British Rally authorities still hoping to rescue series
BRITISH Rally Championship authorities are still clinging to the hope they can resurrect the series later in the year despite confirmation the Ypres Rally, scheduled for June, has been postponed.
However, unlike the Ulster Rally which was cancelled last week, Belgian officials are adamant their Ypres event will go ahead later in the year.
Only one BRC round has taken place so far, the Cambrian Rally in Wales back in February, but if the Ypres Rally can go ahead, BRC officials are planning a five-round championship which would include the Galloway Hills Rally in Scotland in September plus Britain’s round of the World Championship, Wales Rally GB at the end of October, which would be split into two rounds.
There is no certainty any of these events will be allowed to take place while social distancing remains, but in contrast to the organisers of the Irish Tarmac Championship who have shelved the series until next year, Motorsport UK continues to put off a decision.
“Potentially we still have five scoring rounds for 2020 so we very much have a championship at this point,” insisted BRC manager Ian Campbell.
And while drivers like reigning Tarmac champion Craig Breen and the man who was leading this year’s aborted series, Alastair Fisher (above), fully support the Irish decision, British champion Matt Edwards is urging the BRC officials to pursue every avenue to get rallies up and running again.
Edwards, who won the Ulster Rally in 2018, says: “There’s a whole industry that needs people out rallying. It is not just the competitors, there are thousands of people that depend on it in some shape or form for a living.”
But fellow Welshman and title rival Tom Cave feels the championship, should it go ahead, would be devalued.
“Speaking from a hypothetical sense, if we went on to win the championship I don’t think you’d get the credit you’d fully deserve if it was a full six round series,” said Cave. “I think it should be knocked on the head.”
But Fisher, who won in Galway, the only Irish round to take place, fully supports the Tarmac committee’s decision.
“The priority right now is protecting our families and the wider public from this virus. We also have to look at the safety of officials, mechanics, fans, drivers and co-drivers. As a sport we have a responsibility,” he said.
SO, where best to start for John Andress when sifting through this Ulsterman’s lengthy and pretty decent playing career? It’s a tricky one as the former prop’s journey reads more like a route map as, over the course of more than a decade, he was at three Irish provinces, the same number of Premiership clubs in England and even had a bit of Scotland, thanks to some time at Edinburgh, thrown in as well.
Could he be Ulster’s most travelled player in the pro era? Not many spring to mind who can challenge his journeying nor indeed the demand that was shown for the tight-head prop’s services which saw him play over 200 times in the professional game.
And in that time he has played with and against some of rugby’s leading lights, not been far off becoming a full international, and rubbed shoulders with an eye-catching who’s who of the game’s coaches.
Not bad for a largely forgotten player in his home province who left here with his career stalled and an off-field reputation for not exactly model behaviour.
Though by no means a highlight, his encounter with then Munster coach Rassie Erasmus — just over three years prior to the South African going on to mastermind his home nation’s recent World Cup victory — seems to jump out.
❝ If I could go back then with the mindset I have now it would be different but I was always dedicated
As such, we begin virtually at the end of Andress’ career.
He had been signed from Edinburgh by then head coach Anthony Foley and joined the squad in the summer of 2016 as a 32-year-old dodgy-kneed prop, though with knowledge aplenty about getting the job done.
Foley reckoned that Andress could add value. Erasmus, who came in as director of rugby for the start of the new season, thought otherwise.
They sat down that pre-season and the South African told Andress straight out.
“You know, I’d thought I’d give it one last go,” Andress recalls of agreeing to join Munster.
“But Rassie was very honest with me and told me I wasn’t going to be in his plans and that my knee just wasn’t up to it.
“He was going to play younger guys and that was that. It was gutting but you just had to live with the reality of it and, you know, that’s the nature of professional sport.”
There was no sense of bitterness, no explosion of anger, just respect that his coach had been straight and told him what he probably already knew anyway.
“Rassie was sound and thoughtful too and he’d ask you if you needed help with this and that. I respect him for what he did as he could have just lied as many coaches I’d known before had done,” he says. He saw out his time with Shannon in the AIL and was gone before Christmas from a Munster squad still rocked by Foley’s sudden death.
Though that wasn’t quite the end of it as Pat Lam and Connacht came calling just as Andress was laying the groundwork to bring wife Ruth and his young family back home to Belfast.
“They’d had a few injuries and said I’d be looked after and I thought, ‘Well, yeah’,” he says.
“Actually, Connacht also wanted me when I signed for Munster and, looking back, I should have gone to them I suppose.
“But, look, it’s like placing a bet,” he says of mulling over moving clubs and, really, he should know.
He played five games for the westerners which was five more than he got at Munster — he also never turned out for Ulster’s senior side at the start of his journey
— and also had the personal satisfaction of playing against Erasmus’ side on New
Year’s Eve when he emerged from the bench.
“I won a few scrum penalties and that was like nearly proving a point to myself,” he adds of what was a narrow defeat for Connacht.
He finished up in late January 2017, coming off the bench for a six-minute cameo at Toulouse in the final round of Champions Cup pool matches.
“It was a nice way to end it all,” the now 36-year-old (left, playing for Worcester) states of bringing the curtain down on his well-travelled playing career which, naturally, had its fair share of injury issues.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Andress has found himself drawn towards coaching.
Though a late convert, he reckoned he could give something back from all the differing nuances and techniques which he had absorbed with most, though by no means all, of it being positive.
After two years at junior side Instonians he has now taken up a role at AIL club Belfast Harlequins, where his adult career pretty much started, as assistant to Neil Doak while he has also been running player agency Edge Rugby Management along with cousin and former Ulster player Roger Wilson, who now lives in Texas.
Andress’ journey to this point is quite the story, how he transformed himself from supposed ‘wild child’ with an off-field reputation into a quality professional who was in demand for his strength and durability.
Along the way he also became an avid student of scrummaging, majoring on the subject in the brutally harsh and unforgiving world of the English Premiership.
He was a player many clubs sought to employ and wherever he went, Andress, mostly, added value.
The former Campbell College pupil also notched up a few notable personal achievements too having played for Ireland ‘A’ — injury, however, forced him out