He’s No Doris Gump

My first thought when that All Blacks bomb fell from the sky on top of Caelan Doris, late on, and he dropped it, was of course to be reminded of the helpless anguish of all those looking up into a flaming middle-eastern sky as those Israeli bombs fell on Gaza.

If only … sure isn’t that what sport is about, distracting you from the real world and its conflicts, by offering you a more containable and immediate one to resolve? Shamefully, I actually roared at young Doris, for committing such a heinous act in Ireland’s greatest last 10 minutes of need, and nearly choked on a huge, angry gulp of wine …

And so the last desperate minutes at the State De France flashed by in a fleeting eternity, Irish players and their nation and diaspora still hoping, praying, pleading right to the instant the ever-fussy — but fair — Wayne Barnes put the whistle to his lips to sound the pibroch on Ireland’s Rugby World Cup.

And the great adventure of Johnny Sexton, Andy Farrell, Bundee Aki, Hugo Keenan, big Doris and the rest, ground to a sudden, shuddering end. An adventure followed live by millions.

For some reason, the old Pixies song Wave of Mutiliation had been on constant replay in my head for days.

I thought it was to do with that horrible sense of dread that peaked on Saturday morning when I woke up contemplating the wave of mutilation that would engulf the Irish pack, and warrior king Sexton being carried off after 20 minutes with a leg hanging off — fuelled by the humiliation of that Test defeat last year under their own Long White Cloud, and that look in Richie Mo’unga’s eye at that press conference when asked about facing the best team in the world.

But now, on the morning after the mass deflation and in full hungover disenchantment, I’m thinking of the wave of mutilation from the social media bad cess pit engulfing Caelan Doris and every last one of these wonderful young men and their entourage who had dared to give us such hope, and, whisper it, expectations. It’s Coming Home, Rugby’s Coming …

The bastards had made us dream.

The uninformed twitterings on how badly Doris played, how James Lowe didn’t do much apart from those aimless booming kicks back to the best broken field running team in the world … and all the ‘5 Out Of 10’, ‘4 out of 10s’ that would sum up the performances of each member of the team, with a pithy paragraph write off to go with each.

But now, when I think of Caelan Doris’ performance against the All Blacks, there were glimpses still of the brilliant young buck who charged, ball in hand, time and again into the solar plexus and soft shoulders of Springboks, Scots, and the others alike. Of course, he was less impactful against a ferocious All Blacks pack, led by hardy Ardie Savea, but that’s more a credit to them. 

And he and they never never gave up, even after that one dropped catch.

It’s hard now to look a this strapping blue-eyed boy who had an amazing tournament all round — and is young enough to do it all again in four years, hopefully — and not see a young man who will feel the disappointment of that dropped catch and spilled World Cup more than any of us.

A crushed young boy, even, one whose parents will have driven him to a thousand underage matches, washed a thousand muddy kits and all the rest, and just supported a hugely talent young rugby player, and is also just their son.

He and they will have known a thousand good days, and a thousand bad — and the latest the worst of them all —  to now. That’s sport.

And they will probably just want to hug him now and hold him in the bosom of their healing affections

The disappointment of this defeat and exit is raw and will linger long, but genuinely this RWC World Cup quarter-final loss was like no other that had gone before. 

Ireland lost a game that we could have so easily won — one could even put it down to the heroic hand of Jordie Barrett — once of Ballinacree, Co Meath — holding up a try and a country’s deliverance on the world stage.

And this after Ireland had weathered a stormy start and rose again. To see the relieved All Blacks hugging and kissing each other in delight and exhausted relief at the finish, was to have witnessed the aftermath of a contest between two great teams.

We’ve left the World Cup, but we haven’t left the top table.

We’ll be back.