What’s beyond doubt is the manner of their exits.
Brian O’Driscoll’s last act in the international arena was to parade the Six Nations trophy around the Stade de France as the world’s most capped Test player of all time. Paul O’Connell was carted from the field on Sunday while being administered oxygen and looking, perhaps for the first time in his career, mundanely vulnerable.
Ireland must plough on now without the two finest players of the modern era, two men who more than anyone dragged Ireland out of the mediocrity of the amateur days into a new chapter where Six Nations titles are won and World Cup semi-finals are deemed achievable.
The timing, manner and suddenness of O’Connell’s exit will mean his contribution to Irish rugby may not be reflected upon as comprehensively as O’Driscoll’s last year, which will be a relief to those who were fatigued by that orgy of affection.
But O’Connell’s impact on the game in Ireland has been every bit as significant as that of his fellow Lions captain.
This is so wrong on many levels. One of the greatest leaders & players of them all. Inspirational. https://t.co/8blR5e2tJp
— Brian O'Driscoll (@BrianODriscoll) October 13, 2015
You can’t argue with the fact that, in numbers, O’Driscoll edges out his friend: 133 Ireland caps versus 108, four Lions Tours versus three, three Heineken Cups versus two, 83 times captain of Ireland versus 28, 47 international tries versus eight.
The one truly significant figure where O’Connell comes out on top is Six Nations titles, with this year’s post-BOD win pushing O’Connell on to three, one ahead of the 2009 Grand Slam-winning captain.
It was as Ireland captain that O’Connell’s qualities were accentuated. It was as Joe Schmidt’s representative on the pitch that O’Connell’s true worth became apparent to all. It says a lot of O’Connell’s effect on this team that when he left the field on Sunday he wasn’t missed.
He was central to the engineering of this rugby machine that can absorb the loss of its two most important players, O’Connell and Johnny Sexton, and keep on ticking.
That is O’Connell’s greatest strength. The ability to inspire those around him to go beyond their own limits. The happy knack of leading with his words and his actions.
He will, of course, be missed. Perhaps more by those of us off the field than on it. Among supporters O’Connell reached a level of affection that even O’Driscoll struggled to match.
The mercurial O’Driscoll strode onto the national stage with his performances in the 1999 World Cup before transcending to another plane with his hat-trick against France in the 2000 Six Nations.
From that point on O’Driscoll inhabited a territory never before reached by an Irish rugby player. He was a superstar, a globally-recognised athlete who appeared in television ads and dated models.
As is the lot of a forward, Paul O’Connell’s trip into the national consciousness was a little bit more circuitous. A try-scorer on his debut in 2002, the AIL product would slowly build a reputation as one of the strongest and bravest of Ireland’s new breed of professional rugby players.
His feats of strength and courage seemed somehow more human than O’Driscoll’s gift of vision and elusiveness. Where BOD was elevated to the level of earthbound deity, Paulie was the big lad next door who wouldn’t hesitate to lift your car if you had lost your jack.
Not that O’Driscoll wasn’t hard too, of course he was. It was a quality O’Connell saw (and felt) in him from the first time they clashed at interprovincial level, but O’Driscoll’s more earthly qualities were overshadowed, in his earlier career, by the outrageous passes and snake-hipped runs.
O’Connell’s talents were more pedestrian, if no less vital. His one truly world class on-field ability was the lineout, but he ran, cleared out, tackled and scrummaged with a determination and intensity that would make up for any deficiencies.
He was never much of a passer but his strengths lay elsewhere, with his powers of persuasion and inspiration coming to the fore when he took over the Munster captaincy from Anthony Foley in 2007.
He grew in stature and after his “Manic Aggression” speech went viral, he himself became a national sensation with the proliferation of Paul O’Connell jokes, Gift Grub skits and countless other tributes to the fearsome “Psycho”.
But he was an approachable kind of fearsome.
Softly spoken and well read, somehow it was not difficult to accept this smiling giant was the rugby monster who knocked out cold his team-mate Ryan Caldwell during a training session.
Rugby is an aggressive, physical sport at which O’Connell excelled because he was aggressive and physical.
As O’Driscoll slowed down in his later career he too became known for his physicality and defensive abilities above the stuff that had been his trademark in the early days.
“I’d take the quality of being tough as far more of a compliment than I would a silky runner or very evasive. That would be, for me, one of the greatest compliments,” said O’Driscoll in in interview last year.
It was a compliment he would frequently receive as, with his increased emphasis on the tackle area, he reinvented the centre role as almost that of a fourth back-row. As his career reached its conclusion O’Driscoll’s game was becoming more earth-bound, more grounded in the game’s basics, more like Paul O’Connell’s.
Simultaneously, O’Connell was promoted from the guy next door who could lift the car to the guy next door who could lift a nation, and lift back-to-back Six Nations trophies.
“I’ve no problem being ‘Avis’ to Brian O’Driscoll,” he said ahead of O’Driscoll’s retirement. “I can’t do the things he can do and I don’t pretend to be able to do them, so I have absolutely no problem with it.”
O’Connell had no problem allowing others take the plaudits but now that his time in green is at an end it is time to step out of the shadows and stand alongside O’Driscoll as his equal.
He was the best we ever had, in a freakishly normal kind of way.
