World Cups have a habit of whisking along at such a pace that the recent past quickly becomes ancient history.
It’s minutes into a conversation with retired rugby player Gordon D’Arcy before you realise it was only last month he was omitted from Joe Schmidt’s 31-man squad, effectively ending his 16-year career.
It explains why he won’t be in Cardiff this weekend cheering on the team. If you’re planning on playing at a World Cup you don’t tend to think about sourcing tickets and accommodation.
He’ll be watching on TV like the rest of us, cheering on his former team-mates as they look to beat France, top Pool D and avoid a quarter-final with the reigning champions New Zealand.
He’ll likely also be taking some notes for his new Irish Times column, which attracted international attention last week after he described Sam Burgess’s selection for the Wales game as a mistake, accusing the league convert of naivety.
How did the nascent journalist, a man who kept the media at arm’s length throughout his career, enjoy his first media storm?
“It took me by surprise. You couldn’t argue with the points I made, but when things go viral, they go on Twitter and Facebook and things like that a lot of it can be a storm in a teacup. I wrote the article, so I was pretty happy with what I wrote in it,” D’Arcy told SportsJOE.
“He was never given time to develop as a rugby union player. We all know the attributes he has as a rugby league player and they just haven’t transferred yet. That was effectively what everyone else was saying it was just that it was somebody outside the country saying it. And during a Rugby World Cup any news is good news.”
The column attracted attention in the land of the All Blacks, with Steve Dean of the New Zealand Herald writing that D’Arcy was “proving significantly more incisive in print than he ever was on the field”.
The former Leinster centre says he paid no attention to Dean’s remarks, but seemed to be well aware of what the Kiwi columnist wrote.
“I just switched off. I wrote it, I was happy to stand by my comments and I thought I explained them reasonably articulately. From what I gather it was just one journalist in New Zealand and he didn’t say anything about the article, he just questioned how much of a Rugby World Cup career I had and I only played in one quarter-final, so I can’t argue with that either,” the Wexford man says with a smile.
D’Arcy seems very happy with his lot. A five-month-old daughter, Soleil, his business interests and new career with Investec are more than filling any void that may have opened with the end of a career that delivered far more highs than lows.
For the most part, the good and the bad, in the green of Ireland and blue of Leinster, were experienced alongside Brian O’Driscoll.
Since his former midfield partner retired a season before him, D’Arcy has had the opportunity to play alongside his replacement, Jared Payne, and he believes the Ulster centre was “unfairly picked on” by his former Leinster coach Matt Williams.
“Maybe as a country we are very prone to getting very carried away with ourselves. We had the best outside centre in the modern era for the best part of 13,14, 15 years. He was exceptional and maybe in every game that he is gone he gets better. It was always going to be hard for the person who had to fill those shoes.
“[Payne] is not trying to be Brian he is trying to be himself – he is a very different player to Brian. I think people need to accept he is going to play the game his way. His distribution skills are very, very underrated. You can talk about the “unseen work” but he is definitely doing the unseen work. When crucial things happen he is usually within a yard or two of the ball.
“He is a players’ player.”
Payne missed the narrow victory over Italy on Sunday with a bruised foot and the scrappy manner of Ireland’s performance has seen an outbreak of pessimism ahead of this weekend’s pool decider with Philippe St-Andre’s men.
Not so D’Arcy, who is confident Joe Schmidt, the coach with whom he won two of his three Heineken Cups, will have a plan for France.
“I’m sure there is a rabbit somewhere, the size of this rabbit, how many of them, the colour of it and what it is going to do is up for debate. But there is definitely going to be something different, there has to be something different because we barely beat Italy playing round-the-corner rugby against a team that were physically up for it.
“We are going to do something different but what it is, I’m out of the loop on that one, I’m afraid.”
Don’t let him fool you, a month ago he was learning the Schmidt playbook out in Carton House. He may be watching it at home on TV like the rest of us, but his view is much, much better.
Gordon D’Arcy was speaking at the official unveiling of a brand new Powers Single Pot Still Whiskey expression, the Powers Three Swallow Release.
