Running and Racing in Paris

During the summer, Ronan O’Gara, his wife Jessica and their four kids left Cork for a new life in the French capital. Tony Leen found a family adjusting well, and the former kicker revelling in his role as coach.

PRIOR to take-off on the hop between Cork and Paris, Ronan O’Gara is on the phone to his five-year-old son Rua, afraid he has brought the wrong children’s book back home with him.

“I’m so looking forward to getting back,” O’Gara admits, “even if that sounds an unusual thing to say after only three months.”

It’s unusual, but only because the flight destination is Paris — not Cork.

“I’ll always be a very proud Cork man. That never leaves you. But this has worked beautifully for us on a number of levels. It’s not that you make a decision to enjoy something new. You either do or you don’t, and so far, so good for us.”

On Monday, the first of July, O’Gara checked in at Cork Airport and headed around a career corner that was audacious even by the standards he set himself as a caped miracle-maker in a number 10 shirt with Munster and Ireland. For his freshman step into coaching, O’Gara had eschewed six-figure offers to continue playing, opting for the modest income route of a proper coaching education with the Racing Metro 92 club in Paris.

Uprooting his wife Jessica and their four young children — twins Rua and Molly (5), three-year-old JJ and baby Zac — to Paris represented a gamble of sorts, though no more than throwing himself into a new club, a new language and new career.

Not that he was presuming his family would buy into the new life. In his Irish Examiner column last june, O’Gara admitted: “If Jessica and the kids don’t settle, we’ll be coming home, and if that’s seen as a failure, then so be it.”

There’s been no such hiccups, as Jessica confirms. “It’s been fantastic so far,” she says. “Challenging in some ways, but with four young children, it was never going to be anything else.”

The family would not arrive in Paris until the middle of August. For the first six weeks, the Munster icon was very much on his own, in an apartment that won’t feature any time soon in the glossy property brochures. Anyone who knows O’Gara, even vaguely, cannot but be taken by the depth of his will. He had to go to the well a few times in the early stages.

“Now I’m in before 9am, but in the first six weeks, I was it at 7.30am, and I just put the blinkers on. It helped me blank out the thoughts of the family on one level and playing with the Munster lads on another, because that’s what I still miss the most — the craic, the dressing room, the slagging, the messing, the competitiveness. What I wanted all my life I got with Munster. Here it’s a completely different challenge on all fronts, not least because you have to speak another language. It’s not what you say here, it’s how you say it. One word wrong here dilutes your message completely. That’s a challenge.

“But I know the players respect the fact I’m speaking their language, because the captain has told me. Players have come here in the past and not done that. That’s the big thing for Jonny (Sexton) and I, that we converse on the pitch in French — unless, of course, things get very heated!”

The morning we arrive together in Paris, O’Gara is whisked away by the club for a questions and answers business briefing by one of Racing Metro’s main sponsors. En Francais. One of the questions was on the future of the Heineken Cup, which kicks off what could prove a swansong season this weekend.

Afterwards he picks himself up on just one word: “I should have known disagreement was désaccord,” he sighs.

AT RACING’S expansive training facility at Le Plessis-Robinson, O’Gara is met for a late lunch by Jessica and the family, plus Jonny Sexton and his wife, Laura, who lives in an apartment in Châtenay-Malabry, some 20 minutes away.

The one-time rivalry has melted over time, long before they teamed up in Paris. O’Gara tells of shared car trips to kicking practice with Ireland and a growing sense of mutual respect. Now they’re friends, working with each other on a daily basis.

For lunch, the families are tended to by a Tunisian assistant who plays with O’Gara’s twins, Rua and Molly, each kitted out in Racing’s blue and white stripes. Jessica has taken leave of absence from her teaching post in Douglas, and being the phlegmatic lady she is, seems to have acclimatised pretty seamlessly into life in the Bourg-la-Reine suburb of Paris. The O’Garas now live in considerably more comfort than Ronan’s initial lodgings, about a 20-minute drive to work for O’Gara, but a house with four young children is a house with four young children.

However, life has its compensations. This week the O’Garas managed to squeeze in a day trip to Disneyland.

“The city centre is only 20 minutes away, and we’d get in occasionally. A busy house makes the transition more straightforward, certainly for Jess,” O’Gara says. “She has her hands full and is so busy that she doesn’t mind, or know, whether she’s in a house in Douglas or Bourg-la-Reine.”

Getting the children into routine is critical. The five-year-old twins have just started school, but were immediately separated into different classes. It was something Jessica understands but was initially taken aback by.

“I was a bit nervous for them because I thought they’d be together. In my own school in Douglas, it is up to the parents whether you want to keep the twins together or apart in school, but the school principal here made it quite clear that the French system is different. They’re fine now, though, hopefully soaking up their French like a sponge.! And they’re together at playtime anyway.”

As she discusses her family’s changed environment, Ronan is outside on Racing’s all-weather training pitch with members of the coaching staff watching the under-age section. He has worked longer hours than might be expected to ensure no-one around here thinks he’s in Paris on a money-making jolly.

“First impressions last,” he suggests.

And yet, when he walks through the gym and weights area, the aura that he still carries transcends any language or familiarity barriers. The younger academy players who don’t come up and shake his hand clearly want to. Why else would they interrupt their work-out? O’Gara believes it is a legacy of Munster’s achievements across Europe, but he has been the architect of many of their greatest hours.

“When I started here, I had a totally different job in my mind,” he confesses when we settle down in his upstairs office. “I was thinking I’d be here for three full days, maybe go to one or two other clubs that wanted me for the other two days, specifically for kicking. There were also other top European teams I had offers from. (“Water under the bridge,” he insists, not divulging any more).

“Naively, I even thought I’d be at home at the weekends doing some TV work. But then after meeting the two coaches, Laurent Travers and Laurent Labit, I was handed a far broader brief. I was delighted, it was full-on. In my head, I thought I’d be working a lot with the academy at Racing, but at the moment I only have two hours a week with them, one Tuesday, one Thursday.

“The professional team is so busy, looking after kicking, skills and now I’ve progressed to defence, though I haven’t done full presentations for the defence yet. In its simplest terms, I’m the junior coach, doing a bit of everything. It couldn’t have worked out any better in terms of learning. It’s coming in at ground level, but with a professional team, and I’m very appreciative of that. A lot of people would have to do a year or two with the academy, but the two lads are a terrific combination, and they also want to be challenged by an outside voice. I’m helpful too as the link between them and the English-speaking lads who’d probably say something to me first, and I’d feed it into the two coaches.”

O’Gara has signed up for two years at Racing Metro, and if he isn’t daring look beyond that, it’s already evident neither he nor Jessica are pining for Ireland. Two years hence, they may find leaving Paris a greater wrench than they thought. Tomorrow night, Racing entertain French powerhouses Clermont Auvergne in the opening round of the Heineken Cup — the side he played his final Munster game against last May. It’s been a patchy start to the domestic campaign for Racing, but the real work starts now. He still has frequent cause to travel home, but as his Racing rugby responsibilities grow, O’Gara may have to arrange for the Barry’s Tea parcels to be ferried to France by parents and friends.

However, the entire family will return to Cork for O’Gara’s sold-out testimonial dinner at Cork’s City Hall on Oct 24 — a €350-a-head statement of respect and affection from his own people for a glorious playing career. The flight back to Paris may be a little more sombre after that one.