SIDELINE CUT:Who starts at outhalf in upcoming Ireland games may prove a ceaseless talking point, but both Ronan O'Gara and Jonathan Sexton can serve Ireland's interest, writes KEITH DUGGAN
IT IS worth reflecting on the rugby life of Eric Elwood now that the Irish game seems set to enter a fresh series of debates on who should play number 10 for Ireland. The cases of Ronan O’Gara, the senior man who has given a decade of mostly exceptional service to the green cause, and Jonathan Sexton, whose starry ascent in the past season and a half brought to an abrupt end the frequent agonising about what might become of Irish rugby after O’Gara, are both well-known.
It is a fascinating debate in that it pitches the poster boy of Munster rugby against the new darling of the Leinster game, it carries echoes of the old Tony Ward/Ollie Campbell debate and it presents a delicate challenge to the fabled man-management skills of Ireland coach Declan Kidney.
But listening to Eric Elwood talk with straight-forward eloquence about his plans when he takes over as head coach of Connacht next season, I couldn’t help but think of the closing phases of his own international career. Elwood will take charge of Connacht on the one-year contract deal that has been imposed on all personnel in the club, hardly ideal circumstances in which to be planning the future of a team but nonetheless a reality that he has to deal with.
As he admitted, coaching was something that evolved naturally rather than an ambition he harboured from a young age. But it is worth returning to the days when Elwood was the rising outhalf for Ireland. He got his first cap against Wales in Cardiff in 1993. It came out of the blue; Elwood had been performing exceptionally well for Lansdowne, having moved to the Dublin club through a combination of work and a desire to put himself in the shop window for the international selectors. He received a phone call telling him to be at the Berkeley Court hotel on a Wednesday morning, learned he was starting the match the following afternoon and kicked the lights out in Cardiff that Saturday.
That victory ended a long losing streak for Ireland and prompted an outburst of tears from Nick Popplewell, the redoubtable prop who was beginning to wonder if his Irish career was destined to result in zero victories. A fortnight later, Elwood was again fearless and commanding as Ireland pulled off the coup of the year in beating England. He was 23 years old. Shortly after that, he was picked on the Sevens team that went to Hong Kong.
“Two caps, two wins and off to the Far East in one fortnight,” he said in an interview he gave to this newspaper on the weekend of his last game for Connacht at the Sportsground. (It was against a Sale team that included Sebastian Chabal and Jason Robinson. The visitors won 18-25 – Elwood’s last kick was a touchline conversion).
This was a different time. When Elwood was 19, he was picked to play for his province against the All Blacks. He headed up Shop Street in Galway to buy fancy boots for the occasion and was still trying to get the new clip-on studs to fit minutes before the team was due to take the field. George Hook leaned over him. “Biggest effin’ game in your life and you can’t even get your boots right,” he said in the sardonic drawl that would, a decade later, become customary to television viewers.
Elwood emerged in a rugby era where the prevailing culture was to show the touring All Blacks or South Africans a stubborn time on the field and a good time off it; Moran’s on the Weir featured prominently on the agenda in that era. But he also made the transition to the professional game and relished the new regime to such an extent he was still playing top club rugby in 2005.
He won 35 international caps and his final time wearing an Irish shirt was as a replacement on the bench in 2000 when Ireland received a merciless 50 points drubbing from England at Twickenham. Elwood’s international career spanned four coaches – Noel Murphy, Murray Kidd, Brian Ashton and Warren Gatland. It was the latter who first encouraged him to believe he could play international rugby when he arrived as Connacht coach and it was under Gatland that he realised his day was done as well.
But his was an interrupted career. No sooner had Elwood established himself as Irish outhalf when he found himself involved in a long-running competition with Paul Burke, a lighter player who was perceived to bring his three-quarters line into play more readily than Elwood. Sometimes he played, sometimes he did not. That is how it went.
He was there for the World Cup in 1999, taking 30 stitches after clashing heads with Johnny Bell in a nightmarish game against Romania, a tournament that represented a dark low for Irish rugby. And he was watching on television just weeks after the Twickenham debacle in 2000 when a young Cork outhalf named O’Gara made his debut against Scotland and played with a confidence that fell somewhere between chutzpah and confidence. There and then he knew the number 10 jersey was gone for good.
The point is although Elwood’s time and O’Gara’s time seem like very distinct eras, there was a touching point. They both featured in Irish squads in the same season. That match against Scotland when Gatland, in a direct repudiation of the assertion made by football’s Alan Hansen that you win nothin’ with kids, went for broke and picked a young, callow team that ran riot against the Scots. It was the beginning of a new era for Irish rugby.
It has come full circle for Elwood, who now finds himself as the head broom in the Connacht dressingroom where he was tinkering with his boots minutes before standing before the haka. And it seems stunning that, already, O’Gara is entering the late phase of his career – such is the brutally swift nature of the sporting life. But the Cork man showed in the pulsating closing minutes at Twickenham a week ago why he remains such a vital part of Ireland’s plans. The debate about who should or shouldn’t start at number 10 will carry through the remainder of this season and, as long as Sexton and O’Gara remain fit, it will dominate the rugby chatter in the build-up to the next World Cup.
The real question, surely, is who should be playing number 10 for that tournament. “Both” may well be the perfect answer and solution. Using Sexton judiciously and ensuring O’Gara’s decade of nerveless orchestration of Six Nations afternoons are not just cast aside because a younger player has come along is surely crucial to Ireland’s development over the next few seasons.
The Sexton/O’Gara debate will only grow louder because people find it interesting to talk about it. But there is a danger it could heap unnecessary pressure on the player who is on the field and become a distraction to the squad in general. Regardless of who plays next week against Wales, if Ireland end up playing for a Triple Crown in their final game, then the identity of number 10 will become a ceaseless talking point. Chances are Sexton and O’Gara are both too self-possessed and inscrutable to allow the issue to get under their skin. After all, sportsmen have a feel for these things themselves. Elwood knew he had retired the very day O’Gara’s international life took flight. “I just thought, ‘That’s it. Do I apply now for my two ex-international tickets or will they arrive automatically in the post?’”
“Elwood knew he had retired the very day O’Gara’s international life took flight. “I just thought, ‘That’s it. Do I apply now for my two ex-international tickets or will they arrive automatically in the post?’
