Ronan O'Gara: Here I am on matchday. In this life path, Munster are in town as my opponents
A LA ROCHELLE WELCOME: Ronan O'Gara looks on ahead of the Champions Cup clash with Leinster at the Marcel Deflandre Stadium in January. Pic: ROMAIN PERROCHEAU / AFP
Manic week, but in the quieter moments the mind occasionally drifts to life and its paths.
I remember well all I ever wanted to do when I finished in a Munster dressing room in 2013 was coach Munster. All I wanted. The only thing in my head for two years. Then you get out and see things a bit differently. Your objectives change. Opportunities come, you don’t know where this is going.
The Munster connection is always there, but it’s 12 years gone now, for me. Out of the country 12 years, though of course I get back a lot.
Back then I was thinking, go to Racing for a year, come back into the Munster setup. But you do a second season, 'this is ok'. Zebo, fair play to him, had hooked me up with the TV. You’re still sitting at home every night watching RTÉ, TV3, TG4, but you’re living in France. You could be anywhere.
After a few years, that drive, that competitiveness inside you takes over. I knew it was a good kickstart in Racing. Coaching the pros straight away, didn’t have to go into the academy, though that can be a good start too, to see things differently.
As a player you’ve an idea in your head what coaching is about but when you get into it it’s very different. You go to New Zealand. Whoa! Never seen anything like this. You get turned inside out and upside out. You are transformed into a coach because you get critiqued. You have to teach. And you are critiqued by people who know how to teach.
That’s where the ex-player doesn’t stand up. You have to be able to coax people, to get them to see your point. People learn differently, you become aware of all that. You’re aware of personality profiling.
It becomes more interesting the more you get into it. You're torn, am I going to go hard on the playing side, the detail? Is that the kind of coach I’ll be? But you keep coming back to people. It’s about people. How do you make people happy, feel good?
And here I am on matchday. In this life path, Munster are in town as my opponents. Was this week about detail or about people? Because it’s Munster and because, no matter what you say, there’s a good bond between me and the players, they will, I’m sure, want to put in a big performance for me this afternoon.
But we need to get our detail right. We need to put phases together. We haven’t been able to do that. Basic errors, discipline errors are killing us. Five or six guys might do something right and the other two are just off. For whatever reason, when your luck is down, the opponent attacks just where those two are not on it. And get a result out of it. When it rains it pours, that’s how it feels.
This column drops Saturday, not Friday for once. Everything has felt slightly out of whack this week. Like my clock jumped back, or forward, one or the other. Seven-hour bus journey back from Clermont last Saturday, so you’re coming in at 4am. Like a zombie Sunday. It’s a writeoff really. Monday for the players is a day off. But the staff are back in. Bollocksed. Training Tuesday, Wednesday. Media Wednesday. The local French lads asking sticky questions. Thursday is the down day, for the players anyway, but a work day for me. You’re a bit all over the place. Still feels like Wednesday.
You need to be an unbelievably good coach to maintain positivity and top form in a period when you’re in a bad rut. And I haven’t passed that test yet. If the timing was different, maybe this would be a different game, maybe this week would feel different. The result always matters, but we need this result. Obviously Munster need it too, so one team goes away devastated.
We can’t say we’re not feeling the pinch of pressure. We understand that. Munster are coming with confidence, but no matter how bad a period we’re in, you can’t tell me we don’t have quality. If the week was about detail, today I may have to remind them of that. To make them feel good.
In a way, detail is more important because it’s Munster. Some weeks, when you’re playing Brive, Castres, Clermont maybe, you know it’s kickshit. It’s not going to come down to good running lines. But playing Munster, you need to have an attack and defence.
Emotion is less of a factor these days anyway. I wouldn’t say it has gone out of the game, but it’s fading. You can’t go on emotion 30 weekends of the year. War mode lasts for two or three minutes then fellas are fucked. What do you do then? Some people struggle with that idea.
Because when you get emotion right it’s so powerful, when there’s an edge it’s so powerful. But you can’t be all the time going, ‘another big game’, people barking and shouting, that’s just not how it works.
If you want to go deep in a competition you have to have detail in your game. You can’t make it up on the day. That doesn’t work. There isn’t so much a tradeoff between emotion and detail, but maybe between detail and aggression.
Mike Prendergast is organising their attack. I’ve a fair idea where he’s going to attack us. You can’t hide much now. A lot today will depend on what happens on the first phase and second phase. If they get those two phases right, we can be in trouble.
At the same time, I can see chinks where we can get at Munster and make inroads. But to do that you need the players to understand what you want from them in the first phase, what you want in second phase, what you want in third. And that’s just one play. That’s one minute, maybe. How many plays can you give without their minds becoming frozen, that they become consumed by detail? Some days you could have a lineout menu of 12 or even 15 plays. If you have too much detail you can’t have enough aggression.
If you’ve too much aggression they venture into yellow and red cards. That’s the challenge every week.
I know Mike well, the person and the attack coach. He’ll be looking at our footage going, if we do this, we’ll get that. Yes it’s a help to know him but the difference between paper and the grass is how hard you hit in the collision and how hard they carry the ball. They're the two things that will decide who wins the gainline. And if you win the gainline you win the game. It is that simple really.
Maybe it’s the timing, the rut we’re in, but I’m completely underappreciating the buildup, the occasion. I know that. I think it’ll kick in once I get to the ground. In that 20 seconds before kickoff I’ll be going, this is so cool.
But I’ll have to snap out of that fast. I’m not a supporter. I’ve got a plan and I've got to watch live well. There is a skill in watching live, to make changes or tweaks, to concentrate, to see if this is panning out how you thought. Is your plan confirmed or is it ‘oh fuck we’re in trouble here’. Within five or 10 minutes of most games you can tell.
The massive dilemma in French rugby is where you go. The French managers are always on the side of the pitch, like a soccer or GAA coach. Some go upstairs to the coaching box, but if you’re not on the side of the pitch the French think you’re not connected to the team. Then if you’re on the side you can see nothing. Upstairs, you’re able to see where space is or what’s going on. And your half-time teamtalk can be a lot more accurate. I went down to the touchline for the full game against Clermont. First time I’d done it. But I’m going back up high this week. When I was a player, I appreciated one or two good nuggets from the coach at the break.
You have to rein it in upstairs too. If you’re talking on the mic every single play you’ll melt everyone’s head. Scott Robertson was brilliant at that, ‘no commentary allowed in the box’. A lot of people watch sport and comment away to themselves with every action. That’s not providing solutions, just annoying people.
It’s not like soccer too, or GAA. You’ve a scrum coach, lineout coach, contact skills coach, attack coach, defence coach. They all probably want to put an oar in on every play. Which would be chaos. If there’s too much chat on the mics this afternoon, that means our plan beforehand wasn’t very good. All you need is key messages, confirming what we planned is working, or no no, they’re having a go off us where we didn’t expect.
Unfortunately, Munster are going straight back afterwards. So I was due to meet a few of them last night. It’s Mossy Lawler’s birthday so I’ll have had to buy him a cognac.
What’ll the kids wear this morning? The older ones know Dad needs a win, better to keep him in good form. But two of them were humming and hawing all week, went to rugby training in Munster jerseys. Over the years, If I saw a Toulouse jersey in the underage section at La Rochelle I’d be going ‘how dare you’ in my head. And then Jess was saying, that’s exactly what French people will be thinking this week if they see our kids in Munster jerseys. It has to be the yellow and black.
We’re playing a game today, there will be a winner and loser, and hopefully everyone in the ground will go for a pint after. I don’t think we can get a minute’s applause beforehand, but I hope everyone takes 30 seconds out of their day to remember the good people who can’t be there, those no longer with us who gave their soul to Munster.
And sometime afterwards, when it’s less manic, I’ve no doubt I’ll appreciate this occasion a little bit more.
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