Spear tackle to ‘sook’: 10 years on from the O’Driscoll-Umaga debacle
A DECADE MAY have numbed the pain, but not the crushing disappointment of Irish fans.
Source: INPHO
Brian O’Driscoll wasn’t just Ireland’s iconic star player and the poster boy for a rise from hopefuls to contenders. He was Ireland’s first Lions captain in the pro era, the first since Ciaran Fitzgerald took the team to New Zealand in 1983.
Fitzgerald’s squad lost the Test series 4 – 0, and still had a better experience that the Clive Woodward expedition south.
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The All Blacks showed their best and worst traits in that opening minute. A quick-tap penalty, ambitious running rugby, efficient clear-outs, aggressive attack, an almost flawless kick for territory. But somewhere mixed in between, there was the apparent ruthless targeting of their opponent’s finest player.
Then 26, O’Driscoll was a lone Lion attempting to disrupt a black ruck. Tana Umaga initially stood firm as pillar until he realised that the Irishman in fact had not been cleared out, he was behind him.
Umaga turns. Justin Marshall spins the ball clear.
Keven Mealamu heaves BOD up and back, Umaga lifts the left leg, Mealamu the right.
Man down.
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With spin doctor Alistair Campbell on board the Lions tour bus, this wasn’t going to be something easily swept under the carpet.
But did the whole Lions family get a little too up in arms? Maybe we had every right to after the citing commissioner managed to decide that the hosts had no case to answer.
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