Fond farewell Rala - the man who babysat the Irish rugby team
IT’S been a week of coming to terms with loss. To Argentina. Of Paulie.
And the realisation that for those Irish rugby internationals, no longer will Patrick ‘Rala’ O’Reilly be there to babysit them and protect them from the real world.
It will be difficult to properly explain in print what a precious friend and confidante he was to me and scores of other Irish players over the past 21 years. But I’m going to try.
You’ve never met such a positive person, with such a great manner about him. And so his retirement this week, in the wake of our exit from the World Cup is, for the players, an absolutely horrendous loss to Irish rugby.
I was trying to look up this week how many countries he’s toured and how many Irish internationals matches he’s done. For the former, I concluded that he’s been to every rugby playing nation on the planet. The latter? I estimate about 181 caps for Rala, but that’s an imprecise calculation.
What I do know as fact is that he was completely under-appreciated by many, as the hidden heroes who fulfil such duties frequently are. Irish rugby will never be the same, irrespective of who goes in there next as kit man, or baggage master (a title he hated, by the way). He was the pioneer and I am sure his replacement will be super-efficient but everyone will be judged by Rala’s standards and his personality. An entire generation of rugby players, going back to Gaillimh, Claw and these lads, have had Rala as their confidante.
A clever confidante too. He got great enjoyment from pioneering Rala’s quote or thought of the day. Each evening on the players’ next-day itinerary, there was a Rala thought for the day. Some of them would be hugely motivating, others just funny. That was a nice touch from Irish management at the time, because they recognised that Rala was a tie that bound. Those pearls ultimately culminated in Brian O’Driscoll’s legendary one about the tomato - knowledge is recognising that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. We had one of those every day from Rala.
His duties entailed a bit of everything. He might have been official kit manager, yet he also had dibs on basically anything else a player had forgotten - because he’d remembered it.
From six different shapes and sizes of studs for the forwards, to underpants for beneath your rugby shorts, or boxer shorts for under your monkey suit. He could have shoes of all sizes, socks, dickie-bows, cuff-links. Different class.
I would have been very close to him, closer than most. And mainly because of the Wednesday Club. That was officially a day off for players in international week but invariably it was a day for the kickers to work on our stuff.
Rala had one of those big Transit gear vans - at this time we were training in Greystones - and there could be myself, Elwood, Humphreys. One fella sitting up the front with Rala and the rest sitting in the darkness in the rear of the van coming home. No light. Some craic. Then he’d hand over the keys to one of the players to drive to fill up his tank of exagerrated stories for the evening about how close to death we all came.
As my own career developed, we did every trip together to Lansdowne Road on those Wednesdays. He’d be friendly with the stadium staff and would have the soccer ball ready for a five-a-side kick-around first to warm up. Afterwards there was always the hot chocolate or cup of soup waiting for you.
I completely trusted him and he would have known me better than anyone. The Wednesday Kicking Club had its own lingo.
He loved the fact that we could break from convention or the strict regime or diet and have a club sandwich and a bottle of Coke when we returned to the hotel late. That was his payment and he got an almighty kick out of it. For those days off, the players would get an allocation in an envelope on the Tuesday night of maybe €30 for Wednesday lunch and dinner off your own bat. Rala would have it cleared with management that he could order a la carte at Carton House, the Berkeley Court or the Radisson. That was the Wednesday treat - get the kicking done and have the long, extended lunch afterwards to dicuss the world and all that sailed in her.
He was clever too on the Fridays with the Captain’s Run at 11am. That would typically finish for 12pm before everyone showered and returned to the hotel for lunch. But we would stick around for an extended kicking sessions because Rala wanted to miss the set menu lunch, so he could have the club or steak sandwich.
There were other things about him I loved. There was no hierachy. The kicking coaches nowadays and all these lads with glorified titles feel they have to remain on the pitch, Sphinx-like, standing and watching. Whereas there is no better man to help a goalkicker than the guy in the stands fetching the balls for you. People hate that job but whether you were going for touch or the posts, he’d be there. You could have 40 balls on the go and he’d gather them from all corners.
It’s very selfish but think about the difference between concentrating on 40 kicks and chasing all 40 of them behind the goals and into the stands afterwards. When that pain in the arse work was done for you, it made a massive difference to the content and quality of your work.
In the last few years, he’d wisely hired helpers or Transition year students and he’d want to personally vouch for them and ensure they knew their place. He’d be smart enough to separate the good lads from the ones who wanted to be the star themselves. When we were in that bubble our heads were in a different place and if that lad said something, Rala would be absolutely mortified. He treated every one of the Irish players like his own babies.
There was laundry collection at certain hours during the afternoon on match weeks but we used have our own arrangement where I could leave a bag with him at any time and it would be returned the following morning. ‘Have you anything to send down Yellow Brick Road’ was all he’d say to me. The other players would be looking and wondering: what sort of dialect are those pair talking? It could be anything from your black tie to gear to casual clothes, but it was all back on a hanger in your own bedroom the following morning. Mollycoddled beyond belief.
He’s the reason we are all struggling to cope in the real world because he was a mother and a father to the players - in fact he was more than a father in some respects, because with your dad, you’d get a bollocking or two. There was never a suggestion of that from Rala, he was always in good form. Friday nights were special. On the eve of a massive game, his room was the assembly point for everyone. We all went down on the pretence of getting our shorts and socks for the game or needing to polish shoes and stuff for the function the following evening. But really just being there made us all feel better about ourselves and what we were facing into.
The format was the same: pick up socks and shorts and there was usually a match programme too. Your jersey was hanging up with the other 21 if you wanted to examine it, just to have a look or a feel, or peek inside the collar to make sure how many caps you have . Everyone had their own little routine and treated the room as their own to some degree, which is the ultimate display of how comfortable everyone was with him around.
He’s a perfectionist who also had huge respect for the hotels and the fact that we were their guests. He’d have plastic covering everything, he introduced a totally professional set-up long before it actually went professional. Friday nights are fraught enough. It’s a nervous time, it’s a long night sometimes, but Rala’s room was the place to go to break up your evening.
I didn’t meet him last Sunday in Cardiff. We’ve met up on a few sidelines since I retired and we’d still grab the cup of tea together down under the tunnel. But I’m conscious he’s in match mode now and I’m intruding. He’s forever been the consummate professional. And they’re always tough to let go.
God, I don’t know could I ever really say a farewell to Rala.
Pumas show how to rise to occasion
THERE are a pair of World Cup semi-finals this weekend, I’m aware of that. But recognising Rala is important too.
Who’ll be left standing Monday morning? If Argentina were playing South Africa, they’d be in a final. But it says so much about the Pumas that Sunday’s semi is now a 50-50 call. At Racing this week, the coaches were talking about the impact they’ve made as a group on the tournament.
Argentina is the epitome of the sum of the parts being greater than the individual contributions. My head coach Laurent Labit made an interesting point — three of the Puma back line failed to sign up with a Top 14 club for this season. They were looking for work (this is prior to the new Argentine franchise for the extended Super 18 next season), but no-one was interested. Think about that — 14 clubs with 40-odd players on their books, but no interest in Lucas Gonzalez Amorosino, Nicolas Sanchez, or the No 8 Leonardo Senatore.
Perhaps that says something about the Top 14, but what an ability by the Pumas to over-achieve at this World Cup. Watching their fans too, it left a mark on me last Sunday that they have a really good product there now in how they play for each other. Last Sunday, one tenth of the crowd was from South America, but when they had the momentum they made as much noise as the Irish.
New Zealand v South Africa? All Blacks will win this convincingly. The Boks are the weakest of the four still standing.
