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The quiet Munsterman who, two years after suffering a career-threatening injury, will lead the tourists out to face the All Blacks at their Eden Park fortress on Saturday
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Peter O’Mahony nearly did not make the touring squad.
But for Jamie Heaslip picking up an ankle injury two hours before Ireland’s Six Nations match against England in Dublin in March, he would have started that match on the bench. And this tour could have been very different.
But Heaslip was injured. And the 27-year-old O’Mahony put in the 80-minute performance of his Ireland career to date, tackling anything and everything in white; wreaking unholy havoc at the breakdown and set piece; stealing the ball from the vaunted English locks at the lineout; winning the man of the match award; denying Eddie Jones’s men a world record 19th consecutive win. In the process, he took his name from the bottom of Warren Gatland’s possibles list to near the top of his definites one.
Yet it is typical of the Munster man, of the hidden work he does from first whistle until last, that he barely features in the official Six Nations’ highlights reel of the game.
That is O’Mahony through and through. There will be no limelight stolen by this quiet Lions’ captain, who is not prone to unnecessary rhetoric. No wasted words where a gimlet stare will do. No job demanded of his charges that he wouldn’t do himself. No chance of a backward step taken. He is an opponent worthy of the All Blacks.
Do not doubt that O’Mahony is made of the right stuff. He has captained every side he has played for – including the Lions against the Maori last weekend, and Ireland in 2013 against USA and Canada. He has long been regarded as a long-term Ireland captain in waiting.
Leading the Lions out at Eden Park for the first Test against the All Blacks while tour captain Sam Warburton sits on the bench is another twist in an unusual two-year period that started in agony.
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In October 2015, O’Mahony could have been forgiven for thinking his rugby career was over. He was stretchered off the pitch midway through the second half of the World Cup Pool D decider against France with an ACL injury. It was another match in which he had stepped up to leadership, after Paul O’Connell earlier left the pitch with what would be a career-ending injury.
He was out for a year. He returned to club action in October 2016, as a replacement in a routine Pro 12 match against Zebre. Two weeks later, Munster’s opening pool match of the Champions Cup at Racing 92 in Paris was postponed at the 11th hour following the death of coach Anthony Foley.
O’Mahony, the club captain, was the one who spoke to the press in the tragedy’s immediate aftermath. It hurt like hell, but he did stepped up again for his mentor.
Niggling injuries kept him out of the early November internationals, including that match against the All Blacks in Chicago, as well as the first two Six Nations matches of 2017. But, while his international career appeared to have stalled again – the bench appeared all he could hope for on his return to full fitness – he was leading Munster from the front to their best season in several years.
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Their run to the Pro 12 final and the Champions Cup semi-finals will go down in history as a fitting memorial to their lost coach ‘Axel’ – but it was as much about the players’ and coaches’ response to the tragedy. They were led there, as in many other ways, from the front by O’Mahony.
It’s no surprise that his rugby mindset has Foley at its centre. He grew up watching Axel play in the Munster side of the early noughties. And he was part of the province’s age-grade set-up when Foley began coaching.
As well as Foley, he has been shaped by O’Connell, Donncha O’Callaghan and Doug Howlett at Munster, and Brian O’Driscoll with Ireland. But there can be no doubt he is his own man.
Lions’ forwards coach Graham Rowntree said he believes O’Mahony carries the leadership DNA of that Munster legend Paul O’Connell; and former clubmate and two-time Lion Donncha O’Callaghan is on record as saying that he believes O’Mahony can is a match Martin Johnson in the scary no-word stare stakes. That’s not a bad combination for a Lions’ captain to have when facing the challenge of the All Blacks.
It helps, too, that he also brings that additional lineout presence, ferocious tackling, much-better-than-decent ball-handling, and an engine that can run for 80-plus minutes.
As former Lion Will Greenwood said at the end of the 2015 Six Nations: “If all the wild horsemen of the apocalypse came around the corner, O’Mahony would charge straight back at them.”
What Greenwood didn’t say then, true though it probably is – and what the captain will demand on Saturday – is that the rest of the team follow him.
Thing is, they will.
