Ronan O'Gara: We all know what to do with potholes. Avoid them

GAME CHANGER: Ulster's capture of Fijian superstar Leone Nakarawa for next season could be a gamechanger for the province - if they get the best out of the Fijian. 

LEONE Nakarawa signed for Ulster this week. He will join Dan McFarland’s squad next season. It’s a move with potential game-changer writ large.

The intrigue will be how Ulster see him and use him. If they expect the chilled Fijian to be hitting rucks, cleaning out, from minute one to eighty, they may be disappointed. If they let him play, boy can he play.

So much comes so easy to the former European player of the year. For a long time, Racing 92 got the best out of him because the coaching team got him. If he trained like Jane, he invariably played like Tarzan at the weekend.

Training isn’t a black and white process anymore. Whether the right messages are taken out it is just as important as the practice. Any and every session is sprinkled with variables – and remember you are not always working with the same players on the same wrinkles every day.

If you are driving yourself to hit key metrics from every session, you are going to spend a lot of the afternoon banging your head against the office table. Lads injured, lads coming back from injury. Lads sharp, others not up to speed yet. Transferring stuff from an overhead projector to the pitch is great in theory. But you’ve got to do the reps to understand it – then someone likes Nakarawa just goes off on a solo run anyway on Saturday and beats an entire defence!

Alex Ferguson had the ideal scenario. A Man Utd coach on the pitch during games, carrying out his instructions and expectations. Driving standards, chasing slackers, driving the high achievers. But there are only so many Roy Keanes. You’d love on occasions if a current player thought how a coach thinks. That he would set up sub-groups and run through stuff in their spare time instead of playing Play Station.

Tim Bateman at the Crusaders had that capacity. He understood his level, never over-stepping his reach in the group, but always pushing standards in a good way, whether that was to Crotty, Bridge, Reece, Goodhue, whoever. He was able to explain their complementary roles for the guys in the room to understand. Now scrum halves don’t, by their nature, like change. Because they are the pinch point, the ones who get the ball away, they need to know everything first and they’ve never been slow to indicate that ‘No that will never work’.

But after a while, with a player like Bateman, a good communicator, they see ‘he’s not having a go off me here, he’s just proposing we change it up a bit’. A lot of people assume change to be negative. It can be very positive.

Before the message comes the culture. Those constructive conversations only happen because of the atmosphere and the environment you’ve created in those meetings. It’s where we embrace that very 21st century phenomenon, the growth mindset.

And then what happens when you bring it out into the pitch session? When backline goes against backline, there’s always the one beauty deliberately trying to sabotage the team that’s selected for Saturday when he should be mirroring the opposition set-up for the game. They can’t help themselves, it’s that competitive nature, with a little side dish of ‘Nah, I am going to mess this up’.

We are all different. In the area of player recruitment, one has to have due diligence, but rugby is a tidy community. The word around the camp-fire invariably checks out. If a fella is a pothole, he’s best avoided. You might get one wrong out of ten. Ulster know what they are getting with Nakarawa. He’s a free spirit but he’s a proven talent.

When La Rochelle went looking last year for a scrum half to come in, we knew Vannes’ Jules Le Bail from his time at this club. Every character assessment turned up the same conclusion: he is just a great guy. That’s an easy one. There’s such a big responsibility in terms of player and coaching recruitment. Mistakes can last a long time, hang around the place like a bad smell. You are introducing a new personality into the mix. Several conversations will be had before you get a reliable vibe. Hollywood signings are great for a two-week jolly but then the reality kicks in and players want to see how they can be improved and be more successful, that’s when the coach starts work.

We may look at the Six Nations in more depth here next week but amid the squad announcements and formal launch, it seems rude not to make passing reference. That Virimi Vakatawa is a confirmed absentee for the opening two rounds is a major boost to Ireland, who face the French in Week 2. There simply isn’t another centre in France like him.

Every one of us as spectators craves a spark. A Dupont, an Alldritt, the eight and nine for France who are world class. Romain Ntamack will get there too. Maro Itoje retains incredible consistency levels for England. These are players you’d pay to see - if only that was an option.

The question mark hanging over Andy Farrell’s squad is the spark. Where is it coming from? It doesn’t seem long ago that the senior statement like Earlsie, Sexton, Stander, Murray, O’Mahony were international babies. Now we look to Caelan Doris to continue that stratospheric progress (that lad could be on his way to a very special career), we await Jordan Larmour to grab that 15 jersey, we hope Hugo Keenan get us up off the sofa, Garry Ringrose likewise. 

But all the while we play toy soldiers. If you want to play a phase game, you want your best players on the pitch. So why not Bundee Aki and Ringrose in the centre, and Henshaw at 15? He had a bad day there at home to England in the 2019 Six Nations opener, but who didn’t under-perform that day? It was also his first test start at 15 in six years, and only his second ever. Such a selection facilitates exciting possibilities off the bench via Larmour and Keenan.

Ireland should be fresh and hungry for progress but going to Wales for an opener brings challenges that aren’t all set aside by the lack of noise.

Around the time Ireland play Wales on Sunday week, La Rochelle should be squaring off with Racing 92 in the Top 14. The Cork-Tipp-Limerick reunion. Finn Russell will be with Scotland. He looks tired. Racing have had it hard with fixtures. They haven’t had a week off in so long, which goes all the way back to the final stages of last season’s Champions Cup. He will go straight into camp and be expected to lead Scotland in the Calcutta Cup match. Not easy.

In discussing out-halves, a hat-tip to Ireland’s probable back-up for Wales, Ross Byrne, for that nice little kick through for Leinster’s try at Thomond Park last Saturday. Munster got tight defensively on their fold around the corner and Leinster picked them off with one sublime moment. Byrne’s kick, watching it live, looked like it had been deflected but when it was watched with detail, you see the margin. He had only a sliver, and a one-in-20 chance of putting it exactly where it was needed for Keenan, but he put in there. One shouldn’t underestimate his cameo in that decisive moment.

Champion teams don’t always play well. But that mentality, to come up with a killer play when it mattered, is the difference. Forget that Munster were 10-0 after 12 minutes. They are 10-3 up in first-half added time and hit the post with a penalty. A super-confident JJ Hanrahan makes that and it’s 13-3. The difference between 10-3 and 10-6 is significant, never mind what it would have felt like to trot down the tunnel 13-3 in front. 10-6 meant no buffer, no safety net, nothing.

At 10-6, suddenly the offside line changes in your head.