SPORT HAS A funny way of assigning greatness sometimes. Obviously wins and losses are the easiest way to see who has done well and who hasn’t but often the difference between victory and defeat can be so tiny that it shouldn’t really change how we perceive a sportsperson.
It shouldn’t. But it does.
For instance, in the recent Super Bowl New England quarterback Tom Brady led two late touchdown drives against one of the best ever defences to snatch a late lead only to see Seattle march down the other end. Brady was one yard from losing until an undrafted rookie sensationally intercepted the ball to seal victory.
Brady was one pass from being 3-3 in Super Bowls but instead some no-name defender earned him the title of ‘greatest ever quarterback’.
One American journalist said that Tom Brady’s legacy was written when he was standing on the sideline.
Irish rugby knows that feeling all too well because the legacy of Ireland’s ‘golden generation’ was written when they were standing under the posts in Cardiff waiting for Stephen Jones to take a penalty.
We thought it would be interesting to imagine a desolate, post-apocalyptic rugby landscape in Ireland where Jones nailed that kick and some of the country’s most famous players were left at the altar once again.
Had Ireland lost they still would have won the championship but it would have felt very, very empty without really changing peoples perception of the team.
Despite winning two Six Nations titles, Woodward’s England side were seen as massive underachievers before they won the Slam in 2003.
And entering 2009, the Ireland team was in a depressed state. All the swashbuckling rugby of the Eddie O’Sullivan era had yielded three make-believe trophies but no actual silverware and the catastrophic World Cup display had bled into the 2008 Six Nations where Ireland lost three games for the first time in the history of the tournament.
The 2008 autumn tests under Declan Kidney were no better – despite Munster winning that year’s Heineken Cup the national team limped past Argentina in as bleak a day as the country has had in the professional era.
So fast-forward to 21 March 2009. Ireland had won their first four games in the Six Nations and needed to beat the previous year’s Grand Slam winners away in order to break the 61-year curse.
At this stage of Brian O’Driscoll’s career he had two Celtic League medals and about ten years worth of disappointing letdowns on the big stage. BOD needed the Grand Slam as much as the whole country did to validate the most breathtaking rugby career we had ever seen in Ireland.
By now you know how the game went:
6-0 Wales
14-6 Ireland
15-14 Wales
17-15 Ireland
And then this.
Wallace made a monumental error, Jones’ kick was short and the nation jumped with joy.
But it is interesting to think about the alternate reality where Wales win.
Firstly, Paddy Wallace becomes Ireland’s Bill Buckner, the Boston Red Sox baseball player who became hated by fans of the team for letting the ball slip through his legs when they were on the cusp of their first World Series title in 67 years.
In the above video Wallace says, ‘I’ve been in a car crash before and you get a feeling of numbness and shock, it was close to that’.
Wallace would have been feeling that for the rest of his life. He would have become the most despised person in the history of Irish sports, maybe second after Thierry Henry.
If you think Irish fans wouldn’t have carried an eternal grudge, or would have forgiven Wallace immediately, you are wrong. It is fortunate that Wallace escaped his alternate path because nobody should have to live with costing an entire country a massive sporting prize.
Wallace would have been blamed but that would have been a very easy out. Ireland led 14-6 and were in complete control and while Wayne Barnes memorably became addicted to his whistle you couldn’t help but think that getting so close to the Slam caused the Irish players to tense up.
Most of the team had experienced crushing defeats in a green jersey before – notably when Vincent Clerc denied them a Grand Slam two years previously – and had Jones kicked that penalty the stigma of chokers would have been impossible to refute.
Other nations already thought as much – Jeremy Guscott told The42 that most pundits felt that Irish team should have won a Slam years before 2009 - but Irish fans would have had no choice but to confront the possibility.
One reason given for the breakthrough at the time was that the young guys on the team – Heaslip, Kearney, Fitzgerald and Bowe – hadn’t experienced many tough Six Nations losses so they had no mental baggage.
Well, imagine the anguish that would have been fostered upon the next generation had Ireland lost that game. How do Leinster react against Harlequins at the Stoop in the Heineken Cup quarter-final if half the team got hit with a hammer a month earlier?
Of course, one career that would have been impacted more than most is Brian O’Driscoll’s. Like Tom Brady, O’Driscoll did everything he could in the 2009 Six Nations to ensure Ireland captured a Grand Slam only to be left standing 50m away from the man who would decide the outcome.
BOD could have so easily turned into a Steven Gerrard figure at international level – a once great player who now elicits sympathy rather than adulation due to his near-misses and Paul O’Connell would have been in a similar situation.
But Jones missed the penalty and the Irish team finally got what they deserved and as the years pass the circumstances of the victory fade more and more into the background.
Whatever about our Ireland, let’s just be glad we don’t live in that other one.
