IRISH RUGBY’S MOUNT Rushmore was a topic for conversation on the latest Rugby Weekly Extra podcast.
Eoin Toolan, a former Ireland analyst, and Murray Kinella, rugby journalist at The 42, pondered the “massively difficult question” that was sent in by 42 subscriber Conor Fenn.
Brian O’Driscoll and Johnny Sexton were the first two for Toolan, who said he wanted to pick players who would have made a world XV during the peak years of their careers. He chose to break it down into two backs and two forwards and said the most notable backs not to make his list were Jackie Kyle and Mike Gibson.
“To keep the forwards happy I’m going with two forwards,” said Toolan. “First is Keith Wood. He played in an era that was absolutely terrible for Irish rugby. As a schoolboy I went to most games in the late 90s and it wasn’t too regularly we were coming away with wins, but he kind of had the weight of the team on back didn’t he? He was just a special player who could make things happen.
“The fourth is really difficult. I’ve gone with Willie John McBride. I think it’s important, the whole of Ireland concept around this too. It was between Willie John and Paul O’Connell for me. Willie John, five Lions series, the only Lions team to win a test series in New Zealand, won the Lions series in South Africa, the infamous 99 call, one in all in. Seventeen caps for the Lions is just outrageous and he captained Ireland to a Five Nations championship win and had 63 national teams caps.”
Kinsella said he agreed with Toolan’s pick and that you had to select the two, Wood and Sexton, who had won world player of the year. “It’s an incredible achievement, and Wood to do it back then was phenomenal,” Kinsella said.
He suggested a possible alternative way to draw up the list. “I was looking into Mount Rushmore and what it is. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor, picked those four presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, because he felt they represented the most important events in the history of the Unites States,” Kinsella said.
“As those forefathers of Ireland you could put McBride, Gibson, Kyle and Wood on there because without those guys and what they did and the achievements they kicked off, Jackie Kyle being part of the first Grand Slam, then maybe a lot of the achievements don’t happen.
“What Sexton and Rog and Paulie did was built on even someone like Keith Wood fighting and battling away for Irish rugby.”
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