Brian O'Driscoll for President !

Oh yes!
I think Brian O'Driscoll would make a great President.
He has the capacity to lead, with a disarming and honest face, and the twinkle in the eye is is bright as David Norris' for a start!
Oh yes, I'd vote for him in a nanosecond - but maybe he has better things to do.

Here's a conundrum.
When commentators talk about rugby, there's a phrase that's often overused:
'they lay their bodies on the line for the team'.
As a nation, we can produce sports people of the calibre of Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara, Paul O'Connell, John Hayes... the young turks, Bowe, Heaslip, the list goes on. And that's just the rugby. There are stars of equal stature in Hurling, Football, Horseracing, Athletics, etc. Hurling is a magnificent game. I love that unique mixture of balletic athleticism, lightening speed and the precision of a poet. But for pure passion, give me rugby...
It's the one sport I follow.

As a small child, I remember sitting beside my father to look at matches. It's strange, looking back. We lived in a GAA heartland; my brothers all played Gaelic football; and my father zealously followed the Cork team through good years and bad. My dad was the mildest of men. Many said he was too mild for his own good. Except when it came to rugby.

My memories are filled with grainy black-and-white pictures together with strikingly colourful language from the normally calm, sombre man beside me. And this was in the era of the ban, remember! He would swear and grumble, curse the damned Welsh, call down the Ides of March, call the Scots and Sassanaigh all the names under the sun, plus some that never will see the sun. He idolised Jack Kyle, Mike Gibson, Willie John McBride. They were his heros, and he, of course, was mine - so maybe they became my heros by proxy. Whatever the reason, I still love the honesty of effort, stepping up to the mark with nowhere to hide, the craic of the third half, the brotherliness. A glimpse into an utterly male domain.

Though he died in 1983, last year, during the 6 Nations, I felt my Dad beside me as I sat on my sofa. We bobbed and weaved, we pulled, we pushed, we felt every tackle, we breathed so deep in an effort to will them the strength to go another inch, and another inch. And together we inched our way, all the way to the Grand Slam. Oh, how he would have gloried in it.

They gave every ounce they had for each other.
The trust in each other was absolute and unwavering.
The ultimate in teamwork.
And they still are -
And the new breed show all the signs of carrying the torch forward to yet another level.

So, what's the conundrum?

Well, if we can produce heros like this,
and we can produce artistry like Yeats, Joyce, Shaw,
Ó Riordáin, Kavanagh, Wilde, Swift, Eileen Gray, ...
scientists like Boole, Beaufort, Tyndall, Boyle...
Pantridge, Anthony Clare...
engineers like Ferguson, Holland, Callan, Mitchell...
and I couldn't even TRY to list the musicians, singers, dancers - think about it,
Spillane, John Field, Ó Riada, Sinéad O'Connor, U2, Riverdance, . . .

All uniquely Irish, all magnificent in their field.

So the conundrum?
If we can produce these magnificent beings, why on earth are we making do with Cowen, Coughlan, Lenihan, and though I'm convinced that Kenny, Gilmore et al would do better, I don't know how much better they would be.

We should have inspirational politicians, God knows that we need them.
We need passion. The capacity to 'lay the body on the line for the team'.

Cometh the hour - where is the (wo)man ?