Former Munster and Ireland star Donncha O'Callaghan was staggered by the physicality on display in New Zealand’s 21-9 win over Ireland on Saturday evening.
O'Callaghan, who now plies his trade with Worcester Warriors, was left grimacing by some of the challenges at the Aviva Stadium.
Speaking on the The Ray D'Arcy Show on RTÉ One, the veteran lock said: “It was unbelievable. Second half, I felt like putting in my gumshield just to even watch it! I play rugby, but i was looking at that game, just going ‘Ohhhhh’.
“It was unbelievable. They’re a quality team but we’re really coming on in leaps and bounds
“It was great to see how competitive we’ve been.”
O'Callaghan attributes the All Blacks remarkable success to the dominant position rugby enjoys in New Zealand and suggested that the lure Gaelic games may have cost Irish rugby a number of potential stars.
“It’s the bit that kills me,” he said.
“The New Zealanders go on about how great they are. But they play nothing else. The girls play netball and the boys play rugby.
“You just think, if you’d Joe Canning, Henry Shefflin, any of our Gaelic footballers or hurlers, how incredible we’d be.”
O’Callaghan admitted to feeling like a relic in a youthful Worcester team, who suffered an agonising 18-17 loss to Northampton Saints on Friday night.
“I’m a kind of dinosaur in the dressing room,” he said.
“My team-mates are all 18, 19 and I’m 37.”
The majority of O’Callaghan’s contemporaries have hung up their boots and a number have expressed bewilderment at why their former team-mate is still toiling in the trenches.
“I’ve met a few of them,” the Cork man said.
“Malcolm O'Kelly was there – ‘Why are you still doing it? Why would you still want to put you head between two asses and push?’”
"I felt like putting in my gum shield just to even watch it" Donncha O'Callaghan on today's game #raydarcy https://t.co/Jk7F6CyrXz
— The Ray D'Arcy Show (@RTERayDarcyShow) November 19, 2016
O’Callaghan admitted to still being at a loss to process the death of his former Munster and Ireland team-mate Anthony Foley.
“It’s still hard to get your head around,” he said.
“He was my team-mate and my skipper.”
O’Callaghan believes Foley’s children will have been left with an indelible impression of what he meant to those he came in contact with.
“I know that he was a hero for them,” he told viewers.
“But I hope they got to see how special he was for the rest of us.
“He dripped honesty, he dripped integrity. He’d a special way of influencing the people around him to go beyond themselves.”
O’Callaghan believes the reaction to Foley’s passing highlights the camaraderie that underpins the sport, and said: “You look at the whole of the rugby community.
“You see the Leinster lads wearing the red jerseys with the number eight for the warm-up. You see the Ulster lads singing The Fields of Athenry in Ravenhill...
“It shows that the game is special.
“You go out and you knock lumps out of each other, but there’s a spirit within rugby that’s just a little bit special and you’re glad to be a part of it.”
