Sporting miracles do occasionally happen. And when they do the vivid memories cascade down for years and years. Think of dramatic Six Nations games between Ireland and France, say, and it is impossible not to be mentally transported back a quarter of a century. Baggy cotton jerseys, Irish underdogs and – magnifique! – a young Brian O’Driscoll scoring a hat-trick in Paris to beat France 27-25.
Not only was it Ireland’s first win in Paris for 28 years but that evocative mid-March weekend sticks out for a different reason. It also proved to be the final overseas rugby assignment for one of the great oval-ball chroniclers, the Guardian’s own Frank Keating.
Frank adored Ireland and its revolving cast of quick-witted rugby characters and that night, once the two of us had finally located our hotel down a tiny street on the Left Bank, we duly raised a glass to the most lustrous of green days.
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Because what Frank loved even more than Ireland winning was the story-telling romance of sport and all its twinkling possibilities. “What’s auld Gaelic for ‘Incroyable’?” began his match report. “This result will leave a winking asterisk in emerald neon in history books all down the new century.”
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And the almighty “BOD”? “In an age of played-for midfield collisions and narrow-eyed and relentlessly grinding body charges by over-muscled half-robots, O’Driscoll shines out like the full-beam Fastnet light does off the Cork coast.”
Ah, what a man. What a writer. And what a scene-setting genius. How about this for a description of the annual pilgrimage made by French supporters up from their sud-ouest heartlands to watch the national team in the big smoke? “Berets, rough cognac, live cockerels in the luggage rack, La Marseillaise in gruff, proud throats …”
Or the glorious quote he attributed to the French forward Jean-Luc Joinel after Les Bleus were deprived of a grand slam by Scotland at Murrayfield in 1984. “We had thought of everything,” sighed Joinel. “Except for the possibility of a referee who has only the one eye.”
In the world according to Keating – and how we miss him – winning was just one part of the sporting equation. It was also about humour and fellowship and finding the joy in things that might otherwise be grimly serious. His first hero as a first-time Ireland watcher at Twickenham in 1960 was the visiting captain, Tom Kiernan, but the collective spirit of the entire team equally captured his imagination. “He had a blinder and in front of him his colleagues fizzed about in a hotchpotch of jinks and jigs and darts and delicate invention and wild-make-do-and-mend – all the time maintaining the most furious gusto imaginable.”
Not surprisingly he also had an especially soft spot for the charismatic France captain Jean-Pierre Rives – “the cascading hair of Pernod yellow …” – who also summed up the “vim and swagger” of Les Bleus in their prime. “The whole point of rugby,” Rives told Keating one day in a Toulouse cafe, “is that it is, first and foremost, a state of mind, a spirit … the game’s very name is a magic word.”
Which leads us neatly to Saturday’s New Testament version of the same ancient story. How Frank would have loved the enticing, tantalising frisson of it all. Ireland looking for a third Six Nations title in a row, a feat never previously achieved. And France cast as the musketeering sous-chiens with the brilliant Antoine Dupont leading the charge. To quote Rives again on the subject of big international days: “It will be excitement all round, movement and an atmosphere that sets you quaking and stands your hair on end. The struggle is in keeping an inner balance in the middle of the tempest.”
There are two small snags for sporting romantics everywhere. The first is the mathematics of this season’s championship run-in. Yes, it would be a grand Irish story if they effectively secure the trophy with a week to spare. But how truly special might it become if France win and set up a classic Super Saturday with everything still on the line?
The second caveat? Modern Test matches, as seen at Twickenham last month, are not necessarily won by the side playing the most effervescent rugby. For all their fancy offloading in Rome, France picked a 7-1 bench against Italy with the aim of pounding their hosts into submission. They may seek to do something similar in Dublin and take on Ireland at source, as England successfully did for a while on the opening weekend.
Either way, the visitors will also have to shake the uneasy memories of their last visit to the Aviva Stadium, in 2023, when they were beaten 32-19 in a pulsating game. France simply could not escape the clutches of a focused, purposeful home side, even with Dupont in Superman mode. Remember when Mack Hansen looked certain to score and the scrumhalf somehow stopped him with a scarcely believable tackle? The French certainly will.
But you never know. Maybe this will be the match that lives up to the hype and drags rugby and sportswriting back out of the grip of the stattos. “For Frank it was always a joyous business, about lovable people doing beautiful things with the ball on the field and having fun afterwards,” wrote Matthew Engel in his wonderful tribute after Keating’s death in 2013. “When it started to be grim-faced and serious and unsmiling – even rugby, especially rugby – the jollity drained out of it.” Twenty-five years on from O’Driscoll’s treble, here’s to a similarly uplifting game in Frank’s memory. — Guardian
