There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired” — Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby
Midway through 2018 we first heard the story of a young man who was fighting for his right to stay in the one place he called home. He wanted to live his best life, free from persecution. The papers ran daily opinion pieces on what they felt was best for him. Amnesty International warned that the government should intervene, or they would. The Clooneys offered to send a plane. Shane Ross called on the minister for sport to mediate, not realising that he was the minister for sport.
It was a dilemma of such moral and ethical minutiae that it forced Irish people to stare into the blackest recesses of their souls and reflect on what it is to be a conscientious human being in a modern civilised society. This was an episode that gripped the zeitgeist for an entire month.
In the end, Joey Carbery accepted his fate and left Leinster for Munster. The news cycle may have moved on but as Eddie O’Sullivan, the former national coach, told us, you can’t un-ring a bell. The misfortune that was forced upon him — coerced into leaving a job that he didn’t get to do very much in Dublin and do it someplace else — was one injustice too many for people to bear. A year hasn’t yet passed and the plight of Joey has returned to our back pages.
His safety and security no longer the issue, the great debate now rages over which number he should wear on his back — 10 or 15? Everybody has an opinion. Mary Robinson, speaking as Chair of the Elders, expressed the need for national unity while acknowledging that Joey’s distribution off either hand at No 10 (look what he did last Friday against Gloucester) trumps his qualities as a broken-field runner at 15 (look what he did a week earlier against Connacht).
Bono spoke about it onstage during a recent concert in Berlin. Hozier has written a protest song about it. Nothing stirs the countries’ passions quite like an out-half debate. Campbell v Ward, ROG v Johnny, and now Joey versus himself.
Carbery, now at Munster, has barely been out of the headlines in recent years
But just who is Joey Carbery? We knew Ronan O’Gara and we know Johnny Sexton because they wear it on their game faces, all snarl and grit. We knew Brian O’Driscoll because he often wore it in Krystle.
Carbery seems less a person of interest and more a totem for a movement: the post-modern wunderkind who eschews brash precociousness in lieu of all-round likeability and . . . surfing. He possesses an almost Gatsby-like enigmatic quality — like everyone has been to his parties but nobody knows who he is.
He was born in New Zealand! He made his money from bootlegging liquor! He rides a kid’s scooter to training!
The truth about Joey lies less in which team he plays for, which city he lives in or which number he wears. The truth about Joey lies more within ourselves. We love the distraction of the debate far more then we love the subject. As Carbery plays more rugby, maybe he will become just an ordinary, consistently brilliant player and therefore of much less interest.
We’ll then divert our gaze to some 16-year-old protégé from St Michael’s with hands made of actual silk.
For those of us who like to go low-carb in the new year, don’t count on it. Next January, just as the Lenny Abrahamson-directed biopic The Ballad of Joey Carbery sweeps the Golden Globes, the only certainty is that Carbery will once again dominate the news. His contract with Munster will expire in summer 2020 and for him — and the country — it will be a Sophie’s Choice moment.
The Justice for Joey campaign will again divide the nation. Chances are the public will worry about it far more than he will, because life has always been a series of crossroads for Carbery. How else could it be when you are blessed with the hands of a 10 but the feet of a 15?
Colin Sheridan 