There is an eye
IT'S their fifth consecutive season reaching the Heineken Cup semi-final, a phenomenal achievement, and at this stage practically every one of the Munster rugby team are household names wherever the oval ball is king.
Instantly recognisable faces include Ronan O'Gara, Anthony Foley, Peter Stringer, Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan even Christian Cullen, one of the greatest All-Blacks of them all.
Then there's the fierce front-row combo of Horan/Sheahan/Hayes, or there's Wallace, Williams, Quinlan, Henderson, Mullins, Kelly, Payne and Horgan.
The list goes on and on.
The same goes for their coach, Alan Gaffney, with that shock of white hair, and the affable, knowledgeable, unmistakable Aussie drawl.
But, hang on, who's this Brian Hickey guy, the Munster 'Assistant Coach'? Well, they know him well enough in his native Cork, where he coached UCC and Cork Con for a few years, and he'd be recognised in parts of Limerick, from his two-year stint with Young Munster in the late 1990's.
They might even remember him at London-Irish, with whom he spent several less than stellar years (by his own admission) as a back-up full-back, while qualifying as a dentist. Outside of those select areas however, who the hell ever heard of him, what has he ever done in rugby? Well, for starters, he did play the game, sort of.
"I was the perennial sub, would only get into the starting line-up because of injuries," he smiles. I went to Christians, where it was all rugby; they won the Senior Cup my first year, but I wasn't on the 22; my second year we were beaten by Pres in the final, I was a sub that day. In UCC I won U-20 medals and things like that, and was sub when they won a Munster Senior League. Wing-forward was my position, then full-back, which was where I played in England. Six seasons with London-Irish, started off down in fourths, thirds, moved up gradually 'til I was a fairly regular second-team player. I made a couple of first-team starts, but they were few and far between, because Jim Staples was the full-back of the time."
Occasional first teamer at London-Irish? Can't have been that bad, surely.
He smiles again. "Well they were a good side at the time, but I wouldn't even say I was the automatic number two to Jim, they'd kind of stick someone else in before I'd be looked at. It was the early days of the Premiership, we had Staples, Saunders, Curtis, Geoghegan, top players."
Hickey didn't set the rugby world on fire as a player then, one reason for his relative anonymity. But hang on a second there lads; even as Munster continue to chase that elusive first European title, Brian Hickey has already been there, done that. Just that it was in a slightly different kind of t-shirt.
"I did a lot of competitive sailing, sailed with Mark Mansfield in the European championships, in the 1720 class. We won two of them, so we can't have been too bad! It was fantastic to sail with a guy like Mark, he's now going for his fourth Olympics."
So there it is. The guy with probably the lowest profile of all in the Munster rugby set-up is the only one with a European championship medal already tucked into his back pocket.
Hell, he might even have been an Olympian.
"Olympian? Ah no!, he protests, "I wouldn't have been that standard, but Mark was. He was very much the guy running the show; five of us, all with our own jobs to do on the boat. Even in that situation, it was good to be part of a team."
Part of a team. That's what he is, this Brian Hickey, an integral part of a very tight, intensely-focused, superbly-prepared team. That last part, superbly-prepared, is where Brian comes in, where he's most in play.
An injury, timely as it turned out, at the age of 27 cut short that run-of-the-mill playing career; timely, in that it led the young Corkman straight into coaching, just about the time the English RFU were beginning to get their ducks in a row.
"There was no-one running theLondon-Irish second team, the Wild Geese, so I kind of ended up going to most of their games, giving pep-talks at half-time, and that's when I fell for the coaching bug.
"Luckily, I was exposed to some very good coaches over there, and not just in London Irish. People like Mike Gosling, who went on to coach the English backs, Alan Black, others who are now heavily with the England game, who have subsequently moved onto higher things. They also brought in a lot of top guest coaches, to their courses, people like Roger Uttley and Brian Ashton.
"Clive Woodward had just come back from Australia, got involved at Henley initially, then came to London Irish.
"On another occasion we were brought up to Northampton, where Wayne Shelford was in charge. While coaching was in its infancy here, they were very much the forerunners of what was to come in England, setting up the coaching courses there. The RFU was light years ahead of everyone else in the Northern Hemisphere in that; the IRFU courses were also top class, it was just the RFU were that little bit ahead. My Level 3 coaching course over there was equivalent to Level 4 here."
So it was that the trainee dentist cut his teeth in coaching with some of the most progressive rugby brains around, from both hemispheres. He learned well.
He came back to Cork, and with the help of Peter Melia, took UCC, his alma mater, from Division 3 to Division 2 in his first season, consolidated that position in his second. Also took them to Dudley Cup honours unbeaten. From there, he headed north, to Limerick, rugby capital of the world, to Young Munster, Ireland's own wasps.
"Everyone thought I was mad to go down there, because it was a strange thing to do, but I just saw it as a challenge. I must say I found it as good a two years as I've ever had.
"The travelling was tough, you're down there three or four times a week; I'm doing that again at the moment but it's a different level. I was exposed to some fabulous players there, Peter and Des Clohessy, Ger Earls one of the finest players I've ever come across, a fantastic fella to deal with and there was also Derek Tobin, Mick Lynch, Pako Fitzgerald, the assistant coach, Mike Prendergast was coming onto the team at the time. All of them were very helpful to me."
A good first season then in which they made the AIL Division 1 play-offs, lost to Garryowen in a hard-luck semi-final ("missed about seven kicks on the day").
They slipped a bit in the second season, with a tougher programme both home and away, but they still finished top six.
Then he came home, to Cork Con, one of the most storied clubs in the country.
"Con was just around the corner from me, growing up, always my club. I had intended taking a year out but, for various reasons, Mickey Bradley and Paul Derham, couldn't give a full commitment to the year in Con; I was asked to help out, and was delighted to be able to do so."
Again, good first season, just missed out on the play-offs; they were more involved the second and third years, did even better. Still, even as Munster were losing heartbreakers in Europe, Con were suffering the same fate in the AIL play-offs, beaten in the final two years in-a-row. Disappointing, but it brought their young coach to the attention of the powers-that-be in the IRFU.
"The Munster position came up, I had to go for it. I remember a comment I read from Alan (Gaffney), long before I ever met him; don't die wondering. I'm glad now I did it, because I'm really enjoying it. It's got a little tiring lately, with a lot of travel since Christmas. I was in France twice to see Stade play.
"Not alone are you preparing for your own game, you have to travel to see the opposition; if they're playing away from home, it can be difficult to get out of these places. But from the rugby point of view I'm still enjoying it, absolutely. It's a completely different scenario for me, up to this I was doing it sort of as a pastime, something I loved doing, even if was at a serious level with College, Young Munster and Con.
"With Munster, it's a couple of notches above that again. I suppose there was always the worry there that what you always did out of love, when it becomes your job it can take that edge off it. But I can't say I've found that to be the case.
"It's completely different in terms of the stakes being so much higher, but no less enjoyable for that. I think you couldn't but enjoy it really, with the players we have, the whole thing that goes with Munster."
The players. Maybe the most revealing comment from Brian Hickey, in a long interview, was what he said in parting.
"I don't want it to be about me; the players are the most important element in all of this." He's right of course.
Alan and Brian, may do all the prep-work, all the research, all the video-analysis everything to point their team in the right direction; ultimately however, it's up to the players. If they haven't got the talent in the first instance, if they haven't got the intelligence, the attitude, the hunger; if they haven't got the work ethic, then all the work in the world won't amount to a hill of beans. In that, in the players at their disposal, the Munster coaching team are very fortunate.
"They have a great camaraderie, a great sense of fun; in fact there were times in the early days when I'd have wondered, are they taking this seriously enough, but the more time you spend with them, the more you see they know exactly when to take it seriously, they can switch on very quickly. The one outstanding thing about professional rugby, those who make it to the top are those who realise you do have to put your body on the line, in every sense of the word.
"It would be very easy just to go from one training session to the next, but there's a lot more involved than that. These players are very diligent. Jim Williams, for example; he had an injury, was told that to give it the best chance of recovery he should ice it on the hour, every hour.
"So he set his alarm to go off at five(minutes) to the hour. All that night his sleep was interrupted, every hour, but he did it.
"That's the kind of example set by guys like Jim Williams; when Ronan had a similar problem lately, with his leg the week before the Stade Francais game, he did the same thing. From the example of fellas like Jim Williams, John Langford, Rhys Ellison, the guys now know, their all-round health, keeping themselves right physically as well as mentally, keeping their bodies right, is critical to what they do.
"In training, they are particularly hard, our sessions would be fairly full on and no-one holds back. The only thing they'd be wearing is that protective suit, but relatively speaking, they don't offer huge protection.
"Sometimes they train at match intensity, not for a full 80 minutes, but full on while it lasts, no quarter given or taken.
"There are guys in there in direct opposition to those whose places they are trying to take. And yet, hard as it is, it's always fair, it never crosses the line."
They will need all that hardness, all the preparation, by players and coaches, if they are to make another Heineken Cup final.
While Munster leaked a worrying four tries in their semi-final win over Stade Francais, Wasps, their opponents in Lansdowne Road this Sunday, were swamping Gloucester and looked well-nigh invincible.
PLUGGING the gaps in that defence is the first challenge facing Brian Hickey and the other Munster coaches; coming up with a game-plan to break the massive Wasps defence is the next; keeping it all in context however, is the biggest challenge of all.
"We would pride ourselves in not conceding a lot of tries, but Stade Francais was an unusual game in one way.
"Two of the tries came from balls we ran from inside our own half and turned over. We didn't react quickly enough. The other two came from not just one defensive error but a series of them, one following the other.
"You can't afford that, at this level; you might get away with a slight lapse in defence, but three of them in quick succession bang, bang, bang that will be punished, and was. That is a cause for worry.
"Looking at Wasps, I would think they are quite a similar side to Munster, in many ways; they have the pace to play a wide game, the ability to send runners hard up the middle, but they can also play a very traditional tight game. Their maul is very strong, their body positions good, those two pushover tries against Gloucester were never in doubt. They're an exceptional side, we're under no illusions about the size of the task we face.
"But, while we'd respect any opposition we play, you can spend too much time too worrying about them, what they can do, trying to counteract that, and end up forgetting about your own game. Certainly we'd want the players to be conscious of what their defensive duties are, but at this level you've got to go out and try to win the match, not just be afraid, play with fear, play not to lose.
"It's the same for the coach, you can become too negative. You have to think about the defence, that's critically important, but you have to plan too to win the game, plan to attack. That's what we'll be doing".
So, who's Brian Hickey? He's the guy who, with Alan Gaffney, with a squad of extremely talented, dedicated and determined players, makes up the Munster team. That's who.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
