Scotland v IrelandMalcolm O'Kelly today becomes Ireland's most capped player. Gerry Thornley talks to him
Some players just make an immediate impression, like seeing Gavin Henson play like a man amongst boys in a Welsh under-21 win over their Irish counterparts five years ago.
It was an AIL game at Templeville Road about 12 years ago. Out of the blue this tall, gangling teenager stooped to catch a ball around his shoelaces and galloped on while hardly breaking stride. Jeepers, who's this guy? Of course, at St Mary's they knew they had a gem and you didn't have to be a soothsayer to have predicted Malcolm O'Kelly would one day play for Ireland. Even becoming Ireland's most capped rugby player of all time today has long since seemed a matter of when rather than if.
Players such as O'Kelly don't exactly grow on trees. He has always been, and remains, something of a freakish sporting talent, a source of amazement as much to his team-mates as to supporters.
Reggie Corrigan, one of his long-time sidekicks with Ireland and Leinster, looks toward the ceiling, pauses and thinks about Big Mal for a moment. "I think of someone who can turn and win a game for you," he begins. "He's an incredible athlete, and I've watched him in games for Leinster where he's taken an intercept ball from just inside the opposition half-way line and gone the length of the pitch to finish it off with backs chasing him down.
"I saw him from nowhere stick a hand out at the front of a quick lineout by the opposition to score a try against Italy. He just does these bizarre things. He reminds me of Go-Go Gadget with these arms that he has. When he runs he looks totally unorthodox, he's all the over the place, yet he's as talented a second row as the world has ever seen. He really is an incredibly good player.
"Then you meet him and you talk to him," Corrigan continues, "and he's so laid back. You can't work out how this can be. He's into his music, he's into books and reading, and he's a well educated guy. He's studying psychology at night at the moment. There's so many branches to this guy's tree it's unreal.
"He's a dry, sarcastic, funny character," adds Corrigan. "But underneath it all, he's serious about what he does. He does his homework and his preparation, and it shows. I don't think you get to 70 caps without being prepared and not being something special."
If there's a flaw in O'Kelly's game it is a tendency to loiter around the fringes or at the breakdown and concede penalties, but even this Corrigan attributes to O'Kelly's eagerness. The flip side is the many big plays, like reaching over and stealing unattended Italian ruck ball for Peter Stringer to find a 50-metre touch in one of the turning points of the match.
One recalls a game against Western Province in Cape Town on the tour of 1998. Just having gone 12-6 down in injury-time, Ireland had to win their own restart. David Humphreys' drop kick landed a good deal closer to the Western Province 22 than the 10-metre line but O'Kelly, a good 10 yards ahead of his team-mates, somehow chased it down and won the ball amongst a thicket of opponents.
With that Ireland dragged themselves upfield, and would have won the game from an ensuing, 14-man lineout maul but for an erroneous penalty against them. But it had all been down to O'Kelly's sheer desire and athleticism.
He admits to being a little embarrassed about overtaking a legend such as Mike Gibson. "He did it over 15 years, I did it over eight years, but I'm very happy to have done it in eight years. You've still got to lace up the boots and go out on the pitch 70 times. Yeah, I'm absolutely delighted. But I'd be even more proud of it if we went out and won on Saturday."
O'Kelly has also seen the grim times. Against Argentina in Lens. "It was horrendous, it put us into depression for a few years and it took us a while to get out of it." The hammering against England in the Grand Slam decider. "The hope was there for the squad, but we just didn't perform really."
Against that, the highs have been more numerous and more memorable. "Yeah, the English away win last year was pretty special. Beating South Africa this season was pretty fantastic, beating Australia, beating the French away and beating them at home. Winning the Triple Crown. They're as long as my arm to be honest, I've had a great last few years."
Aside from drifting through life with a sideways smirk and a shrug of the shoulders, O'Kelly conveys the impression he never harboured much in the way of ambitions about himself as a rugby player, not at any rate until it all started to fall into place.
"When I was watching rugby it was when England would come over and we would get a fair beating. I was just playing to enjoy the game, not looking toward too many heroes. I think Moss Keane once came to my club in De La Salle Palmerston. That's a moment I'll always remember because he lifted me up by the ears. I was getting an honours scarf and he lifted me up by the ears. I've met him a few times since but I've never said it to him."
Had he ever returned the favour? "I wouldn't be able to, to be honest."
He's seen some changes, the IRFU's approach to their own indigenous players, the incomparably more specialised coaching, and he reckons he's changed completely as character, citing his impending marriage to longtime girlfriend Stephanie in July, though in many ways he seems the same, and hasn't forgotten his roots.
"The guy who is doing my wedding is a fella called Fr Ronnie Grimshaw in Templeogue and Fr Redmond, two good guys in Templeogue College, which helped spur the interest in rugby for me. Frank Flanagan and Xavier O'Connor up in DLSP (where O'Kelly played under-age rugby for several years), a few guys in St Mary's, I'd have to say Victor O'Connor and Rodney O'Donnell, and Ciarán Fitzgerald was a good influence on me as well."
The first cap would have come sooner but for a broken ankle while at London Irish. Eventually it arrived in 1997, late enough at 23, against a vintage All Blacks' side. "I remember competing against Ian Jones at lineouts. I remember hitting into Robin Brooke at a ruck, I remember Zinzan Brooke speaking across them, organising them, and I remember one of their guys running through me," he recounts, with that engaging smile.
Even allowing for the more prolific nature of Test matches accumulating 70 caps is some haul. "I've been lucky with injuries, apart from one shoulder reconstruction at London Irish a week before the first international, so that was a bitter blow. But I suppose I've just always had the desire to play for Ireland, and I've been a bit lucky with what God's given me as well. I've always been a hard trainer, and I've always pushed myself. However, you can be very fit but you can be mentally weak. I am fit but I can also push myself."
Dr Liam Hennessy once conducted a fitness test on O'Kelly and was very surprised at the relative lack of lactic acid which had built up in the player's muscles. "I would be physically very aerobically fit, just as Victor Costello would be hugely powerful, much more so than I am."
As well as the man above, it's clearly in the genes as well, given his sister Catriona was a renowned hockey player. "She's a physical therapist, but she's still in great nick. My mother was a very good all-rounder, a very good hockey player, tennis player, squash player and now a very good golfer."
Willie Anderson, who coached O'Kelly at London Irish and later Leinster, speaks firstly of what he calls "a great rugby gentleman".
"Like Brian O'Driscoll, I might have been able to influence him a milligram; he (O'Kelly) was such a talented guy. People say you coached them? Let's be honest, 'away ye go'. His lineout work for Ireland and for Leinster - fantastic. And just his athleticism. He's able to make a tackle, get on his feet, and win the ball. He's prepared to put his head in where people wouldn't put in their boots. He's a very intelligent guy. He's got two degrees and a masters or whatever, and he's a realstudent of the game. When Malcolm got into the way of planning, looking at the opposition, how they moved, what idiosyncrasies they had, their lineouts, he worked on his game and became even better.
"I think he is now maturing into a legend, one of the greatest players ever, and I hope that he gets his just reward this year. I think he's now playing better than he's ever played."
Enviously laid back, to the point of being prostrate, O'Kelly's dreamy, forgetfulness is almost legendary.
"He's the kind of guy that you need to have a minder with," laughs Anderson, "to make sure he brings his boots, knows what time he's to get on the bus, but once you overcome that there's no point in shouting at him because he'll just say 'so what if I forgot my boots? So what if I've got the wrong top on?'"
"But when he crosses the whitewash," adds Anderson, nodding toward the adjacent sideline in Murrayfield, "like Jeremy Davidson, Paddy Johns and other guys I would have been involved with, he is a fantastic player, an immense player. And I hope he's not too immense this weekend."
O'Kelly has not only matured and improved with age, he's had to become an even more adaptable lineout performer, operating more at the front of the Irish line to accommodate Paul O'Connell, while still mostly the primary ball winner in the middle for Leinster, though he can operate anywhere, and is a magnificent poacher. There's surely never been a more proficient lineout operator in the history of Irish rugby, and he's helped make Ireland's the best lineout in the world.
He's still only 30, and the desire seems to be as strong as ever, given he points out Gareth Llewellyn is still going strong at 36.
"I'm under contract now for another couple of years. If they don't give me a contract after I'll either go off somewhere else or I'll pack it in, depending on how I'm playing and how I'm feeling."
But, he's clearly not planning on that. "There's always plenty to do and achieve. There'll always be that," he says, and, being the freak of nature that he is, who's to say he mightn't have another four, five or six years left in him of world-class rugby?
Shorter-term, with regard to the Lions, there is still some unfinished business. He was never given a fair chance in Australia four years ago, confined to one credible 'trial' per se in the defeat to Australia A where he was shunted to a then utterly unfamiliar front-of-the-line role. Thereafter, to his ill-disguised frustration, he was consigned to aping Aussies in practice. The experience temporarily knocked him for six.
"Four years ago I probably wouldn't have said that. I think I would have been happy just to leave it off. Time heals and having been there I know what can happen, the pitfalls and how difficult it is to perform. You can go in with a certain amount of form and it can go on for you.
"It's a whole new team and a whole new set-up that may or may not work for you. But, regardless, you've got to go in there with an open mind and take it on the chin, enjoy it for what it is. And I plan to do that this time. Hopefully with that attitude it'll keep me alive and in the shake-up right 'til the end."
Today couldn't happen to a nicer fella. Or a more talented second row. It would be easy, and even a little trite, to question its validity on the matter of eras and relative cap hauls. That's not his fault, and ultimately no one else has played as much for Ireland. With luck and health, he will go on to extend his record. Good luck to him. May he reach a century.
