Anxiety? You have to stay on top of it every day
HEAD IN THE GAME: High-Performance coach Gary Keegan. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan
With the high-performance expertise that has helped deliver Olympic boxing medals, All-Irelands, a Champions Cup and a Six Nations Grand Slam, Gary Keegan is in a strong position to pinpoint the traits that make individual athletes and teams succeed at the highest level.
And in this Ireland team at France 2023 Keegan sees the qualities that he believes can make Andy Farrell’s men world champions.
Ireland’s Performance Coach met with media Tuesday at their Stade de la Chambrerie training base in Tours and the man who built Irish amateur boxing’s gold medal-generating high performance programme, and also contributed to Dublin football’s five-in-a-row, Leinster’s 2018 Champions Cup/Pro 14 double and Tipperary’s 2019 All-Ireland SHC title outlined what he sees in this squad that makes him visualise an Irish World Cup success.
“I think apart from how we play the game, apart from the skill set that this group have from one to 15, it’s potentially our ability to adapt, to not expect things to go smoothly, to have the resolve,” Keegan said.
“The road can be rocky at times but there’s no need to panic, just get on with it, things happen, just get on with it. I think they’ve built that mentality over the last three and a half years and hopefully it continues to serve us well in this tournament.”
Keegan had picked up the baton from Farrell in 2020, a year into the new head coach’s tenure as Ireland boss. Farrell had been defence coach under his predecessor Joe Schmidt and the review in the 2019 World Cup exit highlighted “performance anxiety” within the squad as a contributing factor.
Keegan credits his boss with removing that particular spectre ahead of his arrival on the scene.
"I didn't feel a lot of that in the environment,” Keegan said of his early days in the role three years ago. “He'd done a lot of that work himself with the group and he was getting them to a tipping point where they were ready to tip over the line.
"Andy and his coaching team had them in a very good position. There's always a danger that we'll carry the memory, the trauma of a previous experience into a similar experience in four years' time.
"This group has gone beyond that and due credit to the players, they've opened themselves up. They've had an opportunity to access new tools, new thinking, new strategies and they've gone about implementing that into their practice on a more daily and weekly basis.
"It's a different group because it's a different environment under a different leader."
That is not to say performance anxiety has been totally banished, as Keegan explained.
"You have to stay on top of it every day. I don't like the term because you can have a little bit of negative thinking that comes into a little bit of worry about something small, it gets bigger and then all of a sudden it looks like anxiety.
"You have to wash it out every day. Every player does, every coach does because we're stepping out of our comfort zone. That's where we want to be, that's where our potential is.
"There's going to be a bit of discomfort out of that, so we try to normalise that and not hide in its shadow, we try not have a meeting in secret.
"It's very open, the environment is very open and we're open to discussing these things.
"It's not bad news to have a bit of performance anxiety, it's part of the process.
"It's how you manage yourself, you reach out and are proactive about it that makes the difference. And I think that normalisation has really helped people.
"But we'll have things to prepare for this week and the following week, it never really goes away."
Farrell’s “embrace the chaos” also helps that daily cleanse but it is more than just manufactured stresses to test his players’ mettle, Keegan suggested.
“Well, the competition manufactures situations for you because it’s pitching against some of the best teams and best players in the world who are trying to find a way to beat you. You’re trying to find a way to beat them.
“That creates adversity in itself. The way we train, the way we push ourselves, the way we’re going out of our own comfort zone all the time is creating adversity because we can’t grow in the sunshine. We have to grow under difficult conditions.
“Those difficult conditions are structured and organised but they’re set to harden what we have as a team, not only physically but mentally.”
Keegan’s relationship with Farrell is linked to both mens’ success in their respective roles with the performance coach clearly an admirer of the head coach’s ability to lift confidence and levels of self-belief.
“A lot of it is led by Andy's leadership. I think the person at the forefront of the group, it's important that he has a very clear sense of what he's trying to achieve and he's a very clear sense of where he wants to take the team.
“And it doesn't happen overnight. It's taken three-plus years to build the environment and build the belief in the group in terms of what we're collectively trying to achieve and he's been consistent and constant in his approach to that and I think we all take our lead off how he's leading and managing the environment.”
Keegan believes it is that belief from the top that has banished the baggage of past World Cup failures from the squad, 15 of whom have experienced at least one quarter-final defeat at the tournament.
“It takes a leader who wants to do that. It takes a leader who has the confidence in himself to want to break the mould and to want to reach for the stars. Because if he's not convinced that it can be achieved, it's very hard to convince everybody else that it can be achieved.
“He's 100 per cent convinced. That doesn't mean there's any guarantees in terms of where you end up. It's about how and it's about what we do, and it's about how we respond to difficulties as we face them.
“We're not expecting the paths to be clear or easy. It's not meant to be because it wouldn't be worthwhile if it was. My career has been involved in breaking moulds, that's an exciting thing to be part of and I think we have that within this group, for sure.”
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