RESURGENT McGRATH STAKES HIS CLAIM
Door opens for McGrath to regain place in club and national set-ups
‘If you are behind the pace, you stand out in a negative way’
AYEAR is a long time in the world of professional rugby. Rewind 12 months, and Jack McGrath was not only the premier loosehead operating in Ireland, but he was also widely fancied to nail down a starting spot for the Lions’ summer tour of New Zealand.
As it happened, Mako Vunipola — somewhat controversially — won that particular battle, and since McGrath returned from that gruelling tour he hasn’t looked the same imposing force in Leinster blue. The timing could hardly be worse, as McGrath’s own dip has coincided with Cian Healy’s stunning resurgence.
Currently, a three-week ban handed down to Healy for walloping Exter’s Luke Cowan-Dickie means that McGrath has been reinstated as Leo Cullen’s first choice loosehead, a golden opportunity just one month out from the start of the Six Nations, and one he is keen to grasp.
Not that he’ll be putting too much pressure on himself.
‘I think for me I don’t try and be like anyone else,’ McGrath explains.
‘I try and play my own game and play to my strengths. I’ll try not to try too hard because if you try too hard you’re going to make mistakes. For me, consistency is a huge thing.’
And the 28-year-old accepts that losing that consistency earlier in the season was one of the key contributors to his dip in form.
‘At this level, if you are a little bit behind the pace, you stand out in a negative sense,’ he continues. ‘I probably came back in a little later. Like anyone, you need game time to get our fitness up. I’ve been trucking away, trying to do a few extras, trying to get as much down when I come on in a game, try to impress.
‘It was just a few different things came together. I probably didn’t have enough game time, probably wasn’t doing enough [extra sessions] when that happened.
‘When I came into November [for the internationals], I was probably a little under-cooked and selection didn’t go my way. I parked that and I have a regime now that I find is working for me in getting back to the best of my ability.’
While McGrath can acknowledge that he wasn’t at his best at the start of the season, his determination to get back on track has impressed those working closely with him.
‘It’s tough [suffering a dip],’ explains Leinster scrum coach, John Fogarty.
‘Something he [McGrath] probably won’t even know that it’s happening, where he has a tiny little drop off, and because Cian is Cian or because you’ve got quality players in Ireland, and you saw [Dave] Kilcoyne as well, because of the quality that is in the country, those kind of drop-offs, physical dropoffs or a little mental lapse, it can lead to [losing your place], simple as.
‘But the reaction to it, he’s going to work. Sean Cronin is another example of it, these players have taken it on the chin and been realistic in their heads about where they’re at and have gone to work.
‘The big rigs, the front-five players, they need to truck. You see it across the provinces, where all those big lads need to be playing games and they need to be playing as regularly as they possibly can.
‘Now, you overplay them and they’ll burn out, but he [McGrath] probably came back a little bit not exactly where he should have been at the start of the season, which led to maybe a slower start than normal for Jack.
‘And then mentally, we’ve talked about it before where he’s been up for season upon season and summer tours, Lions tours, I think he had a mental drop off as well. Sometimes that happens.
‘How he reacted to it has been really impressive. He made himself a really good plan with the guys in here, physically what he needed to do, and he’s put himself now in a good position.
‘And then on the other side, the door has been opened a little bit and he’s going to get some minutes. I think that’s a good thing for us, a good thing for Ireland, and it’s a good thing for Cian as well.’
Now, McGrath is aiming to kick on after a promising few weeks which also saw him captain Leinster for the first time on the occasion of his 122nd cap in the thrilling 34-24 win over Munster at Thomond Park. ‘It was a massive honour and a bit of a surprise to be honest,’ he admits.
‘I was delighted, and no better game to do it in because that can be a tricky fixture as well. There was a lot of talk around selection and all that sort of stuff so we just knew ourselves if we went down and played our game we could get a result. Thankfully that’s what happened. It was great and they’re an easy bunch to lead when it is like that, although saying that it is only once.
‘When you’re here a while you do sort of forget you’re moving up and there’s guys that look up to you, and you have to at some stage be more serious around the place. When the older guys are there you can get along and do your job but when people are looking up to you, you’ve got to do that little bit extra and show people what it takes to win games and hopefully win trophies.’
And his approach to winning back his spot can be seen in the message he tried to relay to his team-mates as captain.
‘Rugby is simple, it’s a simple game. Play the game you enjoy.’