Could Declan Kidney do more to ensure Brian O’Driscoll doesn’t walk away from Ireland at the end of the Six Nations?
By Adrian Barry (@AdrianBarry98FM)
He’s the only player to start the opening weekend of the 2013 Six Nations who featured in the first ever Championship in 2000. Now Brian O’Driscoll’s long career could be nearing an end but how much is being done to ensure Ireland’s greatest ever player doesn’t walk away when he still has much to offer?
“Brian will make up his own mind, I wouldn’t like to sway him one way or another,”said Declan Kidney in the immediate aftermath of Ireland’s barn-storming opening win in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon.
Kidney had just been asked by this reporter if O’Driscoll’s try-scoring, try-providing, ball-stealing, big-tackling, Man of the Match performance against Grand Slam champions Wales would trigger a conversation between the head coach and his disposed captain in relation to his seemingly imminent international retirement plans. Kidney feels his input isn’t required.
Having just turned 34, O’Driscoll has hinted in recent weeks that this could be his final Championship and this year’s British & Irish Lions tour to Australia would be a fitting end to an international career which didn’t bear fruit, at least of the medal variety, until it’s autumn. The Great One can walk away at any time, he owes no debt to his country or to the game.
Kidney rightly points out too that while he may be willing to carry on, O’Driscoll could pay a physical price later. “The bottom line is you would love to have the guy around forever, wouldn’t you? But if you look at the performance he put in today, that’s not easy on the body.”
Valid points but Kidney must speak to O’Driscoll, take coffee with the Leinster centre this week, assure him that the 13 shirt is his for as long as he so wishes. He’s earned that much. He may still choose to walk away, he may need to walk away, but if there’s a chance Kidney’s opinion holds any ‘sway’ with the player, the coach must take action now.
Perhaps Giovanni Trapattoni and Declan Kidney have more in common than might be immediately obvious.
Our national football coach has been an easy target for those who say he can’t, or chooses not to, communicate with his players. Perhaps Giovanni Trapattoni and Declan Kidney have more in common than might be immediately obvious.
Any criticism of Kidney in the week when Ireland made their most promising Six Nations start since 2009 (we all know how that ended) may have you thinking the author’s suffering from a severe dose of the bends (rising too quickly from the depths) but remember too that Ireland’s main man has also shown a reluctance to get involved in Jonny Sexton’s club switch insisting, on the eve of the Wales win, that the Leinster 10 didn’t require his two cents.
Surely Sexton’s national coach is one voice he must listen to above the excited din at a time of such uncertainty. Sexton will be Ireland’s pivotal player, in every sense, for the next five to six years. The head coach needs to reassure him of this even if he ends up in the starting 15 at Nairobi’s Nondescripts RFC (the oldest rugby club in Kenya!).
Wales defence coach, Shaun Edwards, unprompted, offered his own verdict on O’Driscoll’s Millennium display. “I thought he was the difference between the teams. I wish someone had left him in Ireland,” said the straight-talking former League legend.
Man of the Match, of course, against Wales
BOD has already lasted longer than two of his great peers in midfield. Tana Umaga called time on his All Blacks career approaching his 33rd birthday and his hero Tim Horan walked away from the Wallabies having only turned 30. In recent months, Horan himself called on Australia’s top sides to make the Irishman an offer he can’t refuse, clearly feeling the Dubliner still has much to offer. He does. His IRFU contract expires this coming summer.
Having been ousted as Ireland captain, the odd sight of Brian O’Driscoll standing mid-way along the line-up for Ireland’s Call just prior to the 30-22 win over Wales jarred for many but his leadership influence was crystal clear during the game. Gesturing frantically late in the first half to rush a penalty kick to touch, Ireland’s newest captain Jamie Heaslip and his out-half Sexton were in conference when O’Driscoll looked at the Millennium Stadium clock, saw it ticking towards the red and used the universal rolling-hands gesture to tell Sexton time was of the essence. It eventually led to three points – 40 minutes later those three points would be crucial in maintaining a two-score buffer at the end game.
Later, O’Driscoll would ask referee Romain Poite if the clock was in motion again after the TMO decision to award Craig Mitchell his first international try. By the letter of the law, he shouldn’t have spoken to Poite but the habits of a lifetime can be hard to break!
When Conor Murray was sin binned with 10 minutes to go, Ireland needed a stand-in scrum half at scrum-time. There was only one man for the job although his box kick needs some work.
His box kicks need a bit of work
One imagines Simon Zebo, Craig Gilroy, Peter O’Mahony et al having to pinch themselves for having the fortune, and of course the talent, to merit a bird’s eye view of O’Driscoll at work. His former Leinster coach Matt Williams readily espouses the theory that we should beat a path through the turnstiles at the RDS and the Aviva Stadium to see him in action while we still can.
While he’s still winning the battle on the pitch, it seems O’Driscoll is losing out to the new breed of Ireland players off it, recently replying to a tweet about not having to buy a drink in Ireland, saying ‘not true in the slightest! There was a time but these young pups have taken over’.
If you happen upon Brian O’Driscoll at a bar near you anytime soon don’t buy him a beer, do tell him he’s still needed and, better still, get yourself along to see him doing what he does best. The clock is ticking toward the red. Unless quiet Kidney finds his voice.
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