I was thinking ‘this guy is in serious trouble’
But up he got and belts out Celine Dion’s Titanic song in a high-pitched voice. What’s going on here? Progress
He was stumbling around the place like a baby foal. Looking for a fight, a brawl, anything that his scrambled brain might equate to compensation for the almighty bang Florian Fritz had just suffered.
And then he collapsed again. Yards away, I’m there. No panic yet. I’ve been there before. In fact, as a competitive sports professional your guilty thoughts are ‘this means they’re introducing Fickou. That’s not weakening them’. Should I have been thinking like that? With blood seeping from Fritz’s head wound? No, but I wanted to win the game. This was Top 14, and a semi-final was over the horizon.
Fritz is disorientated. Guy Noves is panicking. The duty of care to a player is nowhere near where it should be at, because this is last chance saloon in a poor, poor season for Toulouse — and their veteran coach’s brain is fried.
Fritz can’t think straight. You have to take all responsibility away from the player, because he wants to be out there. The Toulousecentre is a hardy boy and being the type he is, he doesn’t want to be carried off the battlefield on a stretcher. Momentarily, you think perhaps his senses are intact and for the sake of his family, his wife, he wants to be able to walk off the pitch. A message. ‘I’m okay, relax.’ Stretchers in rugby mean serious neck or serious limb injury. Is he better than he seems? A reprieve from the horror. The Toulouse crowd rise to acclaim their warrior as he stumbles off the pitch. For that half a minute, everyone seems proud to be part of this occasion, to be inspired.
But that was on the presumption that it was night over for Fritz.
For those still oblivious to the damage to Fritz and rugby’s reputation, Google ‘Fritz’ and ‘concussion’. For those of us living this near disaster, the worst was yet to come when I saw him ready to come back on. I don’t get shocked too easy about pro sport but that shocked me. I was thinking, ‘this guy is in serious trouble’. He was gone. God knows what happened in that 10 minutes or so in the Toulouse dressing room to get him back, but you could see when he came out that there had been a bad let down in the duty of care towards the player by Toulouse.
It was actually sad to see.
Sad too for a man like Guy Noves, to see what this level of pressure can do to his thought process. To see him on TV at the Toulouse dressing rom door, apparently urging Fritz back into battle, was distressing in another kind of way. I know how a competitive sports professional thinks. We don’t think like a normal human being, that’s the reality of it. Toulouse flopped in a Heineken Cup, they’re struggling in their league, success is in their DNA but this was wrong.
Common sense prevailed at half-time, and Fritz was withdrawn. The pressure valve released for a few minutes, the Toulouse management begin to think straight again. Because to that point, no one, least of all Noves, is thinking clearly. Losing at home to Racing Metro, keep your team in the game, win at all costs. Noves and Toulouse may have got away with this one once but rugby won’t be so lucky second time around. We could end up with blood on our hands in every sense of the phrase.
The giddiness of success blanked Fritz from our minds for a few hours afterwards, but the full realisation of a tragedy averted wasn’t long in boomeranging. Racing got back to our hotel and allowed ourselves a beer and a team hug. A winning environment helps foster a family environment. But the latter has to be constant.
I’ve started insisting on songs from players, whether it’s the team bus, the meeting room, the hotel. You’d still be surprised, the more you’re around the place, how intimidating a group environment remains in terms of standing up in front of your peers and singing a song.
Brian Mujati sang at the weekend. There hasn’t been a peep out of him all year, but his impact off the bench last Friday night was seismic. Their scrum, six minutes to go at the Ernest Wallon and we drive Toulouse off the ball. Penalty for us. The Real Mujati.
He’s in top form, he was asked to sing and everyone presumed he’d just pass it on. But up he got and belts out Celine Dion’s Titanic song in a high-pitched voice. What’s going on here, I thought? Progress. We used talk in Munster about the other 22 hours of the day being so important. The off-the-field stuff. That’s it right there.
We’re mixing cultures as much as personalities at Racing. Argentinians, South Africans, Welsh, Irish, French, Georgians, Fijians. Because you live in Cork all your life, until you’ve actually lived among those cultures, you can’t say, ‘I know what you’re saying there’, because you don’t. It’s so different. You must get used to the fact that what makes one person or culture tick, doesn’t do it for another. You have to live the experience to understand these people. Don’t prejudge.
As my wife says, rearing a child from a book is quite different to the real thing. You Google me, do you get the real ROG? Tonight, we fetch up in Lille — not John O’Neill’s old ground, a new enclosed arena, Stade Pierre Mauroy — to face Toulon. Mighty Toulon. The challenge for us is what Racing team turns up this evening. We are capable of beating a lot of teams in Europe if our big guns fire. Last week, in Toulouse, was as good a kicking performance as I’ve ever seen from Jonny Sexton and we needed that. And we had an unbelievable scrum.
Around the same time, Munster’s season could be coming to a disappointing close in Scotstoun in the Pro12. While Glasgow have hit form recently, Munster have fallen off a cliff. I played in Scotstoun this time last year. We were hammered, but — notwithstanding the fact that it was a horrible way for Dougie Howlett’s career to end — it was nothing as bad as last weekend against Ulster.
It will be an upset if Munster win. And yet I think they will. The young lads could end up very disappointed with themselves after the promise they’ve shown this season if they allow it fizzle out in a damp squib.
I don’t know for sure what’s happening in Munster, but it’s been strangely inconsistent since Marseille. With people coming and going, there are handy distractions if players want to look for them. Axel will be taking notes on what he’s seeing.
