EYE, EYE, SIR!

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Ballpark Many, many years ago I played in a low level league game, a memorable match for a few reasons and one I was reminded of following the recent Heineken Cup semi finals. The game epitomised the loneliness of the long distance rugby player, played out on a public park pitch with a few alickadoos, and a couple of kids on swings in the background. The grass was green and the sun shone on our backs in a hugely competitive game, with two big, if slightly unfit packs colliding in seismic fashion. You forgot you had to go to work on Monday as every player put their head and body in the danger zone. We won and the adrenalin still flowed hours afterwards as the buzz of victory coursed through the veins. The referee did well to keep a lid on things as the game threatened to get out of hand, such were its competitive nature.

The following Monday evening in the changing room before training our player coach, ex AIL forward, announced he wished to make a formal complaint against last Saturday’s opponents. He had been eye gouged by the opposition’s scrum half. You could hear a pin drop and a few guys stared at the floor. ‘Well no then’, the coach bellowed, staring at the assembled players, his indignation palpable. Eventually the teams captain broke the silence, the gist of his comments were that it was best left in the changing room as complaints fuelled a tit for tat citing and bad feeling between clubs. There the matter resided and was lost amid the world of rugby fraternity and ethos of keeping it in the changing room.

I was reminded of this last weekend in the wake of Alan Quinlan’s highly magnified and publicised eye gouging, for that’s what it was however sceptical every pundit publically has to be. Listening to Paul Wallace however I was reminded uncomfortably of the old school attitude as he extolled Quinny’s hard but fair rugby ethos and Paul O’Connell amongst others lined up glowing rugby character references for Quinny. Now I am a tad cynical and Quinlan reminds me of a latter day Trevor Brennan, all hail fellow well met off the pitch and something of the thug on it.

SKY have had a part to play of course as the various pundits have hailed and exemplified Quinlan’s ‘burglar’ qualities on the pitch and extolled his tourist qualities off it in preparation for what may now be an aborted trip to the high veldt. In parallel SKY pundits have also rather surreptitiously ran a campaign extolling the virtues of Tom Croft, the youngster excluded from the Lions tour in favour of Quinlan. Having magnified Quinlan’s piece of skulduggery one day, they then inflated Croft’s contrasting performance the next by giving him man of the match and waxing lyrical during the game on how well the lad was performing. Whilst Wallace epitomised the old school in his endorsement of Quinny, the almost angelic, SKY stood for the modern game and all its subtle profundities.

Bottom line was that, whatever Cullen, the victim of this dangerous act might say about rugby being a contact sport, hard game, blah, blah, blah…Quinlan in my book committed a dubious act at best and at worst could have cost Cullen his sight in one eye. This is not something you can reverse in a twinkling of the retina. Once the sight is gone, it generally doesn’t come back, an irreversible coda to a moment of madness. A work colleague lost the sight of an eye playing rugby and magnanimously refuses to blame anyone, putting it down as an accident. It is true contact can be made with the eye due to circumstance and that is the nature of the game but the deliberate targeting of the eye area by a player is unforgiveable and no amount of character reference should obscure the fact.

Over at the UAFC messageboard the pundits on it continue to confound and confuse. The Ulster team are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. Whilst wins in Glasgow and Galway are dammed lucky, get out of jail efforts, defeats in Ravenhill are dammed awful. This neatly obscures the fact that wins for the Ospreys and Cardiff could be considered by their respective supporters as ‘dammed lucky, get out of jail efforts’. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. Connaught’s fans were probably feeling last night, the way Ravenhill’s supporter’s were previous Fridays. Some messageboarders lament the lack of Leinster style rugby messianic or Munster momentum and power but you put yourself in the boots and shoes of true Munster supporters last Saturday evening and a different perspective emerges.

Here was your team supplying the power that has made Ireland soar above the ordinary in the 6 Nations and the engine likely to make the Lions motor in South Africa. They were up against old enemies Leinster, a team that conceivably should not have been in the semi finals and one whose offensive capabilities had all but been extinguished in favour of committed defence. Stunning and sublime as they ran Munster into the ground and made them look ordinary. No amount of mass selection for Ireland and the Lions will make the true Munsterman feel fulfilled as his team crawled off into the Heineken sunset, well beaten and raising questions about the performance of its individuals. It’s all relative, the bleakness of defeat matters not a jot whether it occurs at the bottom of the Magners or the top of the Heineken,

‘It’s a hollow feelin’.

As the Eagles sang in Tequila Sunrise:

"Take another shot of courage,

Wonder why the right words never come,

you just get numb,

This old world just looks the same,

another frame."

There’s always tomorrow, chat soon as BJ Botha might say whilst shopping in Forestside.



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