On the front foot in the back row

OF ALL the rugby mementos Stephen Ferris picks up over the course of his career – and all indications are, on the evidence of the past month, there will be a fair few – nothing is likely to mean less to him than the Rugby World Cup cap that he was presented with at the outset of the tournament in Bordeaux in 2007.

A member of Eddie O’Sullivan’s 30-man squad back then, Ferris was one of three players from the original party unable to convince the coach that he was worth even a few seconds of playing time, despite the paucity of his teammates’ efforts, collectively as well as individually, from the start to the truncated finish of a truly miserable tournament in France.

How times have changed.

“The 2007 tournament was awkward for me,” says Ferris. “The team wasn’t playing well yet I knew from the second game onwards that the only way I was going to get a game was if somebody got injured. That was difficult. But I still enjoyed the overall experience. It’s the biggest rugby tournament in the world and I now know the kind of scrutiny you are under, I know what it’s all about, which I think will stand to me. And the experience will make me a bit more determined, too.”

Ferris certainly seems to be making up for lost time at this tournament. The Ulster man and Sean O’Brien have resembled a pair of human battering rams at the World Cup so far, not least in the encounter against Australia, where they provided their teammates with a near-constant supply of that rare commodity, go-forward ball. The work of the Irish scrum during in that particular game has, quite rightly, been lauded ever since but the effort of Ireland’s six and seven over the 80 minutes wasn’t all far behind.

Such super-human efforts, not only revolve around a player’s skill and raw physicality, but their hunger too, and Ferris’s seemingly insatiable appetite for destruction over the course of the past month in New Zealand has its genesis in the player’s recent past.

Until he made his return to action in the World Cup warm-up fixture against England at the Aviva Stadium, Ferris hadn’t played a minute of rugby of any description since he twisted his left knee in a Heineken Cup game against Aironi at the end of January. The injury was complicated by a tear he suffered to the meniscus in the same knee in 2007, and while deadline after deadline was set for a return to action, each one passed without Ferris cross the whitewash. “It was a frustrating injury because I first though it would take a few weeks, and then another few weeks and I had goals in my head all the time,” he says. “Firstly, I wanted to make it back for the end of the Six Nations, then Ulster’s Heineken Cup quarter-finals, then the Magners League semi-final. The problem was that I was pushing myself all the time trying to get fit and in reality, I was only making the problem worse. As soon as a stopped pushing myself after that semi-final, I rested up, got an injection, took two weeks holidays and it seems to have settled down since then.”

Still, despite the lesson learned, Ferris doesn’t regret rushing his comeback. “Hindsight is great isn’t it?” he laughs. “But it’s too easy to say I might have been back earlier if I had simply rested at the beginning of the injury because the different scans I underwent were all coming back with conflicting information. But I think we know from now on that if I have a problem with the knee, which hopefully I won’t, just to give it some rest.”

An abrasive and energetic performer, rarely away from the heart of the action on the pitch, you’d imagine that watching, rather than playing, rugby during that lengthy spell on the sidelines would have been difficult for him. Not so. “I’m a pretty good watcher actually,” he insists. “I watched most of the Six Nations matches in my local bar with some of my Ulster teammates, cheering the lads on, and I can remember watching the England game in a bar in Belfast. For that England game, there was a massive queue outside with people trying to get in. It was difficult at times knowing that I should have been out there on the pitch instead of having a few pints of Guinness, but I definitely enjoyed the experience. It showed me exactly what the team means to people.”

It also showed him, if he didn’t know it already, that despite his obvious talent and burgeoning reputation in the world game, he still wouldn’t be able to walk straight back into the Irish back row once he recovered. “There’s no doubt Sean O’Brien has emerged as one of the best back rowers in the world over the past 12 months, you have to hold your hands up to that,” Ferris admits with impressive honesty. But, as he insisted all the way throughout the summer as he worked his way back towards full fitness, all he could do was do his best and give Declan Kidney a dilemma. The injury to David Wallace was undoubtedly a blow to the squad before their departure to New Zealand, but it sure saved the Ireland coach hours of wondering whether or not he should take the calculated gamble of pairing Ferris and O’Brien in the same back row.

As the last few weeks on the other end of the globe have shown, it has turned out to be no gamble at all. Ferris has turned in a series of phenomenal performances alongside his back-row buddy from Tullow. Clearly, unlike his souvenir from France 2007, this World Cup cap will mean something very special to him indeed.

* Stephen Ferris is a brand ambassador for Irish sports nutritional supplier Kinetica. For more information visit www.kinetica-sports.com