“We are all vulnerable and we all will, at some time in our lives, fall…”
(Ah lads, not this carry-on. Come on, it’s Friday night. Don’t do it, RTE.)
“We will all fall.”
(You said that already.)
“We will be tested. We will be tested to our souls. We will all now be tested.”
(Oh, we’re being tested alright, pal.)
“It’s these times that allow us to look inside ourselves.”
(It’s this specific time that allows us to go grab a beer and wait this dreary Game Of Thrones fan-fiction guff out.)
Wales v Ireland, Friday night in Cardiff. Big game. Biiiig game. By its pre-game hushed-tones faux-etry shall you know its bigness. For whatever reason, rugby can’t just welcome you into its house and ask if you’d like a nice cup of tea. It’s got to be war drums on a portentous slow-march with a gravel-voiced overlay making out that the fate of man itself is at stake.
It’s not just RTE. Over on BBC, Eddie Butler is intoning his own version. Makes you want to take them all by the lapels and shake them. Lads! Ye have a great game. A brutal, brilliant, totally compelling sport. But come on - enough with the Jerry Bruckheimer stuff.
Pre-match. RTE have an hour to kill before kick-off so they're casting around for angles. The Friday night thing gets a going over. "They've never played on a Friday night," says Shane Horgan. You know what he means but you're still thinking that's not strictly the case, old chap. About 10 minutes later, Ronan O'Gara lays it on the line. "These players are well-used to playing on Friday nights." And that's the end of that line of inquiry.
Game on. The hits. Sweet mother, the hits. Maybe it's the roof being closed but they seem to echo from the pitch to the sofa. CJ Stander runs through Liam Williams like a bullock through a puddle. George North splats Rob Kearney. Robbie Henshaw brings a squeal out of Jonathan Davies - the one in the BBC commentary box as opposed to the one on the pitch.
Ireland on top early but they kick to the corner instead of taking a penalty. Paul O’Connell isn’t convinced. “Wales stole one of these on us here two years ago and went on to win the game,” he says. Alun Wyn-Jones duly beats Stander to the ball and Wales are away in a hack.
It should probably come as no particular surprise but O’Connell is to the manor born as a co-commentator. He doesn’t repeat himself. He doesn’t stray into cliché. His observations are crystal clear and his voice is urgent. Already you can see that if and when he eventually becomes a coach, he’ll be a big loss to TV.
Wales come into it. North steams in for a try, galumphing over Keith Earls and Simon Zebo. ("Flies on a windshield," Eddie O'Sullivan calls them at half-time.) Then Johnny Sexton gets a bang on the head and has to go off for a bit. He's not back on long when Conor Murray gets toasted by North. He spends the rest of the half with his left arm hanging. Then Sexton gets yellow carded.
Gulp.
Half-time. Wales 8-6 ahead. Should be more. Soon it is more. Murray comes back on but Wales skip past him for a second North try. Rhys Webb is running the show from scrum-half for Wales and Murray goes off for Kieran Marmion almost immediately. Everyone wonders, "What was the point of that?"
Ireland come again. Sexton gets back on after his 10 minutes are up and starts wrap-arounding Wales to death. Or near-death. He brings it back to 15-9. Ireland maul close to the Wales line, Rory Best about to trundle over for a try. Referee Wayne Barnes blows the whistle just as Best touches down. "No! I can't allow it! I can't allow it!"
Replays show Robbie Henshaw coming in from the side just as Best is about to flop over the line. It’s marginal, it’s minuscule. “I think it’s a penalty,” says O’Connell, who sounds half-delighted that a knotty, complicated decision has been adjudicated correctly, even against his old team. “I think he’s right.”
It turns out to be decisive. Wales push and press and pin Ireland back. Sexton tries to get Ireland out of their 22 with a dink over the top but when that top belongs to Jamie Roberts, a dink ain't gonna get it done. Roberts gets a block and seems to fall over the line from about 10 metres. Game over.
“I think the best defence won the game,” says Eddie O’Sullivan back in studio.
“We only conceded two penalties in the whole game,” offers Daire O’Brien.
“Yeah, but we conceded three tries,” harrumphs Eddie. Three tries is worse than two penalties.
Hard to argue with that.
“We’re all sickened,” says Ronan O’Gara. “You can’t win a game with nine points. Those days are gone. You can’t do it anymore.”
Back on BBC, John Inverdale sums the night up with a puff of the cheeks.
“Well, 22-9 may be one statistic I can give you from that,” he phews. “But how about 300 tackles across those 80 minutes? Just the most phenomenal match.”
And no need for a single beat of a war drum. Funny that.
