Man in the middle
IT HAD been an interesting talk with Declan Kidney and Jerry Holland, but Pat Geraghty couldn’t read their expressions. It was summer 2000 and he was in line for communications officer with Munster rugby after a decade doing the same job with Leinster, but this was one game of poker he wasn’t winning.
“After a chat we had some grub. No starters, just the main course, unlike Leinster, where you’d have five courses. Though the two lads were always keen on dessert.”
Afterwards the duo were on the point of leaving him to head back to Kildare without a signal, but they relented, Holland welcoming him aboard.
It was a couple of weeks after Munster lost to Northampton in the Heineken Cup final. By Geraghty’s own admission the team took some time to come round.
“Initially there would have been reticence,” says Geraghty. “The Leinster connection would have been a big thing to begin with. But they had huge regard for Declan and Jerry, so the idea would have been ‘if he’s okay by them...’”
Still, he had to earn his spurs. On an early trip to Ulster there was an invitation to join a team singsong.
“The players got me to stand up on a seat, where I felt like a total... anyway, I started The Boxer and perfectly choreographed, they all turned away to talk to each other.”
Geraghty dismounted but Alan Quinlan prevailed upon him for a curtain call. Same result.
“I jumped down and when Quinny started again — ‘ah come on, sing the song’ — I told them to eff off, they were a bunch of ignorant so-and-sos, and the mouths dropped.”
Geraghty jumped back up on the stool and restarted The Boxer. Again. This time they joined in.
His stock climbed again in the Stade Jean Bouin in Paris ahead of a Heineken Cup game soon after, when Peter Clohessy told Geraghty to get rid of a suspicious spectator on the sideline.
“I was afraid of Peter Clohessy, so I went down to the guy, and with my pidgin French I told him he couldn’t be there.”
A discussion followed, during which Geraghty snaffled the Frenchman’s phone.
“He was ‘donnez-moi le telephone’, and I was ‘suivez-moi’, and I walked out of the stadium, with him following me.
“I didn’t realise the lads had stopped training and were looking at this, but he got a bit hot and grabbed me by the shoulder. I didn’t throw a punch, I just swatted off his hand. I didn’t lash the phone away, I just threw it, but that incident was another turning point with the team, that I was on their side.”
Geraghty’s duties go beyond match-day responsibilities. Some photographers aren’t accredited, after all.
“When you’re out you’re conscious of mobile phones, because a moment can be captured which looks very different. If I lean across the table to make a point, if the photograph is taken at the right time it could look as if I’m trying to hit you.
“One night, one of the players was sitting in a bar next to a woman he didn’t know, it had been a long day, he wouldn’t have been one of the big drinkers, and he fell asleep.
“His head was on the girl’s shoulder, and another girl was taking a picture with her phone. I asked her to stop, even though it was perfectly innocent.
“I’ve told people to leave them alone, and there have been instances when I’ve been told to eff off as a result. Does that bother me? Not at all. Goes with the territory.”
When the players meet the press formally, Geraghty doesn’t worry about hostages to fortune.
“It’s not about giving stuff away, it’s about respect, and one thing these lads preach is respect. They’re not going to say ‘we’ll beat the opposition easily’ because of that respect.
“That’s developed through Declan’s era through to the present day, as well as feeding off slights. But respect isn’t a catchphrase. It’s the truth. They’ve lost games they should have won and because they’ve had plenty of disappointments, they know there’s no such thing as a pushover.”
Still, some days are harder than others, like the morning a phone call from New Zealand set off Geraghty’s phone. The Guardian had published a Ronan O’Gara interview, and...
“A cold chill? Of course. It was the week of the Leicester game. Leicester, of all people, a fantastic side.”
O’Gara had been frank in evaluating the strength of English club rugby, but the press officer relaxed a little when he saw the text.
“I felt, okay, typical Ronan O’Gara — he felt he had to defend his Irish colleagues and made no excuses. The only guy who could do it was Ronan, and he was the only guy who could dig himself out of it. And he did.”
At the opposite end of the experience spectrum is new kid, Keith Earls.
“Everyone wants to talk to him, and we’ll say no. He’s a young lad who’s just on the team and he could go through a patch where he’s a hero one week and then has a bad run, so you won’t see much of Keith for a while.”
When Earls is ready to talk, he’ll be prepared.
“Some lads can’t wait to sit down and talk to an interviewer. That’s natural. With Keith, we’ll sit him down with a camera and peg a few questions at him, so he’s comfortable with it. The only involvement the players would have would be if he says, ‘I’m talking to Michael Moynihan’, and the others would say ‘he’s grand’, or ‘watch him’.
“Down through the years we’ve been particular about how we ease them into it, but after that they’re on their own. If they’re happy to talk to someone, talk to them; if they don’t want to talk to a particular journalist, they don’t, and there are players who’ll say that — ‘I don’t want to talk to that guy’.
“I tell the players that if they give an interview and they’re not happy with something, to come to me. I’ll contact the journalist in question and tell him ‘the player isn’t happy with this or that’, and tell them to be aware of that point. If the journalist then goes in hard on that issue, then he’s got to live with that.”
Geraghty keeps track of players’ media appearances in any event.
“I would have files going back for years, of articles that have been done, and if a journalist says to me ‘I don’t understand why player X won’t talk to me’, I can then say, ‘I’ll tell you why, I’ll send you on the piece you did’.”
After games, Geraghty is charged with producing players for media duties, win, lose or draw. It’s not always easy.
“After a match we’ll discuss a topic that might come up, so they’re not caught cold — Neil Best’s suspension, say, might have been raised after the Glasgow game, so they’d be advised on that.”
Though Geraghty is responsible for Munster media appearances, there can be some mission creep when it comes to Ireland duty.
“A few years ago the Sunday Tribune ran an article — not by Peter O’Reilly, who was their rugby writer — about various things in Munster and we were very unhappy with it. Then our lads told me before going on tour to South Africa with Ireland they wouldn’t co-operate with him.
“I said they couldn’t do that — that Peter O’Reilly would be thousands of miles from home, that they might jeopardise his job, that after the tour was over they’d have isolated a newspaper — and that he hadn’t written the piece. In the end I think they didn’t talk to him for a day to make a point, then it was okay.”
Generally, however, rugby gets a very good press.
“Absolutely. That’s generated largely by mutual respect — the players get on well with journalists, by and large, they come across well in the media, so it’s a two-way street.
“There are other teams, I’m sure, who are obnoxious off the field, but these lads maintain a level of normality off the field that you’d associate more with the amateur game as we knew it and possibly the GAA ethos.
“If lads get a bit outrageous... we were in a bar in Limerick last year, and one of the younger lads was heading to another bar and headed out the door with his pint. Anthony Foley told him to come back, that he wasn’t going to walk around the streets of Limerick with a pint glass.
“Another time the lads felt a particular player was out of order, a Cork-based player, so they said, ‘we’ll get Rog to have a word with him’. Same in Limerick, with Axel or Paul.”
All things considered, is Geraghty’s reputation for being confrontational on behalf of the players justified, then?
“I suppose I possibly have a reputation, that people would say I’m over-defensive about them. If I perceive they’re being treated wrongly by anybody, I’ll jump to their defence, so it’s probably more a verbal aggression that I’m noted for than anything.”
But if you have John Hayes standing behind you, isn’t it easy to be confrontational, surely?
“Absolutely. But I see them in the dressing-room with the stud-marks and the bruises, trying to drag themselves up off the bench an hour-and-a-half after the game. That’s how long it takes them to recover.
“You’re trying to get a guy out to do a flash interview and they’re destroyed, but they’ll always turn up. They’ll drag themselves up and you can see the pain, but they’ll do it. There’s never been a time when they’ve said no.
“That’s why I thought it was disappointing to hear Leinster didn’t do their media stuff after losing to Connacht. I’ve been in dressing-rooms with Munster and they’re on their knees. And I’ve said, ‘this is the day we have to front up’. And they do.”
The press man isn’t apologetic about fronting up himself when necessary.
“I know there are probably those who would probably say ‘Pat’ll snap the head off you’, and I will. ‘Why can’t I talk to Ronan O’Gara?’ ‘Because he doesn’t want to talk to you’.”
So, should people be big enough to take an effing match one day and still be able to deal with each other the next day? “Absolutely.”
Eight years after that dessert with Messrs Holland and Kidney, there are no regrets.
“If I had my life to live over again I’d have come to Munster a couple of years earlier. Aside from Garret (Fitzgerald), I’m probably the longest-serving person here, and I came down when I was ticked off with rugby. I had 10 years with Leinster and was disappointed with how that ended, but this was like a shot of adrenalin.
“I’ve been injecting it ever since.”
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