Last Friday's terrorist attacks on Paris will reverberate for months and years to come. The wider ramifications are obvious but it's in the minutiae that you see just how much of an effect the attacks have had on the city. As has been said, they were attacks on normal life, on people going about their daily lives and enjoying themselves. They're attacks that will have a lot of Paris' residents thinking of what to do next and Ronan O'Gara and his family are no different in that regard.
In an extremely honest column in today's Irish Examiner, O'Gara has opened up about the effects that last Friday's attacks have had on life in Paris. Life goes on and O'Gara continues to carry out his job at Racing 92 but it's clear that normality is extremely far away at the moment.
When you suit up for work, you focus but this isn’t an elephant in the corner of the room we are trying to ignore. This is war and terrorism and the slaughtering of innocents in neighbourhoods we can relate to.
This is like fellas going down Oliver Plunkett Street with a Kalashnikov or machine gun and mowing down people going about their lives.
In that atmosphere, it's no surprise that O'Gara and his family have been thinking about a return home. Whether that will happen or not is not certain, but it's something that the former Munster man is giving serious consideration to.
Jessica is a bit scared too. Five children. Away from home. Probably yearning for Cork. This whole episode has us looking homewards again. Am I rattled? Damn right I am.
This is too random. It keeps going around in my head now, my future here in Paris. Let’s see how the next few weeks pans out. You’d have to consider everything after what has happened.
For the moment, O'Gara is thankful that he and the Racing team have the opportunity to travel to the 'tranquility' of Wales this weekend as they take on Scarlets. But, after that, it does seem that the situation in Paris could see O'Gara and his family returning to the tranquility of Cork for longer than just a weekend.
