Ronan O'Gara: The torment, the thrill and the private thoughts on a team bus
Ronan O'Gara gets off the Ireland team bus during the 2009 Six Nations Picture: ©INPHO/Billy Stickland
As you are reading this, the safest bet is I am on a bus south from La Rochelle to Agen. Dressing rooms and bus trips bookend our careers like breakfast and supper. Adrenaline courses through dressing rooms, emotions flare and then flatline on the bus ride home. Everyone’s wasted.
The ride to a game and the trip back home from it might be the same road but they’re different worlds. I’ve felt like Maximus returning to Rome after some conquests with Munster. But I’ve been on bus journeys home that I hoped would never end. That they kept going until the pain disappeared from the rearview mirror.
2009 Lions Tour in Pretoria. Post-second test. That one was horrendous. Paulie had my back — as captain, he made that a great group of Lions team-mates — but I was in a daze walking from the dressing room to the team bus and it had little to do with being run over by a Springbok back row.
I knew sitting into my seat that the longest week of my career lay ahead. I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. Horrendous stuff. The players were supportive but that’s why you have your own standards. It’s you against you. You let yourself down. With the stakes involved in a Lions test, the disappointment was crippling.
You look out a window — please, tell me it’s tinted — and wonder why that fella there with the beer and the bag of chips can’t be you. Players get that claustrophobia en route to the ground. The heaving stomach job that looks every which way for a way out, even at the eleventh hour. That’s the goal-kicker in us all. Why, oh why, am I doing this?
And then you get a moment like 2009 in Cardiff and it changes your life.
You want to hand that pressure onto someone else? Go right ahead, someone else would snap your hand off for the kicking tee. But when you’ve tried and failed, grafted and succeeded, then do you really want to contemplate someone else being there instead, getting the better of you?
In a team sport there are still moments when there are 80,000 people looking at you. Sometimes, you find that sweet spot where it doesn’t matter if the stadium is wedged or empty. But other days you feel the breath of every one of those 80,000 in the ground. Insane pressure. But that’s a great thing to experience.
As a young fella you might be shitting yourself, you wonder do you really want to get off that bus and head for the stadium and the dressing room, but with experience comes ‘wow, how lucky am I?’ Everyone sees the kick against Leicester, the drop goals against Northampton or Castres, but not too many see the 15 years of reps and mental torture, of shitty back fields and more reps.
It’s like being the boss; a lonely bastard of a job when things are going pear-shaped but when things have turned around for the better, everyone wants to be on board, slapping backs. That’s when you appreciate the pureness of the team bus, that moment when the door shuts and the driver knocks her into gear.
I’ve been on short, sharp journeys that made me well up before the game. I will never, ever forget going through the streets of Cardiff for that 2006 Heineken Cup final. From the hotel in the town to the stadium, a city drowned in Munster red. A craving. What a feeling. In Limerick too on the night of big European games, going from the Clarion Hotel to Thomond Park, then parking up outside the dressing room. The noise. The quiet. The feeling of being elevated. It set you up for big performances.
And afterwards, the chance to celebrate together. The greatest road trips of our young lives ferried us to Munster games and Christmas parties. The Cork lads off first to Cashel and Leamy would sort a local whistle-stop tour, then onto Kilkenny where Gaillimh would take over as the host with the most. Twenty regular haunts. The Limerick crew would rendezvous with us in Cashel and try to make sense of their buckled buddies. Fancy dress, into a courtroom session, it was all good. You could write a book on it.
And then that ended. Snapchat and video recording saw to that. There was a time you could go for a pint in peace. People had respect, the good sense to leave well enough alone. Not anymore.
And now a different life, a different country, a different language but the same bus trip with the same idiosyncrasies. Pensive en route. This time the road leads to Agen for tomorrow’s Top 14 game. A good win last Saturday at home to Montpellier. That generates its own vibe. When I was at Racing 92, I added a singing section to the bus trips away from home. That hasn’t happened yet in La Rochelle. Maybe because I’m the head coach?
A few weeks back we spent five hours getting home from the win in Pau, which is all the way down in the Pyrenees. So good in the first half, so not in the second. Green nose or red nose? Satisfied or frustrated? The players can’t see, because I am at the front, staring out the big window into next week’s game. We left Pau around 10pm, got home not long before 3am. Winning makes the socially-distanced bus trip home that bit more bearable but the highlights as Sunday turns to Monday are often stopping for grub at the motorway filling station.
There might be one slab of beers aboard if we’re lucky but there’s none available by law now on the autoroutes or the Aires de Service. Plus, everyone has a car back at base in La Rochelle. And a lot of lads have kids who they are bringing to school the next morning. Saturday nights are so much easier.
The absolute score is discovering a drive-thru McDonalds. You would be so surprised how much that means to professional rugby players after a win. Santa as a kid stuff. The TGV in France is very comfortable, fast and efficient. But they aren’t running late at night, so getting home as quickly as possible is number one priority, but a bit of comfort is essential. Have you seen the size of Uini Antonio or Will Skelton?
All the while as a coach, one is conscious getting on the bus of maintaining equilibrium. It’s crazy how the winning and losing can affect your mood and that of those around you, which is why it is essential to maintain a consistent persona. That night was the end of a long week. I tried to close my mind to the Monday which brings prep for Clermont a week later.
On the Sunday morning in the hotel in Pau, the coaching group takes a first look at Clermont with and without the ball. Might as well use your time efficiently and get it out of the road early to avoid mixing thoughts with the Pau game later the same day. Know your enemy, they say.
We will continue tomorrow in Agen with the ‘huit clos’ shutdown in the French Top 14. You can manufacture upsides like taking the hometown crowd out of the equation, but we’d all prefer the spectators back. In a hollow, empty stadium, you learn who are the good communicators. Positive messaging is so important. One of the big things for me is talking on the run, a skill that’s unappreciated and difficult to master. When you go jogging with your wife or friend, it’s all chat and craic at the start but when the pace picks up or the heart beats faster, you want them to shut up, don’t you? Just leave me alone in my own bubble, I am working here against myself.
Team sports can’t work like that. Constant communication is critical, on the field and off it. Who’s scanning two channels wider to see where the space is at? I am learning all the while in that regard.
When someone speaks in the coach’s box, relevance is essential. I like to think I am always open to nuggets, you have to be. But the golden rule is no fan commentary on the game. If you have a suggestion, of course offer it, but don’t play the supporter: ‘Go the short side there, good carry, good tackle’ — that sort of fan stuff is not on. What are you offering? If you want to be the fan, go pay and watch the game. If you want to coach, then coach.
That was something I found very quickly with Scott Robertson at the Crusaders. No commentary in the coaches box, please. He would give you the old dagger look if you got excited a few times, as I did. Basically, stay on task.
We will reach Agen soon. I stay a bit removed from the lads these days. It’s only natural, the longer you are gone from playing, the more naturally distanced you become. The generation gap creates its own space.
But if we carry a win back aboard tomorrow night, there’ll be a moment, a little smile, a few more laughs, the scent of satisfaction. Maybe a Big Mac if we’re lucky. Fellas will settle in and look around and like what they see.
The brotherhood’s alive and the road is stretching out in front of us.
I’m telling ya.
