Animal cracker

Several hours after the British and Irish Lions’ annihilation of Australia in Brisbane at the weekend, Foul Play happened upon Brian O’Driscoll in that TV commercial for the Irish Times, which sees him extolling the virtues of the paper while engaging in what looks like a spot of sprint training on Dollymount Strand.

Bearing in mind what young O’Driscoll had done to the Wallabies’ defence earlier that morning, there’s little doubt that the Old Lady of D’Olier Street has got good value for her advertising “spend” – or at least rather better value than she got for the similar advert featuring Louis Walsh, who apparently charged twice as much!

O’Driscoll was absolutely supernatural in Brisbane, scoring a coruscating solo try one minute and sending Australian wingers sprawling to the deck the next. Indeed, if we exclude racehorses from the debate, we can surely now class him as Ireland’s second most gifted sporting figure of the modern age, behind only Roy Keane. (So where does that leave Sonia O’Sullivan? – Ed)

Yet, as brilliantly as O’Driscoll performed, he wasn’t the side’s best player, or even the second best, in a team performance which will surely pass into Lions legend.

For the benefit of non-rugby types (or, to put it another way, for the benefit of those who weren’t sufficiently exercised by the Lions tour to get out of bed at 10am to watch the first Test), we should point out, at this juncture, that Australia are demonstrably the best national side in the world, and have been for several years now.

If the Wallabies were a football team, they would resemble a composite of the midfield flair of, say, France or Argentina coupled with the defensive strength of Italy. If they were a commercial company, they would surely be up before the Monopolies Commission for possessing an inordinately large stockpile of fantastic players denied to other teams.

Their entire squad, but particularly their back line, is littered with class players, of which the galloping winger Joe Roff, the peerless lock and skipper John Eales, the freakishly talented flanker George Smith and the genius out-half Stephen Larkham are merely the most eye-catching.

They are so well-off for players that Saturday’s match saw people as talented as Matt Cockbain, Elton Flatley and the magnificent Matt Burke wearing out the arses of their tracksuits on the bench – and that is to say nothing of Manuel Edmonds, Jim Williams and the others who didn’t even make the squad of 22.

All this is by way of contextualising what the Lions achieved at the weekend. Their skill and strength of character was astonishing to behold, and they should have won by much more than 16 points. Australia’s two late(ish) tries couldn’t mask the fact that the world champions had been given the rogering of their lives, on their own turf.

As you may have gathered, Foul Play rather enjoyed Saturday’s game! The fare on offer triumphantly vindicated his heavy-hearted decision to get out of the scratcher at the ungodly hour of 9.30 in the morning.

The match was a real belter from pillar to post, infusing the viewer with that unique sense of exhilaration which comes from watching two excellent teams attempting to tear each other to bits. I always get the same sensation when watching the Tri Nations every summer, after a spring spent looking at Six Nations games, which tend to be relatively stodgy by comparison.

Indeed, the Lions-Australia encounter was like watching a Six Nations game at one-and-a-half times the normal viewing speed, with most of the handling errors and misplaced passes edited out.

And speaking of speed, Jason Robinson was something else on Saturday. A former rugby league star with Wigan who switched to union last year, he made it into the Lions tour on the strength of several blistering but insubstantial cameos for England in the Six Nations earlier this year.

On Saturday he opened the scoring with a beautiful try, before going on to deliver a display of pure brilliance. Keith Wood was named man of the match by Sky Sports (and before I forget, Rob Henderson, a fine player and an incredibly nice man, was excellent as well), but for my money Robinson shaded it, as much for the ferocity and determination of his defending in the final quarter, when Australia mounted a brave revival, as for the danger he presented whenever the Lions attacked.

In fact, the only discordant note on the day was struck by the almost psychedelic state of the Brisbane pitch. At least six different advertising logos, most of them the insignia of brewing companies and suchlike, had been spraypainted onto the grass.

At a time when execrable movies like Tomb Raider and Castaway are taking the science of product-placement to new heights, it is oddly reassuring to see the game of rugby valiantly attempting to keep abreast of the demands of the modern age. One would expect no less, however, from a sport run exclusively by the business classes and for the business classes.

We might as well enter into the spirit of the thing, then, by informing you that this piece was typed on a Compaq Presario computer by a journalist wearing Diesel jeans, Ellesse trainers and a black DKNY shirt, while sipping a can of Diet Coke and listening to the Avalanches album on Sony headphones.

Christ, a bit more of this and I’ll be turning up in ads for the Irish Times.