Ireland legend Brian O'Driscoll offered his thoughts on the current hype around Irish rugby, claiming that factions of the support need to 'have a good hard look' at themselves.
Ireland are currently enjoying a period of near-unprecedented success, bidding not only for grand slam glory but also to become the first-ever side to claim three consecutive Six Nations titles.
However, with that success has come criticism from far and near about the manner in which the Irish media and supporters are responding to the new-found success. Just last week the Telegraph in the UK published a scathing article about the 'insufferable superiority' among the fanbase.
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Brian O'Driscoll in no doubt about Irish arrogance
Speaking as an ambassador for Guinness, who teamed up with Field of Vision to bring a revolutionary sensory experience to visually impaired fans at this year's Guinness Men’s & Women’s Six Nations Championships, O'Driscoll said there was no 'maybe' about whether there was tinges of arrogance among supporters.
"FOR SURE, not like maybe. We're not in a good place ourselves to make a decision on how we are as a team that's going well, its other people that will make that decision" O'Driscoll said.
For teams that have gone well, Leinster would be the same, I don't think there's much love for Leinster across Europe, people will say (it's) because the fans are hard to deal with and I hear that from my work colleagues over in the UK. There's not much love for Leinster, and there's less and less love for Ireland around being good winners.
It's hard for very successful teams to enjoy, Saracens...were never adored as a team in England, but they were wildly successful for a period of time, but that just happens that successful teams will not be loved, people get a bit fed up with it.
I do think, I don't see it a huge amount but just from word of mouth that there are things that are put out on social media and conversations that don't showcase the best of us and certainly don't help our case saying we're humble winners, so we have to be mindful of it.
While Brian O'Driscoll may have sensed glimpses of hypocrisy in Ireland fans getting ahead of themselves, he didn't think the players could be tarnished with the same brush.
"We said it the same about everybody else, Scotland getting ahead of themselves, Wales being hard to work with, England being arrogant, I think we might need to internalise an awful lot of that and have a good hard look at ourselves because it certainly appears, I saw an article in the telegraph the other day to the extent of; are Ireland a hard team to enjoy, are they getting ahead of themselves? I would say the supporters yes. The team no."
On the topic of fans, the former Ireland and Lions captain also gave his thoughts on the comparison between the electric atmosphere in the Principality Stadium last weekend, and the long bemoaned atmosphere in the Aviva Stadium, which many have claimed is being impacted by the coming and goings of those looking to beat the queues at the bars.
I would suggest you need to be in the crowd to really get a sense of the lulls. I don’t know if it’s people walking out and going for wees and pints. I’m sure that has an effect, but we used to say, as a player group, that there’s a responsibility to give the crowd something to cheer about early in the game and get them excited" explained O'Driscoll.
It's give and take but I understand the frustration of people having to stand up and sit down and do the hokey cokey is pretty frustrating. I don’t know if I would be a subscriber to doing that if you are at an edge of a row, that would kill me.
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