Ryan: I thought I was better than I was

A dozen years have passed since a teenage Donnacha Ryan first pulled on a green jersey but it was the reception on his return to St Munchin’s College that has left a bigger impression.

Of all the lessons learned at the Limerick school, it was the manner in which his classmates cut what he admits was an overinflated ego down to size after his selection for provincial and national schoolboy sides that he values most.

“I thought I was better than I actually was. I’ve no problem saying that. At that age, when you come from a small town and you’re making the Nenagh Guardian, the dizzy heights, you actually think and people are telling you you’re great. I was only 17 so very gullible. When it comes too thick and fast you start thinking ‘jeez, I could be this good’. Sport is the best leveller of all, especially in rugby if a guy is getting too big for his boots, you can do him.

“Munchins was a tough place for me to go but it was brilliant. I got a good Leaving Cert, got a (Munster) Senior Cup and made some good friends and a great learning experience and I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had that.”

It is why, after finally breaking into the first-team ranks at Munster and playing 16 times for Ireland last season, he adopts a look of near horror when it is suggested that he must now be comfortable in the environs of Carton House and Team Ireland.

How could he be at ease with himself, he reasoned, when his last experience in an Irish jersey was that 60-0 shellacking in New Zealand back in June? When, for four weeks afterwards, he walked around like a broken man.

Ryan isn’t one to lock that pain away. He prefers to confront such experiences, to learn from them, just like he learned from the sense of loneliness he felt when he was dragged down off his high horse in Munchin’s.

“There’s a lot of hurt there,” he said of that third Test humiliation in Hamilton five months ago, “and you bring it with you. If you are not clever enough to learn from those experiences, you’d be a very foolish rugby player.”

He’s always been this way.

He spoke yesterday of the years of frustration as a reserve at Munster, of having to beef up his CV to include a brief in the back row as a means of getting game time. After all that, he will never take anything for granted.

“I suppose (after) three or four years of frustration, you realise that you never get too big for your boots. We can all be out as quickly as possible, from my perspective. Whenever I get in there, fine, make it as physical as I can and put my best foot forward. If I don’t get involved I’ve raised the standard of the two boys that get in ahead of me and if I come off the bench I can raise the standard again.”

He knows what awaits. The expectation is that the Irish second row will pair off against Juandre Kruger, a 27-year-old who has had to bide his time like Ryan, and Eben Etzebeth, a 20-year-old who has something of a short fuse. Ryan knows all about the latter’s abilities but he wouldn’t be looking to wind the youngster up. It’s not his style.

These days he has as much interest putting someone else down as he does in bigging himself up.