Blast from the past
A chat with former Wicklow head coach Dan McKellar
IN October of 2018, while spending time shadowing Leo Cullen and Stuart Lancaster at Leinster and Saracens, respectively, Dan McKellar returned to his old stomping ground of Wicklow town for the first time since 2005. 13 years may have passed, but very little had changed in the Aussie’s eyes, as he reunited with old teammates and friends that he had made during his two stints with the county town’s rugby club.
‘It was like nothing had changed, despite the fact that it had been 13 years since I had been there,’ he says. ‘I came over (in 2018) to spend a week with Saracens and then Leinster. I drove down to Wicklow on the Friday and stayed in one of the local B&Bs, went to Phil Healy’s. and met up with some of my old friends and teammates. It was like I had only left a week or two ago.
‘That is the beauty of rugby; it is a global game and you get to go off and have those experiences that pop up and I have been very fortunate to play in Scotland and Ireland, and the memories will live forever.’
McKellar, who has spent the last two years as the head coach of the Brumbies in the Australian Super League, has forged a strong resumé in management since his time with Wicklow in 2002 and then 2005. In 2007, the former loosehead prop was a second-grade assistant coach with the Souths Rugby Club, in Brisbane, before being made head coach from 2008 to 2010.
From there, he went on to be head coach of the Tuggeranong Vikings, which included the winning of back-to-back premierships; forwards coach of the Japanese club, NTT DoCoMo Hurricanes, and head coach of the University of Canberra Vikings, following the launch of the National Rugby Championship in 2013.
In 2014, he signed with the Brumbies as their forwards coach, eventually taking up the mantle of head coach in 2018, as a result of the departure of Stephen Larkham. Such is his burgeoning reputation that, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the 43-year-old is being lined up to be forwards coach for the Australian national team, before eventually taking over Dave Rennie in the Wallabies hotseat.
His already stellar coaching career – which has seen him considered to be one of the top young coaches in Australian rugby, hence the link with the Wallabies – can all be traced back to Wicklow, however, a club that has had an indelible mark on the way he has approached the game in the years that have passed.
His first stint with Wicklow started in 2002, and – much like his second tenure in 2005 – only lasted a single year before he returned to his homeland. It was a successful year for the club, as it gained promotion to Division 1 of the Leinster League for the first time. To hear McKellar discuss his reasons for coming to Ireland, he saw it as a chance for him to re-conjure the motivation that he had partly lost.
‘I sort of lost the motivation; I wasn’t getting an opportunity at a professional level in Australia, so myself and Carla thought that it was a great opportunity to do some travel, meet some people, and play rugby along the way. I got to dip my toe into coaching and we had a great time.
‘I was only 25 at the time. I was coaching guys like Cyril Armstrong, who were 10 years older than me.
‘We worked hard as a playing group and quickly gained respect for one another. It was a really enjoyable time. We have made friendships that will last forever.’
It was when he returned to Wicklow in ’05 that he was able to get tangible experience as a head coach for the first time in his career.
Up until that point, he had always been a player, while his initial time with Wicklow was spent as a player-coach.
However, even in his youth in the 1980s, he was demonstrating the analytical potency that drove his passion to trade the try-line for the side-line.
‘I always knew that I wanted to be a coach. I have told this story many times, but when I was a kid, I watched rugby league and I used to do tackle counts. This was before TV used to give you all of this information, in the mid-80s.
‘The Wallabies won the World Cup in 1991, and that was when I started to represent teams in rugby union as a player and started to fall in love with the game.
‘When I was in grade 12, I coached the grade 8 team and the grade 9 team.
‘My dad was a rugby league player, my grandfather was heavily involved in rugby league from an administration point-of-view. It has always been around me from a very early age. I love being involved in the team; setting goals and trying to achieve things together.’
It was his command of the finer details that helped him quickly establish authority and respect in the eyes of the Wicklow players and management. As mentioned earlier, at times, he found himself in charge of players who were often 10 years his senior. Due to his ability to appreciate the finer details of the game, McKellar’s self-esteem was already high, which he credits as being vital when it comes to commanding those around him as a coach.
‘As a coach, you need to have a degree of self-confidence and belief in your own ability. I was pretty clear with the direction that I wanted to take the team, and we worked very hard. We were pretty professional, too. I had Brian Clarke and those sort of guys who are still really involved with the club.
‘They were great to work with and I think, probably after the first training session, they realised that I wasn’t there to muck around. I was there to make sure that we had plenty of fun and enjoyed the experience, but we were going to work hard and get the best out of one another.’
To be able to obtain the managerial experience that he did at Wicklow, at such a young age, set the stage for the latter parts of his career, while the protocols that the team followed under his tutelage continues to influence him to this day.
‘The thing that we had in Wicklow was that we worked really hard and built the whole team and programme around discipline. Those are still the biggest beliefs that I have as a coach; if you don’t work hard, you won’t get anything out of life. You have got to have discipline, and make sacrifices and choices that, sometimes, you don’t necessarily want to do, but the team will be better for it.
‘That stint in Wicklow – a lot of the way that we would have played back then, still carries on to how I coach the Brumbies, 18 years later.’
At just 43 years of age, the future is extremely bright for McKellar. His immediate commitment is to Brumbies, while he may well end up at the helm of the Wallabies sooner rather than later. However, returning to the country where he started his remarkable journey is something he would be more than interested in.
‘I would love to coach in Ireland or the UK. The European competitions, I think, are certainly thriving. The Irish love their rugby union. When I spent a week with Leinster, they were playing Munster that week, and there were 50,000 people at the Aviva Stadium. The atmosphere was special.
‘At the time, I was thinking that I would love to be in charge of a team that is playing in front of passionate fans like you get in Ireland. I am at a great club in Australia with the Brumbies and I have been very fortunate to have been here for several years, and I hope to be here for a few more to come.
‘Does coaching in that part of the world interest me and my family? Without a doubt.’