Jamison Gibson-Park: 'I couldn’t kick snow off a rope when I arrived in Ireland'

KICKING PROGRESS: Jamison Gibson-Park box kicking has improved since his arrival to Ireland. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady

If it’s been said once then it’s been said a thousand times. What would Jamison Gibson-Park, James Lowe and Bundee Aki have achieved in, and with, their native countries had they never made the move to the other side of the world?

It’s a wistful thought from a Kiwi perspective but then there was more than enough time and opportunity for New Zealand rugby to mould that trio into players that could have shone at Super Rugby and at Test levels.

And it overlooks another side to their stories in the role that Irish rugby has played in extracting the very best - and improving again - players who all dreamed of wearing the famous black jersey before finding their feet in the green of Ireland.

They have all benefited from the system and the people that have made Irish rugby what it is on the professional stage. Gibson-Park admits that he is a very different player to the one that shipped up on these shores back in 2016.

"Yeah, the answer is certainly yes, but in what ways... Overall, my level of preparation has got a lot better and my understanding of the game, which has come over a good number of years and working with some good coaches and some really good players as well.” 

Press him further and he thinks that maybe he just committed a bit harder, that there was a time when he took stock of where he was at and decided he needed to do more, prepare that bit better. And from there the opportunities started to present themselves.

It was Andy Farrell who really accelerated his career by promoting him to the Irish No.9 shirt at a time when he was still a little bit behind Luke McGrath for the Leinster equivalent. His importance to club and country has sky-rocketed since.

His passing and ability to orchestrate the Ireland attack has been praised from the rooftops, but Gibson-Park has developed an all-court game and his game intelligence and work rate were never more apparent than in Murrayfield two weeks ago when Scotland threatened.

The hosts had already reduced a 17-0 deficit to eight points by the time Huw Jones cut through the visiting defence and Blair Kinghorn burst free, miles upfield and into Irish territory with the try line racing into view.

That they eventually settled for just three points was down squarely to Gibson-Park who can be seen in the footage racing three-quarters of the length of the pitch, like an Olympic runner leaning into the last turn before home, and making the crucial tackle on the Scottish full-back.

This, he admitted, is not an intervention he would have made a decade ago.

"Yeah, probably not,” he laughed ahead of Saturday’s Six Nations tie against Wales in Cardiff. “I probably could have been glued to the scrum, or something! It's just doing my role in this team and sometimes these things happen against good teams.

“You get cut and they're going to make breaks against you but I think, certainly in this team, the understanding is there that we can still cover it. It's just being part of this squad, you scramble to even lost causes.” 

It’s fair to say that the rugby played in New Zealand is very different to what we digest in Europe. One morning spent watching Super Rugby makes that very clear. So adapting to the Irish way of doing things wasn’t straightforward.

Lowe found himself dropped by Ireland very early on in his international career after struggling to get to grips with defensive duties and an ethos that was markedly different to what he had been accustomed to back home.

Kicking was Gibson-Park’s big work-on. Box kicks weren’t exactly a staple of the club game when he was togging out for Taranaki, the Blues, the Hurricanes or the New Zealand Maori back in the day. Now? Well, he’s nailed that side of the game, too.

“It definitely has improved," he says of his all-round kicking game. "I’ve a few people to thank for that. I couldn’t kick snow off a rope when I arrived. It’s been a slow kind of progression. I kick pretty much every day off in Leinster with our kicking coach Emmet Farrell and the other nines and tens as well.

“So it’s been a gradual progression and, as you say, a growth in my game. It certainly has become more of a thing now but not really when I was coming through.” 

He turns 33 on Sunday and, while his form wasn’t at its very best in November, he was far from alone in that and Gibson-Park has been sublime in the opening Championship defeats of England and Scotland earlier this month.

Think, too, that so much of his rugby was played off the bench up to the age of maybe 28 and there is no reason to fear that Leinster and Ireland won’t be drawing on his word-class skills through to the next World Cup in Australia in 2027.