Pick your moments, pick your battles
May 19, 2001. Cork Con are hosting Young Munster in the semi-final of the All-Ireland League just days before setting off I headed off to manage the 2001 Lions tour to Australia. Ronan O’Gara is also travelling and, regardless of the result, is about to play his last game before the tour. Late on, the Con out-half is lying prostrate on the deck in an awkward position when this raging red head shoes him within an inch of his life. Forgetting my position and in the highly-charged atmosphere that attended club rugby fixtures in those days, I let rip, much to the amusement of the Munsters supporters on the open terracing at Temple Hill.
Eleven years on and that dynamic duo are still the heart and soul of rugby in the province. Indeed, together they’ve almost single-handedly dragged Munster into yet another Heineken Cup quarter-final.
Now that I’m within arm’s reach of him in Limerick’s Castletroy Park Hotel, would he like to reflect on that day in Temple Hill?
“I had a few incidents with Rog that day,” he smiles. “I didn’t really know him but had met him when I was brought for an extra for a bit of experience to Munster’s game in Castres in October 2000 (a memorable 29-32 victory and only Munster’s second ever win in France). I remember Deccie saying ‘welcome to Munster’ after the game. I sat on the bench with the subs and Rog had said hello to me that weekend but other than that I didn’t really know him.”
So you just decided to shoe him anyway?
“I don’t know what you expected me to do — just go into the ruck and say he has a Lions tour next week so I’ll just leave him lie there? That’s the way we were raised in Young Munster.”
Don’t we know...
With a new IRFU contract tucked away that will see him continue his love affair with the province until the end of the 2013-14 season — just four months short of his 35th birthday — the awful thought begins to ferment among Munster fans of a future without Paul O’Connell.
Has he thought about the life after? “I started thinking about that when I hit 30. When you’re in your twenties you never see the end. In the last few years I’ve thought about it a lot and am preparing accordingly. I certainly haven’t decided what I’m going to do, far from it.”
Will rugby have a role to play in that future? “I’m not sure. I would have an interest in being involved but I’m not too sure yet. I would love it not to be my only option. At the moment it’s something that would interest me but I would like to look at other options.
“Not having a challenge or something that you are passionate about would worry me because I’d say I could lose my way very quickly if that was the case. It’s easy to work hard at something as long as you’re passionate about it and love doing it and that’s why rugby has been so enjoyable. It’s easy to train hard and do all the prep work because you really enjoy it but the worry is you may not find that challenge outside after rugby. I’ve been all rugby now since I was 21 so I just want to have other options as well.”
He’s old school is Paul O’Connell. Club and colleagues mean a lot. Trust too. “I remember Eoin Hand and I were on the Munster U20s so we used to be brought up quite a bit to senior training at Young Munster. There would be two packs picked between the seniors and the juniors and it used to be open warfare. For all the skills work and weights lads will do in academies — I didn’t make the Irish academy at the time — club training was brilliant because it was harder than anything you could do. You train with Declan Edwards, Ger Earls, Declan O’Halloran, and ‘Claw’ the odd time when he was not with Munster. Work with them, seeing them at close quarters.... I’d come home from away matches with them at the back of the bus. It was a brilliant experience.”
He was a fast learner but the education never stops. I wondered how much of his time and thought process is consumed by lineouts? “Most of my working week,” he grimaces. “Preparing a menu for the week, preparing how we are going to maul off lineouts, looking at how the next opposition defend off lineouts and what is likely to work best off our lineouts. Obviously I look at theirs and trying to double guess what they are trying to do is a big part of my working week.”
Independently, with other players or with [Munster coach] Anthony Foley? “I do it independently first and then meet up with the other second rows and back rows who would have done a bit as well before the forwards coach. ‘Axel’ is of the opinion that ultimately we are the guys who have to go out there and we have to own it. If the one making the calls on the pitch has a big part in coming up with the options, then he has a better chance of fixing problems as they arise.”
And strategies about attacking in the air, or on the ground, different positions on the field. Is that O’Connell’s responsibility? “There may be certain things we are trying to achieve off lineouts in a game — i.e. off the top ball, to maul or to do little plays — and there would be a group of decision makers who would be involved with the coaches in structuring all of that. Ultimately, based on where you are on the field, you have to chat to the out-half and decide ‘what play are we doing here’ and I have to pick a lineout from our menu to best execute that play.”
What about deciphering opposition calls? “The odd time you pick up calls or words that teams would use but very rarely now as teams pre-call in a huddle and then they use a word for that call, so in each individual lineout that one word can represent a number of different calls. At the moment everyone is copying each other in lineouts and there aren’t a lot of original thoughts. You just add your own little bit in an effort to make it better.”
The best lineout technician you have played against? “[Victor] Matfield would have been the best by a mile. He just had a bank of lineouts that he knew inside out himself over a period of six or seven years. He was able to look at what another team was doing and call the right place every time. Defensively he had a very good sense of where the ball was going. He was very astute at just figuring it out. He was able to take a lot of little tells off other players and he was really good at it, the best I came across.”
But what if he had to lift himself, like some second row dinosaurs we know? Have Munster or Ireland tried it in training, even for a laugh? Lineouts, sans the Bull? “Never. Lifting has speeded up the game. I look back at those old games and it is ball tapped back and the scrum-half dives on it and it’s another ruck. There are too many second rows now that would be exposed if they had to jump for themselves!”
What about scrums? “Scrummaging is very clean cut now. As a unit you have to be so focused in generating as much power as an eight; being together, tight, you literally don’t have any time for any skullduggery now. Everything now is focused on ‘The Hit’. That is the big difference between now and your day. When I look at scrums from your day the front rows lay into each other very lightly and that’s when the scrummaging started. That’s why there were very few collapsed scrums. The collapse now comes from 16 bodies smashing into each other as hard as they can. That’s why you have so many resets. That hit wasn’t there in your day and that to me is why it goes down all the time [now]. There is still an art to scrummaging. We still have different calls, use different channels in terms of what we want to do. All of that is still there and still practiced.”
As Ireland captain, the management of the referee is a big part of the game. There are different approaches, the Martin Johnson/Lawrence Dallaglio in-your-face style or the more subtle Richie McCaw approach. Is there a distinct Paul O’Connell style?
“I don’t think I have a style. You just have to work with the referee and pick your moments, pick your battles and make sure that this is something that really needs to be addressed. At the higher levels, the referees are getting better and better and you just have to pick your moments.
“You meet and talk to the referee in the dressing room now before the game and hopefully you get off to a good start there. Generally he will have a few things that he is looking for from your team and you talk to him and try and clarify that. The issue with Romain Poite when he sin-binned me in the Northampton game, I think people made a big thing out of it but since then we have been refereed by him a good few times and he is a really good referee, very sure of himself. He is one of those guys that if you do have a point to make and you make it in the right way at the right time and you haven’t made 15 other points beforehand he will take it on board.”
McCaw though, is the master. Legend has it that he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the laws of the game and uses it to his advantage. O’Connell says: “I think you will find the guys who are best at managing referees generally are playing for the team or the pack that are most dominant. That’s generally the way it is.
“Look at the guys you have mentioned; McCaw, Johnson, and Dallaglio. They would not have played in too many packs that were going backwards. I think it is harder to argue your case when your scrum is in trouble, your maul is in trouble and the opposition is dominating you at the breakdown. That’s where most of the guys that are deemed to be good captains with referees are coming from a position of strength.”
That manic O’Connell drive and the constant thirst for perfection, where does it come from? “I don’t know. In some ways because I have been captain of Munster for a while I have gotten more coverage, but a lot of the guys that have been there a long time have it. It’s the same with Leinster and Ireland. People don’t associate it with Wally [David Wallace] a lot but that’s because he hasn’t been captain or hasn’t been put out in front of the media a lot. Wally is the most viciously competitive guy you could ever meet but he seems to be able to do it with a smile which makes people think differently of him. Anyone who knows Wally around the training pitch knows him as an incredible competitive guy and most of the guys who have been around a long time are like that — Rog, Strings, Dunners, Quinny, Hayes, Flannery…the list goes on.”
Is it almost a self-perpetuating thing in Munster now? “A big part of it is in the fact that, in comparison to some other clubs in Europe, most of us are still playing for the area we come from and are still incredibly passionate about the team we play for. A lot of those guys would have a fair bit of individual ambition as well in terms of wanting to play for Ireland, wanting to be starting all the time. So it’s a good mix of loyalty, passion for who you play for and then that little bit of individual ambition as well.
“When I was younger I played a lot of individual sports. I swam and I golfed and I got out of them what I put in. You couldn’t rely on or blame anyone else so you just had to work harder, certainly for swimming. If you worked harder than the guy next to you, you had a good chance of beating him. It’s as simple as that. Sometimes guys in team sports lose track of that. There are so many excuses there around injuries, politics, and the coach not liking you. Generally, if you have a bit of talent and you work hard enough and you stick at it long enough the breakthrough will come.
“Look at a guy like Jerry Flannery. He got no contract with Munster or Connacht. Then he went to play his club rugby in Connacht to try and get a contract there, which he did, so that he could get back to Munster, which he did. He then sat on the bench with Munster for two years and when he made the breakthrough with Munster, he played for Ireland within two or three months. It may not happen straight away but if you have the belief and the work ethic it will happen and he is testament to that. The guy that has the mental strength to go through what he went through just fills a team with confidence and takes them on to another level. The more guys you have like that, with that kind of self-belief, it adds to the atmosphere and attitude of the whole team.”
It’s eight years now since Jim Williams had his rant after losing to Wasps in the Heineken Cup semi -final about Munster being at a disadvantage in training in two centres in Cork and Limerick. Does that have to change for the next generation of Munster players?
“It’s certainly very difficult and it would be much better for us to spend more time together but it’s nice for the people of Cork and Limerick to be able to meet rugby players around. They can live their adult lives where they grew up. Not many professional sports people get to do that. For me, that makes a massive difference on how we play and perform. You are representing your city, your county, your province on the European stage. You look at the profile of a lot of clubs in Europe and there are not a lot of guys who are representing where they came from. That is what we have in all the provinces in Ireland.
“I don’t know how good we would be if we were playing in a club that our hearts weren’t in and that is one of our strengths. We still have that old AIL atmosphere about how we play.”
Will the new generation retain that? “I would certainly hope so. I think the new generation coming into Munster certainly still have a big interest in the club game. The guys that are breaking through, I really like their attitude. You look at Conor Murray, Mike Sherry, Peter O’Mahony and their attitude really makes me hopeful for the future.”
Do you see a bit of yourself in some of those guys? “I see Munster in them and that is what’s important. I see that they want to be the ones that want to drive it on. They don’t want to come into the team and tread water. They want to be the best player on the pitch and that is what I like seeing.”
Does watching soccer do your head in? “I don’t really watch soccer. I follow Everton but I do find soccer hard to watch.”
Because you follow Everton? “I find them hard to watch at times, but I admire Everton and like David Moyes. I have supported them since 1985. They were the best team in England back then and Paul Bracewell was my favourite player and Howard Kendall was the manager. I admire Everton and the way that Moyes runs the club on a shoestring. The players seem to have a lot of loyalty to the club and he has kept a lot of players for a long time, which not a lot of managers seem to be able to do.
“I don’t watch a lot of soccer not because of the antics; I just don’t find it a great game. I think in the GAA there is always scoring or big catches. In rugby, even if the scoreboard isn’t ticking over you have breaks, you have big tackles or lineout steals and that kind of thing so there is always something to keep you interested.”
What about Gift Grub?
“It’s very funny. I think they have Rog down to a tee which is great.”
What about you, don’t you think Mario Rosenstock has you down to a tee?
“I don’t think so, no. I played golf with him during the summer and I gave out to him for rolling his buggy across the green in Doonbeg and he got stuck into me for about two holes. It’s a bit of craic and I always know when I’ve been on because I get a load of text messages.”
O’Connell has played golf off a handicap of four but now claims to be a poor nine. “I’m finding it very frustrating because I have tried to get back into it and I just can’t find any form. I am quite poor now whenever I play, which is very frustrating.”
And if your fourball partner is having a shocker, is he in for a bollocking? “That hasn’t happened for a long time now. I have generally been the disaster in the pairs. I am able to enjoy golf now a lot more than I used to. It used to be an obsession with me but now when I play, because I am not playing to a massive level, I kind of remind myself that I am out here to enjoy myself.”
The World Cup and all that went with it, what with the massive Irish support and so many young Irish people there because of emigration. Was that something that, as a squad, ye were conscious of?
“Big time. I did a blog with O2 during the tournament and I kept talking about it and everybody at home wanted to know about it. They could see it on the television. It was incredible, yet sad. On your day off we like to go out and do a bit of shopping, sit out and have a coffee and try and switch off. It was hard to switch off because there were so many supporters, there was so much media work to be done and a lot of the games were in small venues. But you would meet so many people and they are all so nice and they would relate their story. They were here en route to Australia or they were working in Australia and travelled over. Some were working in Auckland and would travel at the weekends for the games. It was sad.
“Certainly for me, you are definitely more socially conscious when you get older and these are our best people who should be running the country in years to come. I’ve been to Melbourne, I’ve been to Sydney and a lot of these places and I’d say they are hard places to leave once you have settled down and made roots. But it’s a long way to be from your family. It’s hard for parents. Emily’s [Paul’s partner and mother of his son Paddy] two sisters are in Canada, in Toronto, a long way away from family which is sad and something that we were very conscious of.
“The crowd that greeted us in the foyer of our hotel in Wellington as we boarded the bus for the quarter-final was very emotional. It sent shivers down the spine. The positivity down there was incredible. New Zealand was talking about the Irish supporters. When we met the players from the other countries after our games all they were talking about was the Irish supporters so it was hard to tell them that there was a bit of a sad story going with it.”
That quarter-final against Wales. Did the players get ahead of themselves and let the mind drift to a potential first ever semi-final? “I don’t think so at all. At 50 minutes when we got that Keith Earls try, it was 10-all. They had thrown everything at us by then and we were confident back at the halfway line. We then lost a lineout and conceded a soft try.
“Unfortunately for us we put a few kicks in the first half that went dead. They put in a few identical kicks in the second half which just stood up inside in our try zone and they kept pinning us back and we didn’t handle it very well. They fed off our mistakes, got another try, which helped make it a very tough battle. We conceded soft tries. Very frustrating. They are a very good side, chopped us in the tackle and slowed up our ball but things like that were always going to happen. They were always going to throw something different at us and we had to figure that out. The soft tries we conceded made it very frustrating.
“The 2009 Lions and this World Cup will be big regrets for me. Lions tours and World Cups are your forever moments so they will be big regrets.”
Paul O’Connell is a son of Cork, no matter how often he tries to deny it. Guilty as charged? “I don’t sweep it under the carpet. I’m very proud of it. My dad is from Ballinlough. He played hurling with Blackrock and scored 1-3 in a Cork minor hurling final.”
Indeed he did. Paul’s father Michael, or ‘Val’ as he was known to team-mates, scored 2-2 in the 1963 city division minor final against St Finbarr’s in one of the most amazing finals of all time. The Rockies were five goals behind at half-time, losing 4-7 to 1-1 against a Barrs side that featured future All-Ireland winning captains in Charlie and Gerald McCarthy. Charlie contributed 3-2 in the opening half before the Rockies stormed back, helped in no small measure by O’Connell’s exploits, to win 8-5 to 5-7. A team-mate of O’Connell was Paddy Geary, whose son Brian has been a regular for Limerick hurlers.
Described as tough and fearless — apples don’t fall far from the tree — Val took up rugby soon afterwards.
“He played with Sunday’s Well and loved it there. He is still a big Well man and still goes to a few of their games (Paul’s brother Justin won a Munster Senior Cup medal with the Well in 1994, ironically beating Young Munster in the final). Dad got a job with DeBeers in Shannon and moved to Limerick and joined Young Munster and we are all devotees of Munsters since.”
But you are a son of Cork? “I suppose I am really.”
You don’t have to apologise for it... “No, no, I’m very proud of where I come from. Dad would be a very proud Cork man still to this day. Rugby is his passion so he has knocked great enjoyment out of the last few years. He has been brilliant because It’s nice to have someone 100% in your corner. The brother is always trying to keep your feet on the ground but Dad is solidly 100% in my corner.”
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