Keith Earls: Moyross, Munster, and finding an inner peace with yourself

‘In the past I held on to a lot of stuff. The difference in my thinking is now night and day’

Keith Earls: ‘In the past I held on to a lot of stuff. The difference in my thinking is now night and day’. Picture: INPHO/Bryan Keane

He's in a different place now, though it’s still the same dressing room.

Five years ago this month Ireland were playing an autumn international in the Aviva. The opposition was Canada, hardly the kind that would have you quaking in your boots, but that evening Keith Earls was. A few minutes before the team headed out, Earls broke from a team huddle and furtively headed to a toilet cubicle to try and avert the kind of panic attack he’d had in his hotel room a couple of days earlier. Then, after fighting off the tears, he’d go out onto a field he didn’t want to be on. Standing for the national anthem, he could only think: Jesus, if only people knew.