Ronan O’Gara: I may not be much good, but at least I’m officially qualified now
Ronan O'Gara in his days as a coach at Racing 92 in November 12, 2016. Picture: Gaizka Iroz/AFP via Getty Images
There is every possibility I am the thickest rugby coach in France, but at least I am a qualified one. After six, frequently-interrupted years of pursuing my full and final coaching badges through the French Rugby Federation (FFR), the envelope dropped through the letterbox last week.
There’s me, all credentialled.
The process commenced at the tail end of 2013 and, by necessity, has been stop-start ever since. I’ve managed to fit in a bit of full-time coaching at Racing 92 and La Rochelle, plus a Crusaders stint on the other side of the world in the meantime. The clever thing would have been to take a sabbatical and drink copious coffees with well-meaning my tutors to, you know, expedite things. But the job kept getting in the way.
I spent enough afternoons dashing from training to study at France Rugby’s centre of excellence in Marcoussis to do me a lifetime, was lectured by a jet fighter pilot on situation management, and struggled to find the momentum to keep the endgame in sight. But I had my final exam on December 2 and received my results last week.
I’m now an which doesn’t make a better coach but allows me, in the Top 14 at least, to don a red band and prowl the sidelines. The notion of studious, bespectacled gurus analysing statistics and data in the coach’s box is a seducing one, but in the trench warfare of the Top 14, down pitchside is where it’s at.
This is the battleground where coaches mark out their territory, scowl and glower at the referee, intimidating him if at all possible, curry favour with him if not. Think GAA mentality here and you have it. I love the way the likes of Liam Sheedy and John Kiely patrol the touchline, advertise their passion, show they are there for their players. When that’s controlled passion it’s a powerful coaching tool. Spitting on the hands and encouraging the boys. Lobbing a few grenades along the touchline. The best of pitch battles in sport are often the ones waged outside the white lines.
Me, I like to watch my team from the coach’s box most of the time. I have mentioned here previously the challenges of walking up and down the pitch with the play, a facility afforded by the absence of a crowd. But it’s not easy to maintain a level heartbeat and thought process, and one is inextricably linked to the other. During the there are upsides to being down at pitch level in terms of messaging your players, but it’s harder to read the game without the helicopter perspective.
And the advantage of three or four different video angles of a play in the coach’s box should never be underestimated. Jonno Gibbes tends to mix it up between box and sideline in order to have an accurate perspective on the lineout etc, and that’s understandable.
I think I’ll keep my shoes clean for the most part.
Tomorrow, it’s back to Paris and Racing 92, where this coaching journey began seven and a half years ago. If La Rochelle wants a proper gut-check, a reliable indicator of where we stand, then visiting my old team at La Defense Arena will do all that and more.
We have won away in the Top 14 this year at Bayonne, Agen and Pau. We should have won in Lyon but coughed it up and left only with a losing bonus point.
In some people’s eyes, that’s a result but that’s not the mentality I accept. Never have, never will. I would never say that big wins at Thomond Park were routine for Munster back in the day but the real test of our stomach for the battle was winning away, especially in France. Racing have gone to Bordeaux and won, done the same in Clermont last Sunday. We went to Stade Francais and rolled over.
Big teams win away from home - that’s the next challenge. It’s not a question of going there and ‘being competitive’, it’s whether we think we can go to Paris and win. Is that realistic? Time will tell.
You can change habits in the short term, but a change of culture is a longer-term project. The challenge for a coach and his/her philosophy is what you bank as work during the week cannot go into the auto delete column on a Sunday night. That should be the starting point again on a Monday, but some lads tend to wipe stuff from the memory bank after a game, maybe not appreciating these are solid foundations we are building and are not disposable after every game.
They are things we bank for the long term. And use to change the culture, to call on at any stage in any game to dig us out of a hole.
In a dogfight, we beat them 9-6 in La Rochelle at the end of November. But the biggest challenge is parking the 49-0 mauling they inflicted on us the last time we were on Paris last February. Players in the Top 14 tend to award themselves ‘a joker’, essentially allowing themselves one mulligan a season. But I reckon we already used our freebie against Stade Francais, losing 35-13.
Between a gradual shift in culture and the fact that the lockdown has denied home teams vital support, the notion that away games in the Top 14 are a forfeit is no longer applicable. There was a time not that long ago that statistical evidence supported the impression that the Top 14 was the most consistent producer of home wins in professional sport around the world. The latest data indicates there are as many away wins as home.
One weekend recently saw only a late try preventing a clean sweep of away victories.
A lot of international coaches here in France struggle badly with the old dressing room acceptance that it is good enough to win your home games. I will never understand how one week would be different to the next in terms of preparation. I would always want to beat Toulouse away rather than at Thomond Park. All the top players I remember were of the same view.
Who knows what shape the Champions Cup will be in by the time we get to the quarter-final stage, but Racing 92 have already been identified here as one of the top four favourites for the competition. And yet you wouldn’t be shying away from the fact that if we get it all together, we will be dangerous. That is not being cocky.
We have a group now that can do damage on any given day. But how do we make that any given day the 80 minutes that matters – that’s the key bit.
