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He isn't Welsh thoughbazzaj wrote:If Patrick keeps that up he should book his summer hols to South Africa in 4 years time and declare himself unavailable to tour with Ireland to ensure he goes on the next Lions trip.
His name is Paddy and he is ginger. He's no fcuking chance.Rooster wrote:He isn't Welsh thoughbazzaj wrote:If Patrick keeps that up he should book his summer hols to South Africa in 4 years time and declare himself unavailable to tour with Ireland to ensure he goes on the next Lions trip.
Red hair though has to count for something.Rooster wrote:He isn't Welsh thoughbazzaj wrote:If Patrick keeps that up he should book his summer hols to South Africa in 4 years time and declare himself unavailable to tour with Ireland to ensure he goes on the next Lions trip.
It's rare to find someone, especially someone who has been there as a captain, demurring from the motion that "it's the greatest thing in your life", but Paulie is bigger than most in every sense.“For some, the Lions tour is the be-all and end-all but his experiences over the past few years have let him realise that nothing is".
Every game was special in its own way and needed to be won. Indeed every lineout, tackle, ruck etc would have been holy grails for that lunatic.BaggyTrousers wrote:
It clearly wasn't for POC. My guess would be that few things gave him more satisfaction than winning the Heineken Cup, Munster's holy grail and playing for Ireland was probably pretty big too. G'wan Paulie.
Don't get me started on Stockdale.Shan wrote:Feck sake guys can ye save yer whinging about Paddy's potential non-selection for the 2021 Lions for a few years.
Indeed. A long term goal finally achieved. I think when you are part of something which takes years to build it means more when you finally succeed...or it should do.BaggyTrousers wrote:Yes Shan but did you ever see homing celebrate like he did in 2006. Whilst they were all going apeshit ROG was the only one going round shaking hands with the Biarritz players.
Peter O’Mahony was a leader even at 19
Donncha O’Callaghan says former team-mate Peter O’Mahony will lead the Lions in the style of Martin Johnson
Imagine how it was to be Peter O’Mahony, lying there on a stretcher with both your knee and your World Cup dream shattered. Imagine how it must have felt to lose a year of your career and then your place in the Ireland team. And imagine the trauma he, and so many of us, endured when he lost Anthony Foley, his friend, mentor and coach at Munster, in October.
For nearly 18 months, life’s reality bit hard and then, on a murky March evening in the Aviva Stadium, fortune changed and a leap into a rugby fantasy world began, starting from the moment Joe Schmidt, the Ireland coach, took him to one side to say that Jamie Heaslip had suffered an injury in the warm-up and that he, Peter O’Mahony, would no longer be Irish rugby’s hard-luck story but instead would start against England.
Two hours later they named him man of the match. Last night Warren Gatland named him captain of the British & Irish Lions. All that pain, starting with the career-threatening knee injury that he suffered against France at the 2015 World Cup, through the dark months of rehab, and darker months wondering if he would ever be the same player again, has given way to a shot at rugby immortality.
Emotionally he is ready for this. If there are those who doubt whether he is mentally capable of coping with the strain of leading the Lions into the most intense arena of all, well that’s understandable. All they will know are the facts, that he wasn’t deemed good enough to start for Ireland in the RBS Six Nations Championship, that he has only captained his country against Canada and the United States.
What they might not be aware of is the man behind the stats, the character lurking beneath those intense eyes, the warrior within.
Me? Well, I’ve known the man since he was ten years old, the mascot at Cork Constitution, our local club. Even then there was an intensity burning in him. Unlike the other ballboys at the club, there wasn’t a giddiness about him, excited that he was hanging around the dressing room of an adult side. You could sense him taking everything in, looking at the first-teamers and probably thinking, “You’re in my jersey until I’m old enough to wear it”.
By the time we became Munster colleagues in 2009, I was a two-times Lions tourist, veteran of two World Cups and two Heineken Cup wins. He was 19, captain of the Ireland Under-20 side, the clear leader among the academy squad members who were training with us.
We were in the middle of a pre-season. Training was finishing up and one of the coaches asked us to do some extra work.
“Are you lot going to join us?” I shouted across to Peter, as he and the rest of the academy players made their way towards the dressing room. Those piercing eyes glared back. “Lads, let’s get to the line,” he said to his peers.
All of them ran to where we were. You could see by the reaction of their faces that once Peter said something, well that was it. They did it.
The competitiveness shone through in that fitness session and afterwards he came across and quietly spoke to me. “We’re following a specialised programme,” he said. “Because of our age, we’ve been warned not to overtrain because we might suffer burnout. Don’t put me in that scenario again.”
In no uncertain terms, I had been put in my place. I admired him for it, loving the fact that he was marrying a new school of scientific thought with old school belligerent values.
He is a different type of leader to the other great captains that I’ve played under. Like me, Peter shared a dressing room with Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell. Yet, when he replaced Doug Howlett as Munster’s captain four years ago, he never tried to be a clone of either him, Paulie or Drico. He’s comfortable enough in his own skin to be himself.
He doesn’t deliver rehearsed speeches. He came into a dressing room where the culture was to shout and roar before big games. That was the way we psyched ourselves up, knowing that we were minutes away from engaging in a kind of sporting combat.
But Peter wasn’t into that sort of thing. When he spoke, there was real value in every word. He would give you that look and once he did that, it was almost hypnotic. I would have done anything he asked.
I thought about that last night when the announcement came through that he was to be the Lions Test captain and thought about what Ronan O’Gara used to say about Denis Leamy, how “three weeks of thought went into two minutes of talk”. Well, that’s Peter. If he’s like anyone else, it’s Martin Johnson.
Remember the 2003 World Cup final? The England players involved in it will never forget it, nor what Johnson did just before he walked down the tunnel, stopping mid-stride to turn around and look back at all his team-mates, one by one. No words were exchanged because none was needed.
Those England players have since spoken about how Johnson’s glare got them buzzing for that match.
I used to get those kind of inspirational stares from Peter just before matches. The other 22 men sharing a dressing room with him on Saturday will know what I mean.
They won’t have O’Mahony stand among them like the Al Pacino character in Any Given Sunday and deliver a Hollywood-type speech. Players can smell the bull**** when that sort of thing is attempted.
Instead they will look at someone who has played brilliantly on tour,
Instead they will look at someone who has played brilliantly on tour, who arrived in New Zealand with a reputation as a ball-carrier and who has since earned kudos for the quality of his skills. He wouldn’t be skipper if he was out of form.
Being in a high-class environment suits a man of his temperament. So does the captaincy.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if Peter had knocked on Jack Nowell, Liam Williams or George North’s doors over the past week, taken them to one side and said: “I’ve played against you, you destroyed us. You’re an incredible player. Trust yourself to find your form”.
He will find the right words. Just as he did the day after Anthony was buried, when in Munster’s Champions Cup game against Glasgow the referee called the two captains together and pleaded for calm. “They’re over-emotional,” Glasgow’s Jonny Gray suggested.
O’Mahony pushed him in the chest.
“Don’t f***ing tell us what emotions we should have,” he said.
That was the day we all saw our little brother grow up. A proud moment for the previous generation of Munstermen. Last night’s announcement, though, trumped even that.
Seeing him become captain of the Lions is an even prouder moment.
Quality, wish him well, just not his team.Shan wrote:Spotted this on MF.
Peter O’Mahony was a leader even at 19
Donncha O’Callaghan says former team-mate Peter O’Mahony will lead the Lions in the style of Martin Johnson
Imagine how it was to be Peter O’Mahony, lying there on a stretcher with both your knee and your World Cup dream shattered. Imagine how it must have felt to lose a year of your career and then your place in the Ireland team. And imagine the trauma he, and so many of us, endured when he lost Anthony Foley, his friend, mentor and coach at Munster, in October.
For nearly 18 months, life’s reality bit hard and then, on a murky March evening in the Aviva Stadium, fortune changed and a leap into a rugby fantasy world began, starting from the moment Joe Schmidt, the Ireland coach, took him to one side to say that Jamie Heaslip had suffered an injury in the warm-up and that he, Peter O’Mahony, would no longer be Irish rugby’s hard-luck story but instead would start against England.
Two hours later they named him man of the match. Last night Warren Gatland named him captain of the British & Irish Lions. All that pain, starting with the career-threatening knee injury that he suffered against France at the 2015 World Cup, through the dark months of rehab, and darker months wondering if he would ever be the same player again, has given way to a shot at rugby immortality.
Emotionally he is ready for this. If there are those who doubt whether he is mentally capable of coping with the strain of leading the Lions into the most intense arena of all, well that’s understandable. All they will know are the facts, that he wasn’t deemed good enough to start for Ireland in the RBS Six Nations Championship, that he has only captained his country against Canada and the United States.
What they might not be aware of is the man behind the stats, the character lurking beneath those intense eyes, the warrior within.
Me? Well, I’ve known the man since he was ten years old, the mascot at Cork Constitution, our local club. Even then there was an intensity burning in him. Unlike the other ballboys at the club, there wasn’t a giddiness about him, excited that he was hanging around the dressing room of an adult side. You could sense him taking everything in, looking at the first-teamers and probably thinking, “You’re in my jersey until I’m old enough to wear it”.
By the time we became Munster colleagues in 2009, I was a two-times Lions tourist, veteran of two World Cups and two Heineken Cup wins. He was 19, captain of the Ireland Under-20 side, the clear leader among the academy squad members who were training with us.
We were in the middle of a pre-season. Training was finishing up and one of the coaches asked us to do some extra work.
“Are you lot going to join us?” I shouted across to Peter, as he and the rest of the academy players made their way towards the dressing room. Those piercing eyes glared back. “Lads, let’s get to the line,” he said to his peers.
All of them ran to where we were. You could see by the reaction of their faces that once Peter said something, well that was it. They did it.
The competitiveness shone through in that fitness session and afterwards he came across and quietly spoke to me. “We’re following a specialised programme,” he said. “Because of our age, we’ve been warned not to overtrain because we might suffer burnout. Don’t put me in that scenario again.”
In no uncertain terms, I had been put in my place. I admired him for it, loving the fact that he was marrying a new school of scientific thought with old school belligerent values.
He is a different type of leader to the other great captains that I’ve played under. Like me, Peter shared a dressing room with Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell. Yet, when he replaced Doug Howlett as Munster’s captain four years ago, he never tried to be a clone of either him, Paulie or Drico. He’s comfortable enough in his own skin to be himself.
He doesn’t deliver rehearsed speeches. He came into a dressing room where the culture was to shout and roar before big games. That was the way we psyched ourselves up, knowing that we were minutes away from engaging in a kind of sporting combat.
But Peter wasn’t into that sort of thing. When he spoke, there was real value in every word. He would give you that look and once he did that, it was almost hypnotic. I would have done anything he asked.
I thought about that last night when the announcement came through that he was to be the Lions Test captain and thought about what Ronan O’Gara used to say about Denis Leamy, how “three weeks of thought went into two minutes of talk”. Well, that’s Peter. If he’s like anyone else, it’s Martin Johnson.
Remember the 2003 World Cup final? The England players involved in it will never forget it, nor what Johnson did just before he walked down the tunnel, stopping mid-stride to turn around and look back at all his team-mates, one by one. No words were exchanged because none was needed.
Those England players have since spoken about how Johnson’s glare got them buzzing for that match.
I used to get those kind of inspirational stares from Peter just before matches. The other 22 men sharing a dressing room with him on Saturday will know what I mean.
They won’t have O’Mahony stand among them like the Al Pacino character in Any Given Sunday and deliver a Hollywood-type speech. Players can smell the bull**** when that sort of thing is attempted.
Instead they will look at someone who has played brilliantly on tour,
Instead they will look at someone who has played brilliantly on tour, who arrived in New Zealand with a reputation as a ball-carrier and who has since earned kudos for the quality of his skills. He wouldn’t be skipper if he was out of form.
Being in a high-class environment suits a man of his temperament. So does the captaincy.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if Peter had knocked on Jack Nowell, Liam Williams or George North’s doors over the past week, taken them to one side and said: “I’ve played against you, you destroyed us. You’re an incredible player. Trust yourself to find your form”.
He will find the right words. Just as he did the day after Anthony was buried, when in Munster’s Champions Cup game against Glasgow the referee called the two captains together and pleaded for calm. “They’re over-emotional,” Glasgow’s Jonny Gray suggested.
O’Mahony pushed him in the chest.
“Don’t f***ing tell us what emotions we should have,” he said.
That was the day we all saw our little brother grow up. A proud moment for the previous generation of Munstermen. Last night’s announcement, though, trumped even that.
Seeing him become captain of the Lions is an even prouder moment.
His missus and he are sightseeing today (yesterday)Dave wrote:For me, the Lions is basically a summer camp for Hendo.