Ready for the end

MONDAY it’ll finish.

He’ll hang up the jersey on the hook after the game against Connacht and leave the dressing room in Thomond Park, and that’ll be that.

There’ll be no regrets from John Hayes.

“The time is right to go,” said the Bruff club man during the week. “There’s no two ways about that. I’ve absolutely no doubts about it (retiring). I was ready to go in October, but then the few injuries occurred with Munster and I agreed to stay on as cover, but I’m definite it’s time to go— I enjoyed the extra few weeks, but that’s it.”

He calls time on a storied career with Munster and Ireland in good physical nick. That was always a consideration.

“I’m fine that way, and it’s something a few people have said to me, how’s my health, but I’m fine — injury-free, the whole lot.

“It’s time to go before things start to creak. You’d hear about plenty of fellas who aren’t able to run around after their children, and I’m still well able to do that.”

He’s got plenty of highlights to tell young Roisin and Sally. You don’t play professionally for 14 years without experiencing a few big days out.

“The Heineken Cup wins would be big, obviously, but I suppose from a personal point of view, winning the first cap is a big one. The whole day, the whole week really, leading into it, is a special week for anybody getting their first cap, and most of the lads who are around the squad will recognise that it’s a special day for the new player. There were five of us who got them on the same day as well (Hayes, Ronan O’Gara, Peter Stringer, Shane Horgan and Simon Easterby), which made it even more special.”

It was also the beginning of Hayes’ long tenure as the sole farmer in the Irish rugby camp; one slight regret is that a certain Carlow man didn’t break through earlier to share that burden.

“The farming thing? That was more slagging from the boys than anything, you’d be on the bus and the rest of them would say, ‘look, Hayes, a tractor, it’s green’ or whatever. Good banter more than anything else. In a way I’m sorry Sean O’Brien didn’t make the breakthrough a bit earlier, he’d have taken some of the heat off me. Though I’d say he gets plenty of slagging nowadays about it from the rest of them.”

That slagging underlines a huge fondness for Hayes among rugby supporters, and Munster supporters in particular. Typically, he seeks to share it around.

“That’s there for all of us, for all the Munster squad. I think it’s something that happened with the a lot of lads from the squad coming from country towns and small places where everyone would know you anyway, and would meet you walking along the street.

“You’re somebody’s neighbour or cousin, people know you and that’s one reason why there’s a closeness between the Munster players and fans. There’s a core group of us have been around a good while, too, even though a few lads have begun to go in the last couple of years, so that closeness grew over time.”

As the poster boy for late adoption of rugby — he came to the game at `18 — he pays tribute to the IRFU for opening up opportunities for people to play the game.

“The opportunities are there now,” says Hayes. “You have a lot of clubs around the country nowadays. Bruff RFC made it possible for me to get started and there are a lot of clubs like that around the country. The IRFU have done great work there and they realise there’s a huge pool of players out there which wouldn’t be from the traditional rugby areas, a pool they could draw from.”

Trying to prod some emotion out of the big man, you ask if there’s anything he’ll miss.

“Having been there again last Sunday, I’ll definitely miss the big day, the Heineken Cup game in Thomond Park is such a big event. A good few of us played a lot of those games but you wouldn’t take them for granted. The way the stadium fills up, the atmosphere that builds... it’s great to be part of that.

“Can you enjoy it? Not as it happens — you’re nervous before every game but when you look back on it, you get a lot of satisfaction.”

Flip the coin: what’s the one thing he won’t miss? “As you get older, with children, the time away in camp becomes harder, but for a young fella that’s very enjoyable. Someone like Conor Murray would love that — there’d be nothing better for him than being away at the World Cup for weeks on end. And it’s a great place to be even if you’re older, but with family it’s probably not as enjoyable.”

He might end up returning to those camps. Coaching is something he’s interested in, though not immediately.

“I’d like to give something back to a sport that gave me so much, coaching might be on the horizon, but I’ll take a break from it for a while and see what happens. I’ll have a look at that down the line.

“Farming would be the plan for a while, I’ve a bit to do there...”

So it’s a functioning, working farm, not a matter of a couple of cows in the back field? “Well, if there’s such a thing nowadays as a working farm, don’t forget that it’s hard for farmers...”

Jeez. Still a professional rugby player yet complaining like a full-time farmer? There’s a chuckling rumble.

The quiet man can summon a poker face to accompany his best lines: when you ask about the possibility of writing a book, for instance, his voice becomes almost sorrowful: “Well, when I see the rubbish Donncha O’Callaghan put in his book...”

So, just to recap: no heartfelt clear-out of the locker, then? No taking down a nameplate in the dressing-room?

“Nothing like that,” says Hayes. “Obviously we train in different facilities so we don’t have the one base where you might do something like that.

“It wasn’t that emotional for me because I knew last year I’d be finishing at the end of October anyway, so I was ready.

“When I look at the likes of Ian Dowling and Barry Murphy, who had their careers taken away early because of injury, I know I’ve been lucky. When they were told, ‘listen, you won’t play again’, there was probably huge emptiness and shock.

“For me, I knew it was coming. And Tony (McGahan) was completely above board when we discussed it, there were no problems. I’m absolutely ready.”