An evening with Rhys: Proud days in Limerick, Ireland ambitions and settling in back home
ENJOYING LIFE: Rhys Marshall during the Guinness PRO14 match between Munster and Zebre at Thomond Park. Photo: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
It has been one of those days for Rhys Marshall.
The clutch on his father’s tractor on the family’s sheep and beef farm north of New Plymouth on New Zealand’s west coast has given up the ghost and the former Munster hooker has one of those Bronco fitness tests looming as he switches gears for pre-season training with Waikato.
Yet on this late Monday afternoon in Hamilton, a 90-minute drive south of Auckland and a three-hour trek north from the farm, Marshall has agreed to meet with the Irish Examiner and talk about old times in red, the international career with Ireland that never materialised and why that no longer matters for a player on the cusp of his 30th birthday who knows his ceiling but is optimistic enough to keep pushing against it.
He is still very much a professional plying his trade for eight months of the year in Super Rugby with the Highlanders in Dunedin, where Ireland were this morning facing the All Blacks in a pivotal second Test, and for the second campaign of the year with Waikato as the Mooloos bid to retain the National Provincial Championship he helped them win last year after a trying Covid-hit campaign.
“I’m not going to be up tonight, planning my week and what it looks like minute by minute, hour by hour,” Marshall said. “That’s an experience thing. I’ve been at this 10 years and I’m probably not going to set the world alight as a number two but I’ll give it a crack.”
Marshall has always been willing to give it a crack. Whether it was for Inglewood Rugby Club in his native Taranaki province, or as a young professional with the Hamilton-based Chiefs or as a Munster player with ambitions to make it as a Test player with Ireland.
Now he has come full circle, back home in Taranaki, dividing his time between the farm, Hamilton and his South Island base with the Highlanders.
“It’s been good to be home, in and around family is pretty cool. I’ve been on the farm in the last three weeks and tried to go back to my home union but they had a few young guys coming through.
“Waikato helped me out last year when I came home. I’d signed with another union but they were one of three teams in and around Auckland to pull out of the competition due to Covid. So I went home to the farm for five or six weeks, no rugby to be played, and then Waikato gave me a call and said they were a little bit short at hooker, so happy days. Threw the boots on for four weeks and we won a title. How bad!
“I love that I’ve got another season now for four months where I can really climb into my work. Then I get another break, probably three or four weeks and then I go into another Super Rugby season with the Highlanders.
“What excites me is that it’s almost like a restart whereas the competitions Munster are in are like 48 weeks.
“I’ve played club rugby the last few weeks for Inglewood and it was refreshing to go back and see guys still going through club rugby because here and in Ireland it’s almost the little brother to schools rugby and also guys from Super Rugby are still going back, like how cool is that, like Peter O’Mahony playing for Con. It’s refreshing to see that still happening in rugby.” The exit from Munster came mid-pandemic and with he and partner Steph, a vet, adding baby Freya to the equation, the separation from their roots back in New Zealand eventually became the deciding factor.
“Part of the reason was family. We had a little girl, she’s 16 months now. We called her Freya Aine, so an Irish middle name. Aine was the queen of the Munster fairies so that was a little nod to our Irish times and she was born in Ireland.
“We’d been away for almost five years. The first two and a half years were unreal, just brilliant. The next 18 months were a bit of a struggle through injury, Covid and all of that stuff and when Freya came along you sit down and sort out your values.
“I did want to play for Ireland. I went over with the idea and unfortunately with injury and selection I just fell off the radar. I understood that, it’s how it goes. We got a couple of offers elsewhere but the Highlanders reached out with a two-year contract for me.
“And it’s funny, once one lot start talking to you, everyone wants to talk to you but when no-one’s talking to you, no-one’s going to talk to you. So once the Highlanders reached out about coming home, lots of other teams in New Zealand did as well, but I was like, I’d like two years down there.
“At the same time Munster were umming and aaahing and they probably weren’t in the position in terms of money outlay for players. I understood that but the best part about that was Johann (van Graan)’s honesty in and around that, and Graham Rowntree. They were pretty upfront about it, told me they had an offer for me but that I probably won’t like it.
“I was pretty upset leaving but it was only because I didn’t really know what I was coming home to. But you do come home and you’re in and around family and you don’t realise you miss it until you get it back.
“Mum and Dad came down a few times to Dunedin, Steph’s family came down and it was just awesome and now we’re back on the North Island and even closer to home. I’ve been on the farm every day, which I love.
“We came up for the Maori All Blacks game and I met Jeremy Loughman’s dad for the first time, this big American guy, and Ryan Baird’s dad and had a few beers. That was pretty cool, meeting people, it’s what rugby’s about. For me it’s about the connections you make.” Marshall feels he made deep connections in Munster.
“I loved it,” he said. “We went halfway around the world to find a place that was like New Zealand and Limerick was just like New Zealand. That doesn’t happen a lot. As we went through the UK you see how rugby is a second-class citizen over there whereas here in New Zealand it’s the common man’s game and it’s the same in Limerick. That was pretty cool.
“For me and Steph, we loved the fact we were in one spot for 12 months. We made some great friends on and off the pitch. Steph is a vet and she worked out of Limerick and the people she worked with and dealt with, people like (John) ‘Bull’ Hayes, just a normal man on the farm, we think the world of everyone there. It’s just like over here, country people trying to make a dollar. I miss that, the earthiness.” Marshall has returned to New Zealand with a greater appreciation of what it takes to be professional player, yet while the differences in approach between Ireland and here are stark, he feels better equipped for the rugby of his homeland after 81 appearances and 15 tries for Munster under Rassie Erasmus and then Johann van Graan.
“Oh yeah, in and around things that I was never good at, in around set-piece and in the ruck,” he admitted about the areas in which he has improved.
“As a Kiwi, they do spend time on them but they’re not really things they thrive on. They’re not a Peter O’Mahony flying into a ruck off a box kick and absolutely lighting it up, or even a Jean Kleyn or any of those boys, they live, breathe and eat contact whereas the Kiwis, we grow up playing around contact.
“For me that’s probably the biggest change in my game outside of set-piece, rolling my sleeves up and hitting a few rucks. And also the detail, trying to introduce that to guys so that we actually know what’s going on. A lot of guys here just sit and kind of nod and have no idea what’s going on. Yes, they’re brilliant, talented players but if they don’t know where to be in a lineout or a kick-off… we had a guy kicked (by the ball) in the back of the head twice at training on a clearance kick and sure enough it happened again in a game. I was just like, ‘we’ve trained this’ but he had obviously just switched off about being in the right place at the right time.
“I definitely feel my set-piece has grown a lot. But I’m probably heavier and uglier and with a little less sense. I always thought I had a pretty good grasp on the rules and the ability to twist them, probably not at scrum-time quite as much but after being with Rowntree you learn a lot, not manipulation but bettering your odds, no different to Steve Larkham, just give yourself the best odds going into a contest.
“I think the biggest thing for me going away, I’ve come back and I’m a little bit less stressed. Not different to Ireland, you grow up in New Zealand to be an All Black and when you go away chasing to be an international player you change your goal.
“International rugby was my goal and I’ve almost come back here and I’m like I’ve missed everything under being an international or being an All Black, I’ve missed the rest of the journey. You miss the club rugby, you miss your NPC, you miss your Super Rugby. You didn’t actually enjoy those elements because right through school you’re taught that they are stepping stones to those greater goals.
“But I’ve come back and I actually realise this isn’t so bad. I’ve played a couple of club rugby games the last couple of weeks and I’ve loved every minute. I worked out it was the first time I’d played 80 minutes in about four years the other day. It absolutely took the wind out of my sails but I loved every moment.
“We’ve got a Bronco fitness test tonight and those things used to scare me. Now I’m going into it thinking it’s just another thing.” That Marshall said this while nursing a pre-training pint in the micro-brewery pub on the outskirts of Hamilton underlines his new mindset.
“Well it’s a pint kind of day. I’ve had a terrible day, but it’s all right. I would never have done this back in the day. I would have never had a dessert midweek, never had a pint midweek because it was all about, first of all, being an All Black and second of all… I was stressed and anxious and you get to the end of the week and you ask yourself, did you do everything you said you’d do and ‘oh no, I missed those, I didn’t do extra tackles after training’ or something and all of a sudden that’s your priority on gameday, it’s all you can think about, missing that thing. Fuck that.
“If you’re doing everything you can at every opportunity like we all are, if you’re the one that’s stressing about that on a Saturday then you’re probably going to play five per cent less that you could.
“But hey, who knows, we’ll find out when I actually get some game time under my belt with Waikato.”
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