Pack down for long hard rugby road ahead
That may strike most of us as a tad premature. After all, we’ve yet to bridge July, there hasn’t been a provincial hurling or football final yet played and the annual delights of Wimbledon and the British Open and the likes have yet to smother us in their welcoming embrace and play havoc with our work ethic.
For 45 of our best rugby players, though, that will be the type of question they ask of each other as they assemble in their Carton House base this Sunday evening, because the work that will take 31 of them through to the 2015 Rugby World Cup across the water in England and Wales will get underway the very next day.
Mad, isn’t it?
It seems like no time at all since the code departed the stage with Munster’s defeat to Glasgow Warriors in the Guinness Pro12 final, but then rugby is now one of those sports which, like a shark that cannot stop swimming for fear it will die, must be seen to tick over all year round in order to satisfy its burgeoning commercial commitments.
The ink is barely dry on the U20 Junior World Cup in Italy, Super Rugby is still catering to those addicts in need of a weekly hit and, yet, Ireland are actually playing catch-up on their counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales, who all saw fit to summon their players into camp a week or more early.
So, players who would normally allow themselves some amount of leeway during the summer off-season will clock in this weekend, having kept the motor ticking over this last month or so in recognition of the carrot dangling in front of them and the metaphorical stick with which Joe Schmidt will beat anyone who doesn’t hit the ground running.
Four weeks: it’s an absurdly short period of rest for people who engage in an activity that exacts so much from the body and the mind, even if the continued advancement of sport science should defend against the fate an overworked Ireland squad suffered in 2007 when they shipped up in France with their holds all but emptied of anything in the way of reserves.
The opening World Cup-warm-up game is just six weeks away, the first pool game against Canada another seven weeks beyond that, but the tournament will mark only the beginning of an epic nine-month trek through a rugby calendar stuffed with club and national commitments that will come to an end after three tests in South Africa this time next year.
The entire package will contain of up to 15 Ireland internationals, as many as 24 Pro12 outings and the possibility of nine European engagements. That’s a heavy load, even with Ireland’s efficient and effective player- welfare system lightening the burden for people like Jamie Heaslip or Conor Murray, who have already put in serious hours this past few years with club, country and the Lions.
It’s that three-date tour in South Africa that sticks out like a sore thumb.
World Rugby was still known as the IRB when it okayed the signing of a 10-year calendar for the global game, starting in 2012, one which would see European nations play more tests south of the equator in June, so it will be interesting to see how the northerners fare when the time comes for Ireland to play the Boks, England to make for Australia and Wales to visit New Zealand.
Here’s a guess: it won’t be pretty.
South Africa is, to put it mildly, not the destination of choice for players who have already put in eight hard months at the coalface. Hard pitches, high altitude and a high-quality Springbok side are bad enough. Add in the likelihood that the hosts will pitch the tourists in some backwater for most of the trip and a grim scene is set.
Three years have passed since Ireland endured a hat-trick of encounters with the All Blacks down there, their fortunes ranging from an agonising last-gasp loss in the second test to a record 60-0 defeat in the third that screamed a bridge too far. How, then, will the tourists get on after a season that begins with a World Cup and all that entails?
Also, how exactly does that schedule fit in with the idea of player welfare?
Rugby has been buffeted by the issue of concussion in the last few years, but the volume of games being played and the lack of down time should be as much a concern as the size of the hits being shipped. Christian Day, chairman of the Rugby Players’ Association, made that point in November as Ireland, England and Wales all faced into games without a clutch of front-line players.
“I would certainly say we are testing the limits on what is attainable,” the Northampton lock told BBC Five Live when discussing the workload of his counterparts across the water.
“There has to come a breaking point, and I hope before we come to that breaking point we have a serious look at the length of time a player gets to rest each season.”
Brace yourselves, it’s going to be a long ride.
Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie Twitter: @Rackob
