We got a glimpse of Sean O’Brien nearing beast mode against Canada. One week later and The Tullow Tank was up to rampaging speed.
Against the All Blacks, O’Brien was an absolute bull. He turned ball over, slowed ball down, tackled with intent, cleared rucks and made an astonishing 20 carries. Nearly every time he carried he got his team over the gainline.
O’Brien had one of those performances that would have gone down in folklore had he finished off one of his two golden try-scoring chances. Beauden Barrett wrapped him up well for the first but he will curse himself for not holding onto Devin Toner’s pop when the tryline was there… waiting to be breached.
Just about everybody that witnessed O’Brien’s bristling, surging, urging performance was privileged to do so. It was good to have him back after another long spell on the sidelines. The tragedy is that he has lost all five of his outings against New Zealand and missed out on history in Chicago.
He deserves better https://t.co/sk6XOpg5Cu
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) November 20, 2016
O’Brien admitted he was pissed off to miss that match and he obviously took that sense of injustice with him into the Dublin return.
Speaking on Off The Ball, last night, Keith Wood had nothing but praise for the Carlow man. He recalled an encounter with O’Brien a couple of weeks back as the moment he knew he was ready to make a barnstorming return to Test rugby.
“I hit him in the stomach when I saw him, just for the craic, you know, because he’s a big ole guy. I was expecting for there to be something a little bit soft but it was like hitting a rock wall.
“The guy is as fit as the proverbial butcher’s dog but he has no match fitness. None.
“What he did on Saturday, that is very hard to explain how unbelievable that [performance] actually was. Some of the balls he went back to collect and those bullocking runs at the end, on the back of everything else he had done in the game, that just goes down as one of the bravest and dragging from the well [games]. That was brilliant.”
Wood also had praise for Conor Murray, Garry Ringrose, “phenomenal” Tadhg Furlong, Rory Best and Irish player of November thus far, Jamie Heaslip.
Luckily for Ireland, despite a couple of bad injuries, those six men should all feature against Australia.
Dick Clerkin makes his GAA Hour debut to talk about a wonderful career and argue passionately with Colm Parkinson over Sky Sports GAA. Subscribe here on iTunes.
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