Reluctant hero still striving to up the ante

INTERVIEW GORDON D'ARCY: JOHNNY WATTERSONtalks to the Ireland centre who, despite two serious injuries, will earn his 50th cap against South Africa on Saturday

IN THESE moments we expect the players, not exactly to come in singing and dancing, but to modestly defer the praise, say they are pleased to pull on the shirt once, never mind 50 times, take us on a journey through the years with colourful anecdotes. We leave pleased.

Gordon D’Arcy smiles and sits down, D’Arcy, who has, in the public consciousness, been twinned at the swivelling hip with Brian O’Driscoll as an Irish centre pairing. Batman and Robin before O’Callaghan and O’Connell; The Lone Ranger and Tonto; Starsky and Hutch. Any clichéd partnership would fit. D’Arcy will earn his 50th cap against South Africa, a milestone for an enduring talent that has survived two serious injuries.

“Ah it’s just a number. That’s grand,” he says dismissively. He is assured the captain has said he will lead out the team on Saturday, that O’Driscoll said it just five minutes earlier. “You can be sure I won’t be,” he says.

We have been here before with the Irish inside centre. Idiosyncratic, discriminating, sometimes a type of separate character, D’Arcy leaves an impression the less frills and complexities that are laid before him in a week like this the more content he will be.

Fifty caps, what’s 50 caps? What is South Africa but another game? The bigger you try to make the occasion, the more you suck him into landmark caps, massive achievements and blowing wind about himself, the more he seems ill at ease. The larger you wish to go with D’Arcy the smaller he wants to make it. The greater the dimensions you make the run in to a match against the World Champions, the more he wants to be left alone, out of focus.

“I suppose there is a different phase in every rugby player’s career,” he says. “I suppose now I’m just happy playing rugby. I was probably more comfortable with it (attention) a few years ago. It makes me very, very uncomfortable now.”

Why is that?

“I’ve nothing new to say. Really,” he adds. “There’s a lot of lads on the team closing in on the hundred, which is probably much more of an achievement. I’ve been around the same amount of time as them and have half the number of caps.”

He has been the best player in the Six Nations Championship twice and in 2004 was nominated for an IRB Player of the Year award. There may be more caps about town but D’Arcy’s game can touch the heavens, where others never will.

He has had over a decade of international rugby, having been called into Warren Gatland’s senior Irish squad on the eve of his leaving Certificate. That year his school, Clongowes, reached the holy grail, a Leinster Senior Cup win, at Lansdowne Road. This ground has been good to D’Arcy. “Probably the schools’ final that we won is still a huge thing for me,” he says, appearing more tempted to reminisce. “It’s probably the only thing I allow myself look back on because I made the move from school to professional. I can look on that quite fondly. There have been plenty of other games but I’m not looking back.”

As the match looms, D’Arcy assimilates it in his own way. He reduces the Springbok status, rationalises what Ireland must do to win. “We’re not really looking at them as the world champions,” he explains. “We are looking at them as South Africa. A physical, physical, physical team. Not as the world champions but as a massive team that are coming to bully you in your own back yard. There’s a bit of an adjustment in your mentality. You know you are meeting fire with fire. The only way to meet these guys is to stand up toe to toe and if there is any bullying to be done, we will do it.”

With O’Driscoll he has done it before. He says the chat between them is light, the understanding immeasurable. Nods, glances and body angles have the two feeding off each other. Against the Springboks it will be no different.

“I know the guy inside out,” he says of the captain. “Probably the one partnership where the level of communication is lower than in most cases because we read body language. We trust each other implicitly. He knows if he comes out I’ll swing in behind and vice versa. He knows if I’m going to hit him with a pass or not. After 12 years you’d hope. When we started playing he was at 13 and I was on the wing. We were always playing beside each other. We’ve always tried to push things too. We have tried to up the ante.”

There are players snapping at his heels at Leinster, in the Irish squad. Some are on the wing now, another injured. Endless pressure but the Earls, the Fitzgeralds, the Wallaces, the O’Malleys, the McFaddens haven’t prised him out. Surely some satisfaction there? He looks up and smiles again. You know what’s coming. “I haven’t really thought about it,” he says.