Tom English: ‘Joe’s debts were too great for him to stop. O’Driscoll has a choice

There’s a debate beginning to stir in Ireland right now about Brian O’Driscoll and the shoulder injury that has aggravated him for too long. O’Driscoll had an immensely brave World Cup, but he was not himself. His smiles after that famous victory over the Australians were matched by grimaces on the night. The guy, quite obviously, was in pain.

You could sit three men in a bar in Ireland and get them to discuss who was the greatest Irish player of all time. The oldest gent might opt for Jack Kyle, the wizard of the north. The spokesman for the next generation might vote for Mike Gibson, the genius from the same part of the world. The youngest of the three would undoubtedly go for O’Driscoll. There might be a dispute about who was the finest, but unquestionably they’d be as one in acclaiming the current Irish captain as the country’s pre-eminent player in the post-Gibson era, a stretch of more than 30 years.

It has been a privilege to follow O’Driscoll’s career, from his international debut as a kid under the tutelage of Warren Gatland – he played for Ireland before he ever played for Leinster – to the hat-trick in Paris in 2000 that brought Ireland’s first win in France in 27 years, to the unforgettable try for the Lions in the first Test in 2001 in Australia, to any number of other memorable days that followed. He hasn’t just been a creative wonder for the last 12 years, he has also been one of the country’s greatest rugby warriors. He has all the skill in the world, but he has also been a beast for the physical side of the game, as brave a player as ever played the game.

Quite how he has lasted this long given the punishment he has shipped is a little miracle.

Those who have admired him for so long are torn about his future. They want to see him tick the remaining boxes in his career, but at the same time they want him to retire on a high rather than spending two years fading away slowly and feebly because his body is no longer up to it. A semi-final place in the World Cup was his main obsession but that is never going to happen for him now. He still has two prizes he wants to chase; a victory against New Zealand – Ireland have never beaten the Kiwis and will play them three times next summer – and a series win with the Lions. You want him to go on, but you also want him to stop. It’s the dilemma you so often find when great sportsmen approach the end of their competitive lives.

It takes some leap to go from O’Driscoll and rugby and the here and now to Joe Louis and boxing and yesteryear, but this week marks the 60th anniversary of one of sport’s saddest, and most belated, retirements. In Joe Louis, as in many others, we see the dangers of staying too long.

On 26 October, 1951, a 37-year-old Louis fought Rocky Marciano at Madison Square Garden. Marciano had just turned 28 and had won all 37 of his fights as a professional, 32 by knockout. Louis must have known that he was in for a hiding but he took the fight anyway. The purse was $300,000 and Joe needed the money.

Louis had been one of boxing’s great stories. He endured terrible racism in his life but the strangest thing happened when he became a champion boxer – the boxing establishment came to adore him. Gnarled old columnists the length and breadth of the country would hail him from the highest rooftops in a way they had never done before for a black athlete. They not only saluted him as a wonderful boxer but a great man, as pure and decent as they came. They largely ignored or camouflaged his failings, his awful marital problems, his desperate financial affairs. He was broke, but they presented him like he was a king.

And then Louis climbed into the ring with Marciano and the lights suddenly went out.

In the eighth round, Marciano, no great artist in the ring but as strong as an ox, caught Louis with a left hook and floored him. Louis was up on the count of eight, but Marciano set about him, catching him with a big right hand and sending him through the ropes. Joe lay there on the apron with only his legs in the ring. The fight was stopped without a count. The Louis era was over.

The legendary writer AJ Liebling of the New Yorker magazine recounted what he saw among the watching crowd when Marciano started to beat up on Joe. “The tall blonde was bawling, and pretty soon she began to boo. The fellow who brought her was horrified. ‘Rocky didn’t do anything’, he said. ‘He didn’t foul him. What you booing?’ The blonde said, ‘You’re so cold. I hate you, too’.”

In Joe’s dressing room, Sugar Ray Robinson wept. Marciano came in the room and he was crying, too. “I’m sorry, Joe,” he said. Joe looked like an old man. Washed up. A world away from the fighter he once was. The dignity remained, though, and that made it all the worse, all the more pathetic. “What’s the use of crying,” he said to Marciano, to his handlers, to the press guys in tears and the stars who came to see him. “The better man won. That’s all. I’m not too disappointed. I only hope that everybody feels the same way I do about it. I’m not looking for sympathy from anybody. I guess everything happens for the best.”

The tax man made Louis fight on. His debts were too great to stop. That was his tragedy. He said he had little choice in the matter. He needed the dough.

In another code and in another lifetime, O’Driscoll has a choice. Does he stay or does he go? He’ll surely choose the former, so the only thing left to do is hope that he doesn’t regret it.