Keith Earls - an artist and a champion

Is there a ‘no show-offs’ clause written into the Rugby Union rulebook? Look at Paul O’Connell - he has an almost pathological desire to play down his own towering brilliance. Indeed Irish rugby seems to be based on the assumption that anyone who does anything out of the ordinary deserves a belt in the jaw.
Look me in the eye and tell me that every time Gavin Henson takes the field you don’t wish him ill? He’s a bit too fond of his own smell isn’t he? The same probably goes for Danny Ciprani.
We desperately want our rugby players to be humble, but should we? These guys, after all, are capable of changing a game in an instant.
Such a subject raises the age-old argument about whether the sporting artist is superior to the sporting champion - a topic the Times’ (UK) Simon Barnes has broached most regularly and most brilliantly.
In May 2008 Barnes focused an extraordinary column (have a read) on snooker’s Ronnie O’Sullivan who, he argued, pursued ‘beauty’ above victory. Barnes also highlighted Arsène Wenger, a man who ‘would sooner lose with beauty than win with ugliness’.
From a personal point of view I have always admired the sporting champion and have often found myself losing patience with the sporting artist. In Keith Earls however Munster rugby have discovered an extraordinary combination of those two polemics - there is no frivolity to him, but at the same time he is capable of tearing an opposition to shreds.


One of the most fascinating aspects to top class sport is the development of the talented youngster. Every sporting biography features the rite-of-passage. Every sports star must face a series of stress tests which challenges and changes them as people. Every one of us goes through a similar process in our personal lives. Luckily most of us go through that process in privacy, but the sports star does not.
Normally when young players buckle under pressure or make horrendous mistakes observers are quick to suggest that the player in question will ‘learn from the mistake’. I disagree. The character, or the lack of it, you display as a young man is hard to shake off - in time it is not muted, but instead magnified.
It has been fascinating this season to watch Keith Earls respond to pressure. He has swotted aside challenge after challenge and match by match he looks closer and closer to the complete package - the artist and the champion. It’s actually a pity that he won’t come face-to-face with Gavin Henson on Sunday. Now that would be a real treat!

Post-Script: The Ospreys, via their website, are running an ingenious competition. By entering online supporters of the franchise are in with a chance to become an ‘assistant manager’ with the Ospreys for the day - the winner will attend the match day management meeting, assist the coaching staff, sit in the dugout during a game, attend the post-match de-briefing in the dressing room, sit through the press conference and take part in the post-match festivities. Any chance Munster would be similarly inspired?

Brian McDonnell