From columns to comment boxes, and from pubs to terraces, the amount of mental energy expended on sport is boggling. Many of us work all week, have a relatively small amount of leisure time, and swathes of us choose to spend large amounts of it watching athletes in pubs or from the stands. In between games we build a patchwork quilt of fact, opinion, and conjecture, (and god knows there’s enough out there) and we let ourselves think that this could be the year that the team we support delivers the goods.
The net result is often disappointment, especially where Irish national teams are concerned. We’re a small country, and the likelihood of us winning anything is slim, especially in team sports. We’re not going to win the vast majority of competitions we enter, and there’ll be more agony than ecstasy if we balance the books.
But we watch anyway. Because of pride. Sport is as much about being inspired by individual greatness as collective success. Athletes may have a ruthless focus that says winning is everything, but even defeated fans can be thrilled by technical prowess, or raw passion. By jaw-dropping skill or selfless determination. Or, in the case of Brian Gerald O’Driscoll, by all of the above. Ireland has a long list of sporting heroes, but few epitomise the ideal of the sporting great like the one we call BOD. In 15 years as a messianic 13 for Ireland and Leinster, he’s been every type of hero. The leader, the showman, the magician, the hometown boy made good, and the martyr to the cause. The only way he could be more of a comic book-style star would be if he had an alliterated name, like Roy Race or Dan Dare.
The heart of BOD’s appeal is in the fact that his sporting skills, his incredible balance and speed of body and brain, are augmented by his attitude. His on-field virtues have sometimes seemed superhuman, yet his prolonged success is a testament to an abundance of human mettle. We’ve seen this true grit is etched onto his face in hundreds of images of him down the years, in mid-flight towards the try line, in victory, in wearing the pain of defeat as captain. As we’ve watched, O’Driscoll has become an icon in Ireland, transcending the previously niche nature of his sport and helping it reach a far greater audience.
The attritional nature of rugby adds to O’Driscoll’s talismanic appeal. The more we’ve seen him battle through the pain barrier, take hit after hit and rise to his feet again, seemingly acting as a sponge for pain, and indeed the fact he’s still going at 35, the more impressive his sacrifice becomes. And the sense of sacrifice is strong with BOD, who’s known to us for sheer bloody-mindedness as much as his magic hands. When we remember him, it’s as likely to be for the perennial image of him getting up, always getting up, after enduring a monstrous hit, as for his 46 international tries. These qualities that we praise in the greatest athletes are ultimately the qualities of great human beings. Sport is a drama, a stage on which great stories are told. We look to great players to show us what we are capable of.
A popular dichotomy in sport, has the grafters on one side and the mercurial artists wielding their god-given talent on the other. It’s a false dichotomy, but few illustrate that as easily as O’Driscoll, who is simultaneously one of the most skilled Irish sportspersons of all time, as well as one of the most hard-working. He is a unique breed, both conjurer and enforcer. If he was a footballer, he’d be Roy Keane crossed with Lionel Messi.
Off the pitch, if we can forgive the peroxide blonde era, BOD has always worn the mantle of living legend with ease, and avoided any pomposity. In fact, there’s a sense of the messer about him, as illustrated by his famous, “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad” quote (which we’re fairly sure he stole from somewhere, but still.) He acts as if he’s bewildered by the praise he gets, deflecting sycophantic questions (and there have been many) like bad tackles. Even after his last home performance against Italy, it was still all about the team and the next match, despite everybody else doing their best to make it about him.
As another monsoon of plaudits rained down, there was a real sense that O’Driscoll might be relieved to hand the crown on to somebody else, and to retreat from the spotlight for a while. He’s already said coaching doesn’t interest him, though if he’d expressed a wish to manage Ireland one day he might have had to move house. While we can expect the odd punditry cameo, he’s not the type of guy to end up giving people a verbal shivving on some post-match analysis panel.
The O’Driscoll era is passing, and though other stalwarts will emerge, it’s unlikely one man will ever stand above the rest so comprehensively for so long. We won’t have to just tell our children or grandchildren about BOD, because there’ll be YouTube or its future equivalent, but the oral history of his exploits is bound to take on a mythical quality, until he’s some kind of sporting Fionn McCool. But even a sober view of his career leaves us to conclude that O’Driscoll was a rare phenomenon. As a generation, we can count ourselves lucky to have lived through his reign.
Words: Ronan Fitzgerald
