So, I’ve been watching the Rugby World Cup and I am cheering hard for Ireland. And I am enjoying it. The kicking of Johnny Sexton, the powerful running from Bundee Aki, the elusiveness of Mack Hansen, the overall excellence of Hugo Keenan, the head on Tadgh Furlong.
They are great, all of them. But, I have to confess; I don’t know what is going on!
Allow me to explain. I didn’t attend one of the handful of American colleges where the sport matters, and in my annual visits to my parents native Ireland I never caught the bug. In those youthful summers in County Offaly we played every sport we could think of. Mostly Gaelic football and hurling, but soccer too, even a form of show jumping! But never rugby.
Back home in New York we had the big four, baseball, football, basketball and hockey. We messed around with tennis, handball, anything with a ball, really. But again, no rugby.
What little I saw of the sport I didn't care for. If anything, I disliked it. My standard joke was that if they wanted to improve the game they should implement the forward pass. Ha, ha.
As for my time in Ireland, the nearest I came to the sport was the discos at the rugby club.
But then came 1982. I spent the better part of that year in Offaly and while the county went stone mad for the All Ireland double-chasing Faithful County footballers and hurlers, there was still room for a little national pride as Ireland’s ruggers ended a 30-year drought by winning the Triple Crown at the 1982 Five Nations Championship.
That summer the oval ball was kicked alongside the O’Neills and the sliotar, often by rugby jersey-clad cut-rate Ollie Campbells from one end of the country to the other.
And I got swept up in the whole thing.
But I never followed up on that initial burst of interest. A couple of years ago I did trek out to Red Bull Arena in New Jersey to see the U.S.A. Eagles get run off the pitch by Ireland. I went because my oldest son said he was a rugby fan. Ten minutes in he turned to me to say, “You know, I don’t think I like rugby.”
We didn’t make it to halftime.
But the noise around Rugby World Cup France 2023 was hard to miss and I knew Ireland was ranked number-one in the world, and about their lack of success in previous World Cups.
So, curious, and already paying for Peacock TV, I passed up the various soccer leagues that start most of my weekend mornings and tuned in to see Ireland run roughshod over Romania 82-8!
Wow, that was easy. Tonga gave Ireland a bit of a contest in game two but even I could see that they would not last, and sure enough Tongan resistance soon faded and Ireland cantered to another easy victory.
And though I was enjoying the games, like I said, I didn’t know what was going on. Offside, for instance. What is that? And in the scrum, oftentimes the ref will blow the whistle ending the scrum. One team will celebrate and I never know why.
That tends to be my reaction to all fouls in the game. Players come together and the whistle blows and I think “free to Ireland” only to learn that the opposite is the case.
Then there are facets of the game that confound me. Like lineouts. Why, I wonder, is a team rewarded for kicking the ball out of play? Generally the idea is to keep the ball inside the lines. And shouldn’t there be a rule against lifting players up to catch the throw? It seems like cheating.
But for all my ignorance, I knew that South Africa vs. Ireland was the match to see. The defending Rugby World Cup champions vs the number-one ranked side. It had to be good.
And it was. In a rugged, brutal kind of way. Which is not to say that ample athletic skills were not in evidence.
Prior to these matches the only rugby player's name that I knew was Johnny Sexton and sure enough the veteran’s kicking mastery played a big part in Ireland’s win. Sexton’s kicking skill is easily relatable. In any sport that I can think of when you kick the ball between the posts you are rewarded.
After a well-deserved week’s rest Ireland will face Scotland and I will be watching. And I will be rooting hard for Ireland.
Even if I’m not quite sure what is going on.
