No, but seriously – how few players could Ireland afford to field and still beat Wales this weekend? And would they even all need to be rugby players?
Could we, for example, get by with a few of the Kiwis and Aussies, maybe keep Peter O’Mahony for vibes and fill out the rest with people from Dancing With The Stars? Let’s have Kayleigh Trappe, Jack Woolley and Rhys McClenaghan in the front row. Could Salomé Chachua do a job at 10?
I picture a second half in Cardiff with a steaming Welsh pack grabbing each other’s shoulders and shouting, “heave!”, only to be pushed backwards by an Irish scrum powered mainly by Jedward’s hairspray. Or perhaps we go the whole hog and put out a Sevens team. Craughwell GAA won the Kilmacud Hurling 7s last summer – maybe we give them the gig?
Bold and brave team selection from Ireland and Wales ahead of Six Nations clash
Bottom line, the Off The Ball (OTB) thing going viral is very funny. We can all agree on that, right? One minute the lads are shit-talking Wales off the top of their heads – kidding-not-kidding about whether a 13- or even 12-man Irish team would beat them – and next thing you know, there’s otherwise sane people all around the Six Nations accusing Irish rugby of arrogance. This is objectively gas.
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Arrogant? Irish rugby? Say it ain’t so!
Rugby in Ireland has always seemed like such an unassuming milieu, filled with hardscrabble, down-at-the-heel types. And now you’re telling us that some of these people are, in fact, full of themselves? Well, knock us down with a feather.
The best part is that it’s not the Ireland team, it’s not the management, it’s not even the hip-flask and sheepskin brigade who have brought these allegations of hubris down upon the nation. Rather it’s three lads from the rugby hotbeds of, eh, Sligo, Mayo and Kildare.
And not even posh Kildare. Ger Gilroy is from Athy, for God’s sake.
(This is no slight on Athy, by the by. The opposite. This column knows Athy. This column married into Athy. It might be the least arrogant place in Ireland. Head into Frank O’Brien’s some night and try to find yourself some arrogance. This is not a notions type of town.)
Anyway, I say we double down. You want arrogance, Wales? We’ll show you arrogance. Did you know that Ireland’s Call has three verses? If it looks like we’re chancing our arms by singing two anthems the next time you come to Dublin, wait till we leave you standing there for half an hour in the Aviva while we warble on into the late afternoon.
Of course, Ireland should lean into this. When Dan Sheehan goes in for the coin toss, he should arrive wearing a single black leather glove. And instead of proffering his hand to Jac Morgan to shake, he ought to slowly take the glove off finger by finger and haughtily slap Morgan around the cheek with it.
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We should go the whole hog with this stuff. Turn down conversions. See if we can win without lifting lads in the lineout, which is a cod anyway. Only count tries scored from crossfield kicks. You think we’re arrogant now? How about we do the Grand Slam wearing flip-flops and boxing gloves? Then we’ll show you arrogance.
Now look. We get it. Sport is sport and no good ever comes from preening when it’s going well. If anyone from outside Ireland doubts how well we know this, they need only listen to how we generally talk about sport here. Be in no doubt – if we have a right to be arrogant about anything, it’s poor-mouthing our prospects.
Seriously, there’s a whole language around it here. A hurling team will win by 14 points and swear blind that it won’t be good enough the next day. A jockey on a seven-length winner will claim to have been lucky the finishing line came when it did. A striker who’s just found the top corner will say he just swung a leg. The deathless truth is that we have a sports culture here that is about as far from chest-beating as it’s possible to get.
This is all the more true when there’s actual success in the mix. We warn over-celebrating youngsters to “walk easy when the jug is full”. We brush off congrats with, “a pat on the back is a few inches from a kick in the hole”. We are preternaturally indisposed to enjoying praise.
A few years back, at a post-match press conference after a Dublin All-Ireland win, Jim Gavin said – with a perfectly straight face – that their rivals were already in advance of them in preparation for the following year. This was an All-Ireland-winning manager an hour after winning the final! And he meant it sincerely. This is Irish sporting culture.
Do you want to know the truth? The actual truth about Irish rugby? We know this is temporary. We know this won’t last forever. Other rugby countries are bigger than us, richer than us, more devoted than us. They’ll work it out eventually and we’ll fall down the pecking order. Maybe not as far as we’ve fallen before but down a peg or two. Or three. Or whatever.
We know this. Don’t you think we know this? Didn’t you hear the OTB lads’ nervous laughter as they were cracking wise? Arrogance is an unknowing act, a blithe confidence in your untouchable pre-eminence. There is doubtless a portion of the rugby support that is blithe to the moment but most of us are anything but. We presume this will pass eventually, we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’ll love us again when it does.
In the meantime, maybe don’t take any of our oul’ crowing so seriously. Most of it is in jest. All of it is pointless. Some of it may well be the deadly serious analysis of a particular strain of Irish rugby person but trust us, that’s always best ignored.
Most of us have been doing so for 150 years, in fact.
