"Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it, it's his time, that's all."
Those are the words that Snoop utters to Mike en route to a killing in the last season of The Wire, moments before she herself is killed. Clint Eastwood's character mutters a similar version of the same sentiment in Unforgiven.
In his retirement interview today with RTE, Paul O'Connell was not in a mood for self-pity. He mentioned Felix Jones, who had to retire last year at 28 after multiple neck injuries. And he has a point. At 36, Paul O'Connell has won one Grand Slam, two Six Nations championships in 2013 and 2014 and two Heineken Cups, on top of playing in three Lions tours and four World Cups. He has experienced everything that rugby could offer a man. O'Connell should enjoy a full and prosperous life in retirement.
But still it is hard not to despair at this news because it means Paul O'Connell will never play a game of professional rugby again. After his years soldiering and sacrificing his body for country and province, O'Connell deserved his swansong in the south of France. He deserved that season and a half playing alongside rugby's galacticos. He deserved all the fringe benefits: the wine, the weather, 'the big adventure' as he called it. Even those uneasy with the deifying of rugby players will admit that O'Connell's service to Irish sport was exemplary. After all the years for Munster, eighteen months in Toulon were the fitting end to a unique career.
He deserved more than being stretchered off a game in his final of rugby. He never wore the Toulon jersey in a single game. His last sight of a rugby pitch as a professional rugby will be whatever he saw as he was driven off the pitch of the Millennium Stadium at the World Cup. He told Michael Corcoran that his initial reaction to the injury that his career was over. He worked as hard as he could at rehab, but his instinct was correct.
I was at Brian O'Driscoll's last game at the Aviva and I couldn't get over how lucky O'Driscoll was. So few athletes get to retire on their own terms, at the top of the heap. Paul O'Connell deserved to walk off into the sunset on his own terms. Sadly, deserve ain't got nothing to do with it.
