Elite sport is a family affair for Jamison Gibson-Park

Leinster's Jamison Gibson-Park. Pic: Nick Elliott/Inpho

There can’t be any shortage of people who have watched with eyes half-closed as their life partner crashes into a ruck or takes a crunching tackle. 

Jamison Gibson-Park, whose wife was a top-class judoka, has been on the other side of that coin.

“I've been to watch, obviously, a good few times,” he said, “and I was like, 'ohh...'. I don't know how they do it.” 

Patti Grogan had already won an Oceania title in the 52kg class by the time she earned her place on the New Zealand team that was named to travel to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

She made it as far as the Netherlands.

Illness struck while based there and the decision was taken after two weeks without being able to train that the Games would have to go on without her. Fourteen years, a move across the globe and three kids later and she is looking at giving the judo another crack.

“The kids are kind of at the age where she feels like she's got a bit of time back. They're over the baby age and they're all into school and creche and so she has a bit of time to get after something herself.

"There's a ten-year period of pretty much being a full-time mum so she's looking to get into something herself. She's a little bit older, on the older side compared to the opposition, but she's going to give it a crack over the next couple of years and see how she gets on.” 

Rugby league teams have been known to lean into judo in training as a means of gaining the edge in the contact stakes. 

Eddie Jones used it with England and the sport is huge in Georgia where the national rugby union tends to pride itself on its physical gifts.

Gibson-Park hasn’t yet looked to import any of his wife’s martial arts ‘IP’ but there are other obvious advantages to having a partner who understands what it takes to play elite sport, not just physically but in terms of the sacrifices involved with that.

“She obviously understands what it's like to be in the mix, she's been in the trenches before. So it's a little bit different, she knows. Overall, it's probably better because she knows what I'm going through and can pick up on the cues pretty well, so it's been great.” 

Gibson-Park was one of those Leinster players who, having been given time off to digest and recover from Ireland’s Six Nations campaign, will return to duty this weekend as they face Harlequins in a Champions Cup round of 16 tie in Croke Park.

The time off allowed players to reintegrate with family life – Gibson-Park and Patti have two daughters, Isabella and Irish, and a son Jai – while the rest of the squad decamped for a two-game URC tour to South Africa.

This is the kind of week where the air gets thinner and the heart starts to beat that bit faster and an inexperienced Leinster team’s 10-7 defeat of the Sharks in Durban last Saturday made for the perfect runway come the Monday.

“It was class, wasn’t it? It was wicked for us to see. We know how hard it is to go down there and win. Obviously came very close against the Bulls as well so it was a pretty successful trip with a lot of those lads getting some awesome experience and a lot of them stood up.” 

Their first day back with Leinster was a retreat in Wicklow with former Cork hurler and performance coach Ronan Conway. 

The squad had worked with Conway before, this one concentrating on goals, both in a rugby sense and in a wider setting.

It’s not hard to discern what the team’s aims are this next few months.

Leinster have made an art of hitting the post in the URC and in the Champions Cup this last three seasons. What’s changed as this time has gone on is the manner in which they are trying to find the net.

Jacques Nienaber approaches rugby very differently to Stuart Lancaster so that change in personnel in the coaches box has had massive consequences for a Leinster side that now places much more emphasis on a defence that is so much more aggressive.

“When you look at Leinster, I suppose the identity has changed a bit under Jacques so we would like to think that we can put teams under pressure on both sides of the ball. We’ll be looking to do that on the weekend. We’ll see how we go.” 

Nienaber has been in situ almost 18 months now. RG Snyman, Jordie Barrett and Rabah Slimani have been at the club since the summer. 

Sam Prendergast has been anointed as the man at No.10. And Antoine Dupont is out for the season.

It feels like now or never for Leinster.