The Future is Now - O'Connell Injury the End of the Golden Generation

Who remembers Ireland beating Romania at Lansdowne Road on November 26th, 2005? Jerry Flannery does; it was his first cap. Andrew Trimble might, as he got two tries that day.

But what makes the game stand out now, as news breaks that a knee injury sees Paul O’Connell ruled out for the rest of the Six Nations, is that routine autumn international was was the last home competitive match that neither Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell nor Ronan O’Gara started in the Emerald Green of Ireland.

There were summer tours to Argentina, Japan and the States that didn’t feature either BOD, ROG or POC, the Initials Gang of the Golden Generation, but generally whenever Ireland played in the last thirteen years one of those three was there to build the team around. One of those three played in 133 out of 146 international test matches. All three started in fifty of them, and they shared a pitch 68 times, counting appearances from the bench.

The last Six Nations game in which Ireland did not start at least one of the Initials Gang is so long ago the Championship was still played among Five Nations. Ireland lost by seventeen points to Scotland in Murrayfield on March 6th, 1999, the final game of that year’s Championship, and exactly thirteen years ago today to the day. The co-incidence is so great it makes you feel the Awesome Hand of Destiny, and shudder at your chances against All-Seeing Providence.

The final fixture of that 1999 season was a home game against Italy, who were due to make the Five Nations Six the following year. Brian O’Driscoll was on the bench that day, and stayed there. O’Driscoll won his first cap at Brisbane on the summer tour of Australia that year. Ireland got pasted but a legend was born.

O’Gara won his first cap the following year, against Scotland in Lansdowne Road on February 19th, 2000, and Paul O’Connell made his debut against Wales in the 2002 Championship. O’Gara tussled with David Humphreys for the outhalf’s jersey in the early part of his career while, Superman pyjamas or no, it took Paul O’Connell a while also to claim his pace in the second row.

Both O’Gara and O’Connell started on the bench when Martin Johnson punked the IRFU in the Grand Slam Game at Lansdowne Road in 2003. Humphreys played ten, and the locks were Malcolm O’Kelly and Gary Longwell. O’Driscoll had no challengers, and still doesn’t.

That 2003 Grand Slam game provides a good benchmark for judging when what’s commonly known as the Golden Generation began. Keith Wood was at the end of his career, raging at the dying of the light. Wood was a true great of Irish rugby, but his career was half and half amateur and professional. The alchemy happened to late for him.

The Golden Generation of the Initials Gang were the front of house players during the rugby boom in this country that coincided with the Tiger. There were other players there, of whom people would have fond memories – John Hayes weeping at every Amhrán na bhFiann, David Wallace, Gordon D’Arcy, Shaggy. The bitterly unlucky Peter Stringer, the man whose career suffered the most from the 2007 World Cup nightmare and who was among the least to blame. But the Initials Gang were the difference makers and one stood head and shoulders above the others.

Brian Moore made the point in the Telegraph that Ireland could have won on Sunday if Brian O’Driscoll had been there. Ireland could have won the Grand Slam in 2007 if Brian O’Driscoll had started against France. And if he’d been around in 1641 maybe the great man would even have given Cromwell a run for his money.

The Golden Generation should have won more, but we are grateful for the Slam they did win, and for the provincial success they enjoyed. Neither is likely to come this way again.

The game is evolving as quickly as ever, and the advantages Ireland enjoyed in the span of the golden generation, from the presence of one of the greatest ever to run with the ball to the way the international club competitions fell right for us, are unlikely to last. We are lucky to have seen the days of glory when we did.

FOCAL SCOIR: Player stats from Stats Guru at ESPN Scrum, a genuinely outstanding resource.

Post Saeculum Aureum: Where to Now for Irish Rugby?

Ireland’s World Cup was a failure. Anything you read elsewhere, about great memories and wins over Australia and the rest, is all blather.

Look at the picture of Brian O’Driscoll at the post-match press conference. He knows better than anyone just what the loss to Wales means. And it’s better for the nation to digest an unpalatable truth and move on than to remain in permanent denial.

This is the end of the golden generation. They shone their brightest in the twilight of their days, fighting on and on against time’s fell and inevitable hand. The golden generation were already over the hill when they won the Grand Slam two years ago. For them to still appear at the World Cup and to threaten so much is astonishing.

Even the term golden generation is misleading. It’s been O’Driscoll and the supporting cast. He had able subalterns in O’Connell and O’Gara but Ireland without O’Driscoll over the years of his reign were like low-fat milk or decaf coffee. More or less pointless. No emerald comet ever shone so brightly and for so long as O'Driscoll. He gave everything he had, and nobody can give more than that.

The depressing thing about the O’Driscoll era in Irish rugby is that the team didn’t win more. One Championship, a blessed Grand Slam, is not enough return. Celebrating Triple Crowns while Wales, England and France all won multiple Grand Slams was pathetic and betrayed a hopeless lack of ambition.

The wins over understrength and overconfident Australia and exhausted Italy in this World Cup were illusory. They simply papered over cracks. And when aging Ireland met young and hungry Wales there was no contest. Ireland were blown away by a much better team.

Seven countries have had podium finishes in the World Cups so far – New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, France, Argentina and Wales. Even Scotland managed to win a quarter-final, once. Ireland never have, and struggle to get out of the group half the time.

This time Ireland topped the group, and still couldn’t progress. The Irish rugby community tends to stiffen with pride at the thought of the successes of Munster and Leinster in the Heineken Cup, and expects that to transfer internationally. Maybe having only two first-rate club sides in our domestic rugby is actually a sign of lean times ahead.

And leaner they’ll get, not least when it makes more financial sense for the provinces to bring in specialist tight head props, openside flankers and stand-off halves from overseas than to suffer the mistakes of up and coming Irish players who must learn their trade.

In theory those young Irish players can learn their trade in Connacht, the “development” province. As such, you’d think all Connacht players should be Irish and under-25, with some leeway for local men to build a support base. Here’s the Connacht rugby squad – how do you think that one’s working out?

Rugby has had ten years in Ireland like it has never enjoyed before. The question facing the IRFU now is do they push on and grow the sport in the country, or settle back to the comfort of the alickadoo community?

The horrified and short-sighted response to former Minister Eamon Ryan’s proposal that Heineken Cup rugby should be free to air suggests that the IRFU are unaware of the need to keep promoting the game. Travelling hordes supporting Munster was always very well when it was novel and money was flush, but that’s not going to happen for a few years. There are dark times ahead, and the IRFU ought to prepare properly for them.

One way to start would be by giving the smug self-satisfaction a rest and publicly bemoaning that the golden generation didn’t win as much as they should have, and if Ireland's greatest ever player wasn't let down by his home union.

What would be very revelatory and cathartic would be if the IRFU came out and said that Ireland could have had Warren Gatland as head coach for the entirety of Brian O’Driscoll’s career, and we shot ourselves in the foot big time there. An Spailpín Fánach shan’t be holding his breath.

Metal Fatigue - Has Irish Rugby's Golden Generation Turned to Rust?

So this is it, then. Butch and Sundance are in Bolivia, Sam and Ilsa are at the airport, Romeo and Juliet will live happily ever after at Mantua. Time is being called on Irish rugby’s Golden Generation, and this Six Nations Championship is surely their last hurrah, their last chance to finally close a deal.

Eddie O’Sullivan, head coach of the Irish rugby team, will name his starting XV for Ireland’s first game of the 2008 Six Nations at half-past one this afternoon, and Eddie is under a little bit of pressure – this time last year, he was Lions coach-elect; now, he’s a man with a reputation in tatters, facing an expectant nation and surely aware that two of his guests this year, Mr Nathan Hines of Scotland and Mr Warren Gatland of Wales, will be rather looking forward to renewing acquaintances with the loquacious Corkman.

So what’s Eddie to do? The sad fact is, there’s nothing he can do. O’Sullivan’s religious commitment to short term goals means that, as the nation expects change after the horrors of the World Cup campaign, Eddie now finds himself in the position of Old Mother Hubbard. Where he hopes to find the cupboard stacked to bursting with pastas, pulses and high carb foods, he finds only a few tins of Heinz beans, and a shameful packet of Super Noodles, hidden at the back for emergency munchies.

An Spailpín Fánach hadn’t quite realised just how very bare the cupboard is until the week before last, when a good friend of this blog and a great rugby man forwarded me his team to face Italy at Croke Park this coming Saturday. And what was noticeable about it was that the usual suspects were all there, just as they will be tomorrow when Eddie announces his team. Maybe Eoin Reddan will be in for Peter Stringer, even though Reddan suffered rather at Munster’s hands last Saturday week in Thomond Park; the lesson of the World Cup is that when something goes wrong, Strings is to blame it seems.

But otherwise, the team picks itself, really. Geordan Murphy may be as popular with Eddie O’Sullivan as Miss Angelina Jolie is with Miss Jennifer Aniston, but with the Piper Hickie retired and Shane Horgan injured, Murphy is there by process of elimination. Andrew Trimble on the other wing, Dorse and BOD in the centre, yadda yadda yadda. In the pack, despite the good press he gets (really, reading the Irish papers, one could be forgiven for getting the impression that the Leinster back row is comprised of Fionn MacCumhaill, Cúchulainn and Mannamán Mac Lir), chances are Jamie Heaslip will not start on Saturday, actually, and the only change will be Mick O’Driscoll understudying for Paul O’Connell.

So, although we can expect huffing and puffing about the team selection and questions about why Heaslip or Luke Fitzgerald aren’t starting, the fact is that while those young men may be playing well, they are not challenging the incumbents for their positions on the national team. At all. Brian O’Driscoll might be careworn and weak from toil and disappointment, but he’s still the most talented player in the Six Nations. He’s going nowhere. You could drop D’Arcy, put Trimble at twelve and one of either Rob Kearney or Luke Fitzgerald on the wing, but really, how much of a difference would it make?

Golden generations do not come this way often. Just for pig-iron, An Spailpín went surfing for the Irish team that started the Six Nations – or Five Nations, as it was then – against Scotland ten years ago, on February 7th, 1998. These are they:

Conor O’Shea; Richard Wallace, Kevin Maggs, Mark McCall, Denis Hickie; David Humprhies, Brian O’Meara; Reggie Corrigan, Keith Wood (c), Paul Wallace; Paddy Johns, Malcolm O’Kelly; David Corkery, Keith Dawson, Eric Miller.

Not quite a golden generation. And a controversial selection at the time, because of the amount of new and untested players – O’Shea, Maggs, Hickie, Humphries, O’Meara, O’Kelly, Dawson. Try picking a best-of team between those and the Irish XV that faced Argentina in the final game of the World Cup. Here’s my stab at it:

Girvan Dempsey; Richard Wallace, Brian O’Driscoll, Kevin Maggs, Denis Hickie; Ronan O’Gara, Eoin Reddan; Marcus Horan, Keith Wood (c), John Hayes; Paul O’Connell, Donnacha O’Callaghan; David Corkery, David Wallace, Denis Leamy.

A bit harsh on Miller, a bit kind to Richard Wallace, maybe. The Maggs/D’Arcy debate is too long to go into here, but otherwise the choices seem clear. The Golden Generation dominates. And that’s what we mean by a Golden Generation – they stand out in the parade of history among those that have worn Emerald Green, not only because they had exceptional talent, but because they all arrived at the same time. But the Last Post is blowing for the Golden Generation now and An Spailpín is most mortally afraid that not only have the Golden Generation left it behind them, but misguided selection decisions during their reign, when the autumn internationals and summer tours were cynically used for CV padding rather than future planning, mean that Irish rugby will be in the doldrums for quite some time. The Golden Generation has not delivered, and over-reliance on too small a core of players has cost Ireland the future. Brent Pope told Tom McGurk on the telly the other night that he believed Ireland could win the Championship, that they were ideally placed. If we were to search Brent Pope’s effects, would we find a bookie’s docket for Beef or Salmon to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup in the optimistic Kimi’s wallet?

John O’Mahony likes to quip that the opportunity of a lifetime only lasts as long as the lifetime of the opportunity. The opportunity is on the life-support machine now and if Nick Mallett’s gamble on the tyro Italian half-backs pays off on Saturday at Jones’ Road, the Golden Generation could be on the scrapheap even sooner than worst fears would indicate.





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