guess, was a habit breaker just waiting to happen.

Okay, so there was a good reason why I was attending my first St. Patrick’s Day parade since a memorable visit to Manhattan back in 2002 and five very pleasant days in Fitzpatrick’s Grand Central, O’Neill’s around the corner and Barry McCormack’s down the avenue.

Eldest daughter Lia — she’s also the only daughter which probably makes her the youngest as well — was dancing in the parade with her troupe — I think that’s what they call it — from Navan.

In such situations a daddy has to do what a daddy has to do, even if her sense of rhythm and speed of movement was all inherited from her mother and the McCarthys down in Cork.

Camera in hand, I set off for Dublin an hour before the parade and arrived, thanks to traffic and parking restrictions that are normal in our city center these days, 15 minutes after it left Parnell Square, but not before it reached my vantage point at Christchurch.

An hour later we were still waiting for the first signs of parade life but it did arrive and, I have to say, it even made for an entertaining couple of hours as the massive American marching bands — they must each fill a plane on their own — joined forces with local groups and some very colorful visitors from France and Italy.

The entertainment before the parade was also entertaining. Two auld ones across the street from me tried their level best to start a sing-song at one o’clock in the afternoon. When Joe Dolan failed to work the oracle they even turned to “Ole Ole Ole” from our World Cup past in ’90 and ‘94.

That almost worked. I say almost because a young lad beside them, whose dad was probably his age when Ray Houghton was sticking balls in Italian nets, decided to take up the chanting charge.

“Ireland is best, Ireland is best,” he screamed repeatedly for two or three minutes before falling back into silence. Then he tried a new tack and bizarrely added, “And we’re good at rugby.”

Quite where that came from I am still trying to fathom. For a start he didn’t seem the sort of child who is ever going to end up in a rugby playing school. And for another thing the current state of Irish rugby would not allow anyone to suggest Ireland is either “best” or “good at rugby.”

His intentions did serve to prove a point, however. Irish rugby has never been popular in the popularity stakes, if you know what I mean.

The advent of the golden generation, the arrival of Brian O’Driscoll as one of the nation’s true sporting heroes and even the success of Paul Howard’s Ross O’Carroll Kelly character in print and now on stage have all served to popularize the oval ball game.

With popularity, however, comes demands never seen before by what was mostly an elite sport everywhere except Munster.

There is no such thing as a free parade. When a young kid on the side of Christchurch with a strong Dublin accent is espousing the virtues of Irish rugby, you know the game has arrived as a populist sport.

That’s why the tabloids are all over the rugby team and its besieged coach like a rash right now. Irish rugby sells papers other than The Irish Times like never before, but those same papers ask questions The Irish Times wouldn’t have dreamt of asking a decade ago.

As a result of popular opinion generated by the very success Eddie O’Sullivan helped to create and is largely responsible for, the Irish rugby team can now fill Croke Park and the back pages.

That’s why O’Sullivan is a dead man walking as you read this — or an “Ed Man Walking” as the funny headline in Monday’s Star suggested.

O’Sullivan has raised the bar in his seven years in charge, let there be no doubt about that, and he deserves credit for it. He has brought us to the Promised Land that is the Triple Crown three times in that period, but now the bar he raised is just too high for him.

In past times the Triple Crown was enough to virtually guarantee an Irish coach the job for life, but that was before five-year-olds on the street corner could debate the merits of open head and tight head props, rucks and mauls, openside and blindside flankers.

In essence O’Sullivan created the monster that is now coming back to bite him and will cost him his job before the month is out.

Unlike St. Patrick he will never be able to drive the snakes of criticism out of Ireland, nor will the man who succeeds him.

Irish rugby has changed, changed forever. For O’Sullivan it is indeed now a terrible beauty, but one of his own making.

The defeat in Twickenham on Saturday may not have dampened the enthusiasm of the kids who think Ireland are best and are even good at rugby, but it will not save Eddie’s job.

By the time next year’s parade comes around there will be a new kid in town. And a new coach. C’est la vie.

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