An Unexpected Encounter

It's been two weeks and mixed emotions. The usual stew; anger, jealousy, acceptance, compassion, etc. The usual questions. How can this sort of thing happen in a civilised society? It was a cold December morning, the kind of morning where the grass crackles underfoot, the kind of morning perfect if someone you know spots you smoking when you shouldn't be and tells your mother. The kind of morning where male genitalia behave like a tortoise, fending a predator.

When my phone rang, I was surprised. She had kissed me goodbye and ten minutes later I was ready to head out the door. He did what? By the time I put the phone down I had already imagined several gruesome scenarios, one involving the park's resident swans and many more which reminded me that television has done a half arsed job ridding me of my imaginative faculties. Whatever the method and no matter how I embellished the grim fantasy, the result was always the same.

Before I knew it I was on the bus, questioning my manliness and entertaining the idea of getting off and beginning a manhunt for the perpetrator of this (probably common) unsettling episode. I also wondered why manliness is invariably measured in units of pummelling.

By the time I was anchored at my desk, my girlfriend had assured me she was well and that it was overkill to call around her home town of Strabane, to look for some out of work Provos to do some freelance work for us. So I attempted to go about my daily chores but could not refrain from dwelling on that morning's incident. Both rational and irrational thoughts tangoed about my mind. For example I did bare a momentary grudging respect, especially considering the windchill. But that quickly passed as the stupidity of such a thought poked me in the eye and I began re-evaluating some of my more reactionary notions. The use of the word normal, relative to society, is usually a term that is shy of me, though in recognising that the majority of ideas occupying the public consciousness are useless and dumb, that elusive (inane) feeling of belonging, is one which I am largely comfortable with. However, in this instance, it is sufficiently broad enough to encompass the vast majority of us. The gentleman in question is obviously one that falls outside such categorisation.

I wondered how can this happen in a civilised society such as ours? And in retrospect perhaps it happens as a result of the nature of our civilised society. Our sexualised, unequal and often uncaring society. With so little room to move and so little chance of being heard above the din of modernity, people get left behind or worse still trampled on. I'm sure most people have felt or will feel like getting off and just standing still. I know I have. I've even considered jumping, not knowing the dangers. I tried to think of what sort of person would behave like this. I concluded, any sort of person. Though on this occasion, this particular individual's behaviour diminishes the compassion I am capable of feeling, it does not eradicate it. I wonder how qualified or objective we are to label ourselves civilised. And if our Saturday night interactions are civilised, I shudder at the cruelties capable in a society lacking our collective sense of right and wrong. From an unexpected encounter I find this an unexpected reaction.

RBS Six Nations Launch

Yesterday marked the launch of this years Six Nations Championships and with that comes the hope of absolution. The stain of the World Cup has been hard to shift and the return of the national team's bread and butter competition is most welcome. The sense of familiarity is soothing in the wake of the great World Cup disappointment. Perhaps it is the familiar February weather, or the renewed promise of a rousing Amhrán na bhFiann. Though the players publicly (most recently Girvan Dempsey in the Irish Times) state their need to look forward and bury the memory of France, I find it inconceivable that they do not view this as an opportunity to re-establish themselves as a team of dogged heart and exemplary skill sets.

(It's January. Two weeks until the Italians visit for the first game of our campaign. This feeling. Deja-vu. I think we'll be there or thereabouts.)

This morning Brian O'Driscoll has declared that he feels the team has underachieved. Maybe they have. A bounce of a ball here or there may have altered that hindsight. As a devote supporter of our National team I find it somewhat disconcerting to hear O'Driscoll stating:

'The players have a point to prove only to themselves. You will always have hype and speculation but you can't control those things.'

I think they have a point to prove to their supporters, who felt the disappointment of the World Cup exit keenly. Not merely the failure to reach the quarter finals but the manner of the elimination. They are a professional outfit at the pinnacle of their powers and can bounce back. If you're sceptical refer to the form of Ronan O'Gara, Donnacha O'Callaghan, Peter Stringer, Denis Leamy et al for Munster in the Heineken Cup and although poor at Welford Road, in the home fixture against Toulouse, Leinster put in their performance of the season with many international stars back on the front foot.

'What you can control are your own performances. We are capable of great performances, we just need to produce them.' BOD

Exactly.

However, the impetus for this meandering was not the utterances of the Irish Team Captain but those of the Head Coach. Yesterday at the launch, held at The Hurlingham Club, London, Eddie O'Sullivan responded to questions relating to the security of his job and the forthcoming Six Nations campaign:

'There's more pressure on me now because we've come off the back of a World Cup that wasn't as successful as we'd hoped it would be," said O'Sullivan.

'I believe I got selection right during the World Cup because if I'd changed the team around would it have transformed our performance?' he said.

Perhaps he is being rhetorical. But if O'Sullivan really wanted to find out if a change of team selection would have altered our fortunes, maybe he should have changed his team selection (Logic is one of my great gifts). But because he resisted that temptation we can never know, or can we....?

'The answer to that is no because our performance at the World Cup wasn't based on poor selection, it was based on the fact we didn't play well as a unit.'

'Changing the unit around wouldn't have made any difference.

So where does that leave the team now? We will have to wait and see. But lets don our scarves and hats and cheer and sing and clap (or shout at the television). This is our 'golden generation' of players. Luke Fitzgerald, Jonathan Sexton and others, in time may fill those big shoes. But the time to perform is now. And if against Italy we find our feet, who knows? But that's part of the fun.

Emmett Quanne
January 2008