It’s all good as class wins out

It’s all good as class wins out


Crash Ball
Trevor Watson

THIS is what you want to be writing about. Amongst all the talk of recession, unemployment, new ELVs ruining the game etc, it is nice to be sitting down and typing words of sheer elation for a change.
This column has been critical of many things this season and, apart from Stephen Jones’ nonsense piece in yesterday’s Sunday Times, today’s words are all positive.
Jones awarded 7/10 for Brian O’Driscoll (same rating as Ronan O’Gara) and 9/10 for Paul O’Connell yet awarded his man of the match gong to O’Driscoll. He then proceeded to pick his Lions test team on the next page where he purposely omitted BOTH O’Driscoll and O’Connell from the starting XV – favouring Gavin Henson and Simon Shaw.
If this is the drivel that their chief rugby correspondent comes up with then it’ll be no more Sunday Times for Trevor! More intellectual reading in The Beano or Dandy!
But back to all that is good in the world. One could not as for a more fitting climax. Yet again, the Millennium Stadium is good to us. The over-used cliché about form being temporary and class permanent was never more apt when O’Gara showed the bottle to lob over the all-important drop goal.
O’Driscoll was his brilliant organised, courageous best. Both wing men did exceptionally well with limited attacking opportunity. David Wallace covered every blade of grass on the field and completely out-shone his Welsh counterpart, Martin Williams but one man stood on the broad shoulders of giants and he was a colossus.
The omnipotent O’Connell was quite simply majestic and, in this writer’s humble opinion, is not only the world’s best second row but probably the world’s best player right now.
The Limerick man-mountain destroyed the Welsh lineout, bull-dozed everything that came in his path (and most things that didn’t), made countless tackles and led from the front all day.
Watching the game, one felt somewhere deep in the sub-conscious that Ireland would not lose that game as long as O’Connell had a breath in his body. 
It was a fantastic achievement. A fantastic day. Just reward for a fantastic team and hats off to a brilliant coach. In the aftermath one cameraman caught a brilliant shot of O’Connell hugging Kidney; now that would be some conversation worth hearing.
So we will salute the giants of 2009. Remarkable men on an unforgettable occasion. Jack Kyle can now relax.

elsewhere this week a word of congratulations to my own club Ballinrobe RFC who captured the Division 1B league title thanks to a bonus point victory over Carrick-on-Shannon on Sunday last. You can read all about our exploits elsewhere on these pages. Eamon McGuffin was on hand to present the Cup to captain Damien Burke. Congratulations to Damien – he is one fine man!

WITH the Six Nations now over it’s time for the controversy to begin as Crash Ball selects the ‘Team of the Tournament’. As always some players were shoo-ins but many positions took a lot of mulling over. Anyway, here goes…

15 Lee Byrne (Wales); 14 Tommy Bowe (Ireland); 13  Brian O’Driscoll (Ireland); 12  Tom Shanklin (Wales); 11  Shane Williams; 10 Stpehen Jones (wales); 9 Mike Phillips (Wales). 8 Sergio Parrisse (Italy) 7 Davis Wallace. (Ireland); 6  Stephen Ferris (Ireland); 5 Paul O’Connell (Ireland); 4 Alun Wynn Jones (Wales) 3 Euan Murray (Scotland); 2 Jerry Flannery (Ireland) 1 Gethin Jenkins (Wales); 16 Ross Ford (Scotland); 17 John Hayes; (Ireland) 18 Marco Bortalami (Italy) 19 Tom Croft (England). 20 Mike Blair (Scotland) 21  Ronan O’Gara (Ireland) 22  Delon Armitage (England)