Ex-Red McGahan plots hot reunion
Time flies and so has McGahan since leaving Ireland after six years with the province to return to his native Queensland and take up a role with the Australian Rugby Union as coaching co-ordinator.
Now, as part of Robbie Deans’ coaching ticket, McGahan will help try to plot the downfall of the British & Irish Lions as the cream of these islands’ playing talent heads Down Under for a three-Test series which begins on June 22 and runs over three successive weekends of what promises to be high-octane, roller coaster rugby.
Like everyone in Australia appears to be, McGahan is excited at the prospect of what he believes is a once-in-a-career opportunity in being involved in a Lions tour.
“It does mean a lot to be involved,” McGahan told the Irish Examiner. “The coaching life span is getting smaller as we move further along in professional rugby. You’re not anywhere for long periods of time so where a Lions tour comes in the cycle, you’ve got to be fortunate, like in a lot of things, timing-wise. So this happens once every 12 years and coaches and all the players are looking forward to it.”
McGahan is generally looking forward to things, at least operating very much in the here and now, and refusing to dwell too much on the past. He remembers his time with Munster fondly but was unprepared to pass comment too deeply on the team he handed over to Rob Penney last summer when he moved home to Brisbane, save to praise the way the younger players he helped to develop continue to shine.
The Australian’s focus is understandably on his current charges in the Wallabies squad with his role on Deans’ management team an all-consuming one now the international season is looming.
“We’re settled back in here and it’s gone quickly, nearly 12 months now, frightening,” he said. “It was a pretty hectic start to getting back in the country.
“We got back on the Friday and I had to leave on the Monday for five or six weeks. And then we were pretty much gone for five months, so it was a fair introduction, but we had a good break over Christmas and since then it’s been preparing for the season.”
The demands of Test rugby are very different to the daily hurly burly he was used to with Munster.
“This is kind of all or nothing,” McGahan said. “We’ll be going now for the next six months with the accelerator to the floor and you enjoy that, but it’s certainly good to catch your breath and spend a bit of time with the family.
“There’s always plenty of work to do. You’re away two or three days a week and then you’re watching a lot of rugby and watching training.
“But you certainly miss that day-to-day working with other people on the staff, whether it’s other coaches or medical staff and getting players on the pitch and planning every week and executing that and living by the win or loss on the scoreboard at the end of it. You miss that part of it week to week but we’ll get plenty of that going forward.”
McGahan admitted an imminent Lions tour had played a small part in his decision to leave Munster.
“It was certainly at the back of my mind. You don’t get too many opportunities to be involved in any sort of Lions situation when you’re from Australia, New Zealand or South Africa and so that was one factor.
“We had nine Munster representatives selected in 2009 and you could see with players like Paul O’Connell and Ronan O’Gara, who had toured previously, how much it meant to them to be selected as one of the best players in Britain and Ireland.
“Then you had someone like Alan Quinlan who was selected for his first Lions tour and [subsequently suspended for the duration] and what it meant for him to be selected and someone else like Keith Earls at the beginning of his career, just broken into professional rugby. All of them had different motivations and emotions and this year will be no different for the ones who have been picked.”
That counts for the Wallabies too, and McGahan has been impressed by the way the squad has taken shape and shown form throughout the current Super Rugby season.
“It’s been a terrific Super XV season so far and for the Australian provinces and we’ve got all of them showing some pretty good form. A lot of guys got a lot of exposure last year and we used quite a large squad over the 15 Test matches.
“So they went back to their provincial programmes to be able to, along with their good coaching programmes, impart some of that international experience. We’ve been really happy. The Brumbies are going well, the Reds are going well and the Waratahs have shown a huge improvement. The Force have put in some terrific performances and the Rebels have been fantastic the last few weeks against quality sides.
“With the limited preparation we’ll get ahead of the first Test we really need players and programmes and teams playing well and that’s certainly been the case this year for Australia.”
McGahan does not subscribe to an Australian media characterisation of the Lions players as “slabs of meat” but does suggest that Warren Gatland’s selection is coming the Wallabies’ way with a certain style of play in mind.
“They’ve picked a squad which is very direct, very confrontational, but that’s just picking to their strengths and that fits with the game plan they think they can win and we’ll be doing exactly the same. I don’t think we’ll be basing [our selection] on weight categories in terms of who they’re going to play. We’ll be aware of it but there won’t be a dictation to how we’ll select.
“We’ll select on how we want to play, and how we want to attack and defend. We will deliver what best suits us.
“Super Rugby is based on a really strong attacking focus and a limited kicking of ball in hand type of play and I’ve been really impressed with the Australian provinces this year, the way they’ve defended and their tactical kicking and catching have been improved areas in Super XV so far. Those are strong qualities that we’ll need collectively against the Lions, for whom that’s their bread and butter in game situations.”
The high intensity of this year’s Six Nations championship in the northern hemisphere has certainly not escaped the Wallabies camp, with McGahan adding: “That big game at the end of the campaign between Wales and England was a terrific game of rugby.
“They showed a lot of spirit and the toughness and the tackling was right up there with what all good Test matches have.
“It was hammer and tong, hammer and tong and Wales kept edging ahead and in the end ran over that English side.”
And while the Aussie media has been quick to highlight Wales’ poor record against the Wallabies in recent years, including four Test defeats in a row in 2012, McGahan is not seeing the large Welsh contingent in the Lions squad as a source of comfort.
“The record against them is there but the scorelines suggest anything but that. We were very fortunate on occasions and some key players came up with some key moments for us to get through against Wales and in all those games last year we could easily have been on the other end of that, there’s no doubt about that. Right from Test one to three, a kick or a point was in it and then the game in Cardiff, just a try in the corner right on full-time.
“So we’re well aware of that, that those results could have gone either way. We needed some key players with key moments and we were lucky enough to get them.”
The Irish contingent may be smaller than four years ago in South Africa but McGahan does not detect any drop in the numbers of green-tinged supporters backing the Lions in his country over the next six weeks.
“They’re everywhere, absolutely everywhere,” McGahan says with a laugh of the Irish in Oz. “You can’t miss them and you don’t go too far without running into someone with a link to someone who knows someone.
“The Irish over here are all super keen and we know how much it means to them and how proudly they hold their own country’s representatives into the Lions. They’re really looking forward to getting behind them.
“We certainly got a glimpse of it at the World Cup in New Zealand with the support for Ireland in the Australia game and it’ll be similar here.
“The demand for tickets has been immense and even though everyone won’t get into the ground the hotels and the streets and the training sessions will be full of Lions fans.
“It will be fantastic. Everyone’s looking forward to it.”
McGahan is predicting a tough and exciting series, hiding his bias to suggest it will be a close-run thing.
“We think if everyone’s fit and on the field then we’ve got a very good chance to do well.
“The Lions went pretty close the last time in South Africa, played some tremendous rugby, but South Africa got off to a real belter in Test one and held on.
“The Lions down here in 2001, were up 22-3 in the first Test and lost the series, so this time you’ve got two exceptionally good sides going at it over three legs and a lot can happen over six halves of rugby.”
Hitting the ground running: The Lions’ most recent tour openers
South Africa 2009: Rustenberg, May 30
Royal XV 25 Lions 37
Ian McGeechan’s tourists rally from 18-3 down thanks to tries from Tommy Bowe, Lee Byrne, Alun-Wyn Jones and Ronan O’Gara, who also kicked 17 points to get Paul O’Connell’s captaincy off to a hard-fought but winning start.
Test Series: South Africa 2 Lions 1
New Zealand 2005: Rotorua, June 4
Bay of Plenty 20 Lions 34
Despite Brian O’Driscoll’s squad jumping into a 17-0 lead, this was a tough opener in the New Zealand backwaters, not helped by a tour-ending ankle injury to Test No.8 certainty Lawrence Dallaglio helping to further sober the mood.
Test Series: New Zealand 3 Lions 0
Australia 2001: Perth, June 8
Western Australia 10 Lions 116
An 18-try romp at the WACA, with hat-tricks from Dan Luger and Scott Quinnell and 13 conversions from Ronan O’Gara in a game featuring debutant Brian O’Driscoll at full-back for a Lions team captained by Keith Wood.
Test Series: Australia 2 Lions 1
South Africa 1997: Port Elizabeth, May 24
Eastern Province XV 11 Lions 39
Two tries from soon to be Test hero Jeremy Guscott highlighted the opening game of the last series-winning Lions tour, with Martin Johnson’s unfancied squad running away with the match after a cagey opening half.
Test Series: South Africa 1 Lions 2
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