Lest we wondered if the RTÉ graphics people had been discombobulated by the crack-of-dawn start to their Saturday, Daire O’Brien reassured us that even though we were only a smattering of weeks away from 2023, we were indeed about to watch the 2021 women’s rugby World Cup final between New Zealand and England.
The tournament was, of course, postponed when you-know-what struck the planet, the final originally scheduled for October of last year.
Was it worth the wait?
Oh Lordy, was it what. “I’m not sure if champagne for breakfast is your thing,” said Daire at its conclusion, “but we’ve just had it.”
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We had too, although while you could pick any number of champers moments as your highlight from a game that produced just the 11 tries, this couch’s personal favourite was when, four minutes from time, an incredulous Fiona Coghlan gasped: “Oh God, THEY’RE RUNNING IT!!”
So, you’re three points up in a World Cup final, the clock reads 76:08, you win a penalty in your own half, so you kick for touch to run that clock down a bit? Hell no, you’re New Zealand – go on Ruahei Demant, you mad thing. You run it, give away a penalty, and bring on yourself three of the most excruciating moments in the entire history of sport. How could you not love them?
Especially when sport can be a touch bedevilled by processes and structures and regimentation and the like, sucking the joy out of what should be a very joyful thing and wrapping chains around players who just want to find their inner Ruahei Demant.
Half-time. “It’s Chaos 19, Maul 26,” said Daire, England’s processes and structures and regimentation leading by seven points.
Lindsay Peat chuckled, having declared her passion for chaos pre-match, therefore wanting the hosts to prevail, Hannah Tyrrell and Paula Fitzpatrick nodding with no less passion, “head says England, heart says New Zealand”, they said.
“Surely we can’t have a second half that matches the first,” said Hugh Cahill as we resumed; seconds later Stacey Fluhler scoring a try that had you genuflecting in front of your alarm clock, ever grateful that it woke you up in time to see her do her thing.
“I think that answers the question,” said Hugh, the second half putting the first in the ha’penny place.
All Fiona could do was purr. Even if she had earlier insisted that a maul can be a thing of beauty, Hugh delicately pointing out that she spent the bulk of her Irish days at front row or prop, so her opinion should be taken lightly.
We have to talk about Stacey Fluhler, though. That smile when she’s jigging and reeling through opposing rearguards? Like she’s kid in a sweet shop. “She’s literally the smiling assassin,” said Hugh, and she literally is, her offload for what proved to be the winning try …. ah here.
Lindsay, Hannah and Paula were tasked with analysing the unanalysable – Lindsay confessing that she had been howling like a hyena in those closing bonkers moments, chaos finally prevailing over, well, the thing of beauty that is the maul.
“If you weren’t enjoying that I don’t know what’s going to make you enjoy a game of sport,” said Fiona. Too true. Glorious, crazy, kamikaze stuff.
The only thing that rivalled the game on the smile-producing front was Rhys McClenaghan’s appearance on the Late Late Show, the Down lad bedecked in gold when he turned up a week after being crowned king of the pommel horse at the World Championships in Liverpool.
“At what point did you think you had a world champion on your hands,” Ryan Tubridy asked Rhys’s Ma Tracy, who was in the audience along with his Da Danny.
“I think we had some clues before we even took him to a gym,” she said. “He was walking on his hands and somersaulting off the sofa – they were the red flags. We put him in a gym because it was much safer than doing those things in the livingroom.”
Next time your kid walks on their hands and somersaults off the sofa don’t be afraid, crack open the champagne, you might have a Rhys McClenaghan in the making.
