McGahan’s eye on the Millennium Stadium

Tony McGahan says Paul O’Connell is always striving to improve his own game and his team-mates.

Tony McGahan has enough on his plate this weekend as he continues his rebuilding project on Super Rugby underachievers, the Melbourne Rebels, but he will allow himself a quiet moment of satisfaction when Ireland take the field in Cardiff on Saturday.

Munster’s former director of rugby is busy preparing his young Rebels for their match in Perth tomorrow morning when they face fellow Australians Western Force looking for a second victory of the season in their fourth game of the campaign. Once that is out of the way, McGahan’s thoughts will turn to the Millennium Stadium when a successful Ireland team will renew its bid for a Grand Slam against Wales with three players whose professional careers started under the Aussie coach’s watch at Munster.

Simon Zebo, Conor Murray and Peter O’Mahony all got their starts from McGahan before he returned home to become the Australian Rugby Union’s coaching coordinator and a member of Robbie Deans’ Wallabies’ backroom staff in 2012. All three were blooded young and Ireland are now reaping the benefits with McGahan admitting he had to throw them in at the deep end to see if they could swim.

“Peter, Conor, Simon, Dave Kilcoyne, and a few of them, we took them out of the academy and put them in the senior programme because we just knew that when they did come into the senior side, they’d have to hit the ground running. You couldn’t give them another two years to find their feet,” McGahan said.

“And they’re the club now, there’s no doubt about that. And now they’re performing on the world stage. Conor and Simon were on the Lions and Peter was unlucky not to be on that tour. That’s three blokes there coming out of Munster in a small period of time and Tommy O’Donnell’s doing great now and Mike Sherry could be a serious player pushing for international honours too but for injuries.”

McGahan is knee deep into his second season with the previously dysfunctional Melbourne franchise, having been given a remit to build a new culture at the club following its less than successful entry into Super Rugby in 2011.

McGahan started afresh with a new staff, including former Munster head of strength and conditioning Bryce Kavanagh, and a revamped squad, with only one staff member and two players from the original set-up four years ago.

“We’ve got some good kids down here as well, guys like (fly-half) Jack Debreczeni, Sean McMahon, who’s just played for the Wallabies virtually straight from an academy contract. There’s about a dozen young guys here who we’ve put a lot of work into over the last 12 months — Tom English, Luke Jones, McMahon were all picked on the Wallabies tour last year.

“We’re going well. We’ve got a big job down here. People had been under pressure to deliver success from year to year, and I’ve been lucky just to come in and knock it all down and start again.”

McGahan is relishing the opportunity to build a club from the roots up and believes his former captain at Munster, Paul O’Connell, is being invigorated in a similar fashion by new blood coming into the Ireland team as he approaches his 100th cap this weekend.

“The Irish side’s 10 wins in a row has been absolutely fantastic and I think Paul, in my experience, will really thrive off the younger players coming through.

“A lot of guys can only thrive off guys that are their peers and Paul has that ability also but he will get as lot of satisfaction playing alongside the Henshaws and the Jordi Murphys and all those guys coming through. He will get a huge buzz from their contribution and their enthusiasm and that really gives him what I think is another kick along too.”

O’Connell’s own desire for improvement was clear to McGahan from the moment the Australian joined Declan Kidney’s coaching staff at Munster in 2005.

“When I joined, the remarkable thing about Paul for me was just his incredible appetite to get better. When you looked at him then and again now to what he’s producing in 2015, it’s his insatiable appetite to be competitive that remains constant. All they great players have that and it’s not just one particular aspect, it was every aspect. He wanted to be a better passer, tackler, better over the ball, close contact he wanted to be a better deliverer of the football so he was always watching, learning, interpreting, asking, demanding of everyone around him to get better.”