Ronan O'Gara: What happened to Anthony Foley could so easily have happened to Uini Atonio
TOP FELLA: Ronan O'Gara celebrates with Uini Atonio after their victory in last year's Champions Cup Final over Leinster at the Aviva Stadium. Pic: David Rogers/Getty Images
I WANT to write today’s entire column about Uini Atonio. I understand it’s difficult for anyone at home to have a proper appreciation of what this great man is about but when we reach for easy phrases like ‘different gravy’ in sport and life, Uini Atonio is actually the . The embodiment.
Processing everything that has happened in the last week or so, and thinking back beyond it to what could have happened, makes for queasy feelings that are tough to articulate. Uini had pulled out of the French Six Nations squad with what was originally thought to be a sternum injury, but we now know it was a serious coronary problem.
When and where did it begin? Was it in the Leinster game in the Champions Cup, the Harlequins game a week later? We are not sure but at some recent point, a serious arterial blockage triggered flashing red warning lights. He tried to play against Clermont last Sunday, he was involved in the warm-up but when he packed down for scrums, he knew there was something not right. The team doctor was consulted and immediately (thankfully) recognised that this was a heart, not a sternum, issue.
We have a brilliant cardiologist attached to the club, Christophe Moreau. We didn’t get back from the Clermont until Monday morning early, and as soon as practicable, he was in with the specialist in hospital. The alarm bells went off with the first scan. He had driven to the hospital, parked his car, and once told he would be there a while, he returned to move his car – this time with a pair of anxious cardiologists alongside. They were the ones sweating. Surgery took place on Tuesday evening, but that’s not the end of it. Further procedures await next week. We are not out of the woods.
I think he must have played against Harlequins under huge duress, he said to me that day he felt he hadn’t recovered from the game in Dublin a week before. That he played against Quins sends a shiver through me. Myself and Donnacha Ryan were saying during the week that all this has very Axel vibes to it in the way it felt utterly and disconcertingly surreal. Standing there looking down at this mountain of a man wired up in a hospital bed was something that will live with me. It makes me wonder how well I really processed October 2016 in Paris.
What happened to Axel could so easily have happened to Uini, and when myself, the president Vincent Merling, the CEO Pierre Venayre and the doc stood over him in the bed, the shock of it all was very real. Very real. This was a close run thing. That his long and distinguished career is over for club and country is something that can, and will, be processed down the road a bit. All I want now is to see Uini fetch that car from the hospital car park and return home to his fantastic wife Annabel and their two lovely kids.
Hopefully, that is in the next week or two. Back at base, the preparation for Saturday’s Top 14 game against Lyon game hasn’t kicked in at all, and that’s not an excuse. It’s been hard to focus on X’s and O’s when one of the great men you’ve met in a rugby career is hanging grimly onto his very existence in a hospital bed. And with that look of frozen fear in his eyes.
****
UINI'S 150kg on a good day. That’s 340 lbs of true goodness. At school in New Zealand, there is a famous photo of him with his rugby playing school mates, 13 of whom made a career for themselves overseas. One of them was Bundee Aki.
He came to La Rochelle in 2011, plucked from a tens tournament in Hong Kong by Patrice Collazo, the head coach at the time. This was a punt, but the gamble has been repaid in spades. When they frame the halls of this place with the great folk who shaped Stade Rochelais, alongside the three generations of Élissalde’s, Romain Sazy and those who started it all a century before there will be a Samoan teddy bear by way of Auckland. A totem.
It’s been the strangest few days of turmoil and deja vu and it feels like we’ve suffered a death in our family. Uini Atonio is wired up to his chest in a French hospital, but at least he is still with us.
People wonder why personality is such a kernel of sport. It’s about that intangible quality of presence, a positivity that radiates across other people. Not even Uini knows how or why he was bestowed with this gift, but he is. Is it his Samoan descent, or it is just a good soul? Nature-given happiness. The expression I relate so much more as I get older – are you a drainer or a radiator in the group? Uini has always radiated good vibes in his own charming way.
Any time there is a service area stop on the way home from a match, he’d pay for the Academy players’ box of Pringles, sandwich and whatever else. In a restaurant, he’s picking up the tab for the younger players, when there’s a round of drinks, it’s always him first to the bar. He has always done the unseen stuff and never for show.
There is literally nobody I can think of in any club in the world that has the effect and influence that Uini Atonio has had at La Rochelle. A Kiwi who acts and speaks like a French men with an effortless warmth that can adapt to any situation in a completely seamless, natural way. The type of lad who could walk into a room and make drooping flowers sit up and radiate.
This is not a mask. He is just so, so good with people. You’re in a bad mood – I’ve been in that bad mood – you meet Uini and you leave in good form. That’s rare. If you are a little too high or giddy, or threatening to give yourself a fine greeting, he won’t be long cutting you down with a killer slag. Think a cross between Gaillimh, Claw and John Hayes if you’re an old Munster culture vulture.
What we have lost is incalculable, he was the beating heart of our dressing room. He speaks fluent French, he is the driving force from an ambition and a mood standpoint – the latter being so important in France. He is the glue that connects the foreigners and the Frenchies. You have no idea. You really have no idea how much of a loss this is.
He does unbelievable work in the shade. I’d use a direct line through him to try to work on a player but more often than not he’s ahead of me and he has already made his move in that regard.
I was talking about it all to Jess yesterday, the emotional upheaval we’ve seen, and trying to explain it all (but really, just venting emotion), that there is nobody really comparable in terms of who he is and what he does. Uini is his own category.
I feel so privileged to have such a run with him. With all the shit going on, the reason coaching is still so cool is having that joy in my life, spending time with him. There are dickheads in the game, but I can guarantee this guy is what life is all about. He is a competitor and such a good guy; you can be both.
I’ve had Uini, Will, Leps (Botia), Greg, Kerr-Barlow, Sinzelle, Danty, Vito, Rhule, Seuteni, Bourgarit, Dulin. Treasures. In my head, I am relating to the Fergie’s babes sensation, we’ve had this core magic with La Rochelle, and there are bonds there for life. We were there, together in the furnace, now we preserve the memories and the times we had.
Now La Rochelle is in a reconstruction of the project but those bits are there to charm and sustain us. At the core of it was and is Uini. He wasn’t handed anything, he went and got it. We are all just so lucky that he is alive.
That is where my head is. Not in rugby or games, but in life and perspectives. When your foundation stone is in the hospital bed, you are there praying, don’t do this to us. It can’t end like this. Axel didn’t even get that, stricken in a Paris hotel room. Cold moments, leaving us sobered and shaky. What if he had played against Clermont last Sunday?
Tuesday and Wednesday were very shaky days. It’s too early to think of Uini’s future. He was already scrum coach here but went back playing. At the moment, everything is 100% focused on getting the man back to full health.
We will go on Saturday, somehow. The big man’s on our minds. In our hearts. Regardless of how things go against Lyon, at least I can go to the hospital and slag on Sunday morning. That’ll do for now.
Some didn’t get that chance.
