Poor Ireland. Just when the nation thought the week could not turn any bleaker, the Taoiseach hopped up on the weighing scales on prime time television.
This was just four days after the Ireland rugby team had not simply lost The Match against England but had been eviscerated and humbled so terribly that if you listened hard enough you could hear the ghosts of Lloyd George, Churchill and Oliver Cromwell laughing their asses off.
So the national mood was fragile on the evening that Leo Varadkar made a surprise appearance on Operation Transformation, the television show in which participants are encouraged to refashion their body-shapes by submitting themselves to a radical exercise regime and the terrifying bubbliness of host Katherine Thomas. I'm not sure there are any braver people in Ireland than those who go on that show.
Now, it is well documented that the Taoiseach is one of the most health conscious and fit of our political representatives. But in a period when the Emerald Isle is careering towards a possible return to hard-bordered partition, it was still a surprise to see him pop up in a cast of other well-known names and faces to stand on a weighing scale which had a gizmo revealing one’s “metabolic age”.
Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, for instance, was a good 15 years younger than his actual age: no surprise. Pretty much all of the celebs were delighted with what the machine told them.
In the list of the 14 men who have been Taoiseach, it seems undeniable that Jack Lynch, the six time All-Ireland medallist with Cork, stands alone as the pre-eminent athlete of the bunch. Still, it’s impossible to imagine Lynch, let alone a WT Cosgrove or John Bruton or CJH, rocking up on the television screens of the electorate in their shorts and leisure wear, inviting the great unwashed to critique the shapeliness of their gams. But this is an age which places a premium of physical wellbeing, and we have become accustomed to the sight of our leader in work-out duds.
Bit of a blow
So it was a bit of a blow when the machine mercilessly informed the Taoiseach, who is, let the record show, a sparklingly youthful 40, that his metabolic age is, in fact, 53.
The expression on the Taoiseach’s face at that second can only be described as WTF. He couldn’t have looked more shocked had he been told that Arlene Foster had been caught smoking weed with Jean Claude Juncker.
“I’d need to see the science behind the breakdown,” he said.
In fairness to the man, the Brexit debate has put a good decade on everyone. But just like that you could see hipster election marketing slogans – A Slimmer Leader for A Cooler Ireland – ripped up and hastily replaced – A Leader Wise Beyond His Years.
It may not have been as drastic a blow to the national morale as the night when the IMF came to town. But it was a low.
And it was in keeping with the lonely sound of the national bubble deflating. On Saturday morning last, a few hours before Ireland and England kicked off, it was evident that the Rugby Nation had veered off-course and onto a treacherous path.
Flick through the national radio stations on Saturday morning and it was, at one stage, possible to hear four simultaneous conversations about “the match”. Everyone had an opinion about the genius of “Joe”, about “Johnny’s” leadership qualities and about whether “Robbie” should, in fact, be at fullback: should “we” be experimenting just a few months before we played the World Cup final?
Gloomy buggers
Ireland is jam-packed with fatalists, those gloomy buggers whose souls and antennae are always tuned to the sights and sounds of imminent disaster.
“I knew we were f****d the minute I heard them talking about a ‘double Grand Slam’ on Marian,” one of them told me a few days after the disaster.
He had been at the game and reported having a “bad feeling” even before he reached Baggot Street and saw the now infamous Paddy Power poster boasting: No Stopping These Backstops.
That poster was just one of a number of clever and bombastic slogans of a campaign designed to provoke and to get under the skin.
England have no need of any such campaign: they have Eddie Jones. The odd thing was that those slogans didn’t exaggerate the general mood at lunchtime on Saturday. They simply mirrored the rampant expectation.
Others would report of being in the grip of bad feeling as they headed to the ground, wary of the blowsy triumphalism for which Irish crowds in confident mood so easily slip.
To former players whose experience of wearing green mostly involved Hurt as portrayed by Johnny Cash, the general atmosphere must have seemed intoxicated and dangerous.
The worst was confirmed afterwards. Ireland-England may have been the hottest ticket in town but tens of thousands of the supporters had yet to take their seats when the boys – The Team Of Us – walked out on to the floor of the coliseum.
And by the end thousands more left early, unable to wait until the final whistle to get away from the drag of watching their team not win. That wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal.
So what happened? Was that early abandonment in the Aviva a reaction of people chiding themselves for daring to believe that this time, this team, could win it all?
National obsession
What Irish rugby has done in the past 20 years has been extraordinary. But it has also reached the stage where the game feels like a national obsession: the wall-to-wall incredibly solemn pre- and post- game analysis in print, radio, podcast and on screen; the seductive marketing campaigns and, of course, the series of brilliant performances and thrilling wins that have brought the Ireland team to the pinnacle of the world rankings.
One game doesn’t change the team’s true standing. Ireland are still a very good team with a brilliant coach who has devised a highly effective if inescapably methodical and unimaginative style of playing the game. It could be that 2018 proves to be as good as it gets. And that’s okay.
It’s possible to follow the Ireland rugby team without officially joining the team of us or without ever wanting to hear the word “physicality” spoken again.
At 7pm on Saturday last that realisation seemed to go viral and left everyone feeling chastened and about 100 years old.
That can happen sometimes.
Just ask the Taoiseach.
