‘Dutchy’ courage pays off
Jason Holland took a leap of faith in 1998 by heading halfway across the world to play with Midleton in the AIL, that led to a storied career with Munster and now he is one of the leading coaches in New Zealand...
NEXT Wednesday marks the 20th anniversary of one of Munster’s greatest European feats.
It will be two decades since Declan Kidney’s men took Stade Chaban-Delmas by storm on a sweltering day in Bordeaux as they triumphed over Toulouse, overwhelming favourites on the day and overflowing with stars of that era.
The home team had the likes of Ntamack, Mafaing, Penard, Califano and Fabien Pelous but Munster brought fire, fury and no little skill that afternoon.
When Jason Holland picked off Jerome Cazalbou’s lofted pass and sprinted clear for the province’s third try of the afternoon, they were effectively home and dry with a quarter of the match left to play.
A landmark Heineken Cup semi-final victory that proved the catalyst for Munster’s eventual capture of the Holy Grail.
‘Is it really?’ asks Holland, when informed of the looming anniversary.
‘Occasionally, that still comes up over here and somebody takes the p*** out of me about the little fat fella waddling to the line.
‘That YouTube clip comes up. If the boys are bored and they want to take the p*** out of something, they’ll find a clip of some of the coaches and that one has popped up.’
The boys in question are Holland’s troops at the Hurricanes in Wellington where he now resides, but more on that later.
Holland’s game-clinching intercept came only a few minutes after Ronan O’Gara finished off one of the all-time great team tries. Have Munster scored a better one since? It was a crucial score and it arrived when the contest was on a knife edge with Toulouse leading 18-17 around the hour mark.
It began with a rock-solid Munster scrum on their own 22 with Peter Stringer feeding O’Gara who fizzed a pass to Mike Mullins in space and 44 seconds, 13 passes and three offloads later, O’Gara was tumbling – Robbie Keane-esque – under the posts to score.
Jim Sherwin, to his credit, admirably kept up with that flowing 80-metre attack when he was sitting in the commentary box for RTÉ that afternoon.
‘Sheehan with a good heel; the frontrow holding solid,’ he began.
‘O’Gara with a long pass to Mullins. Men to spare and Crotty comes up the middle and there’s a lovely reverse pass into Holland and now it’s Kelly up the middle once more, that’s good play. Into the Toulouse half and they’ve got a bit of momentum here and O’Gara feeds it off and here’s Horgan and he’s got Halvey outside him and he trips unfortunately but he’s still going and Halvey’s there waiting for the pass that didn’t come. Stringer himself. Now Mullins. Men to spare here. This is Crotty. Ah yes... O’Gara is in! Another lead for Munster and what a magnificent try.
‘You won’t see better. That is sensational.’
METHOD TO THE MADNESS
Toulouse, the great entertainers of European rugby, were left positively stunned.
‘It was interesting to look back on that,’ Holland recalls.
‘Back in those days we didn’t beat French teams, especially not the likes of Toulouse. The whole mindset was to go out and have a crack. Have some fun. It’s interesting these days to think around that.
‘How careful can you get or do you go out with that mindset of, “Sure we’ve got nothing to lose, let’s just go out and have a crack”.
‘I’ll never forget that day and not because of the footy and not because we beat Toulouse but because of the crowd really.
‘I’d never had anything like that atmosphere. I’d never been to it as a supporter. I’d never experienced anything like that ground in Bordeaux.
‘We were warming up in front of their supporters down in one end and the noise was unbelievable. Looking around the place was unbelievable. Looking at the boys and how much it meant to them. I’ll never forget that day.
‘That and the “Miracle Match” (when Munster needed to beat Gloucester by four tries and 27 points to advance to the 2003 Heineken Cup quarter-final — and duly did) are the two days I’ll never forget.
‘Purely for the passion of the people and the way they sung and what it means to those people was probably the biggest thing.’
Holland made 102 appearances for Munster in a playing career which spanned almost a decade. Along with fellow Kiwi Mike Mullins, who almost signed for Connacht before arriving in Limerick, and veteran Aussie lock John Langford, he added a touch of class to that ground-breaking campaign. Munster would ultimately fail at the final hurdle that season when Northampton spoiled the party in Twickenham, but that season fostered a belief which would eventually lead to the brace of Heineken Cup titles in 2006 and 2008.
Holland would quickly become part of the furniture at the province but he had to adapt to some of their unique ways. Niall O’Donovan, Munster’s forwards coach at the time, used to gauge the team’s readiness for a big match by the edge in training earlier in the week. A few digs? That will do. A mass 16-man brawl? Now we’re sucking diesel, he’d think to himself. Holland laughs when he recalls the dustups in training ‘There was a few boys who had short fuses. Quinny (Alan Quinlan) was one who springs to mind. He was always firing up and had stupid little fights. It was just part of the beauty to him as a rugby player.
‘Me and Mikey Mullins, we used to have a little giggle to ourselves when that sort of stuff kicked off.
‘All those little bits helped us to be a pretty good side in those times with all those different personalities: Claw (Peter Clohessy), Quinny and Gallimh (Mick Galwey) – they all had their little bit of madness around them.
‘Once you harness it properly, it was pretty powerful.’
AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
Born and raised in New Plymouth on New Zealand’s rugged west coast, Holland crossed paths with a certain Joe Schmidt on his way through the club scene in Taranaki and Manawatu – where the future Leinster and Ireland head coach learned his trade.
‘We played a little bit of club footy against each other but only for a year because Joe’s probably three or four years older than me so I knew of him,’ Holland recalls. ‘He played for Manawatu and the year he went out of the squad, I came in.’
Holland managed to break into the Hurricanes wider training squad – Wellington’s flagship Super Rugby outfit – but grew frustrated with a lack of opportunities.
Impatient with his lack of game time, he took up an offer from his friend Damon Urlich to join him for a season with Midleton in east Cork.
‘I got pretty sulky and said, “I’m out”. Looking back, I never really trained properly back then and I was never really in good nick.
‘I was solid without being special so it was all pretty fair when I look back on it. It was good for me to get out of there and get over to another professional environment. Well, reasonably professional as it was in 1999!
‘It turned out perfectly.’
Holland only planned to do six months with Midleton, who were operating in the fourth division of the old All-Ireland League at the time, before a call came to join the professional ranks with Munster. This was no big-money transfer. The modest sum of £25,000 was put on the table to play a season in red. ‘Dutchy’ jumped at the chance and the rest is history.
THE NEXT STEP
An intelligent and skilful player, coaching was a natural progression for Holland when he hung up his boots in 2005. European glory eluded him a player – he featured in the Heineken Cup final defeats in 2000 and 2002 – but was part of the
Munster backroom team which secured their second title with a win over, who else but, Toulouse in the Millennium Stadium.
Tony McGahan, who succeeded Kidney as Munster boss, then promoted Holland to the role of backs coach. He admits he was ‘pretty average’ in his first year.
‘I remember ROG (Ronan O’Gara) saying to me at the end of my six months in. He said: “Dutchy, you just need to coach us. You need to coach me”.’
McGahan, or ‘Dumper’ as he was known, had a major effect on Holland’s development as a top-level coach.
‘He was pretty loud and really tough on the players but I reckon we’d work well together now because we have the same mindset. The work ethic of Dumper was unbelievable.
‘The lesson I learned from him was making sure you do everything you can to ensure that the players are in the best possible position to play the game.
‘He was my first head coach. He had a massive influence. I’ve got a lot of respect for him and what he did for me. Everyone you come across, you always pick up things you like about them or you don’t, and you take that forward.’
He certainly did. Holland left these shores in 2012 to return to his native New Zealand. There, he linked up with Scott ‘Razor’ Robertson
at the hallowed Canterbury club. Tyler Bleyendaal was among the players he worked with during his three-season stint at the club.
The pair are still in touch. Bleyendaal has endured an injury-ravaged five years at Munster but the Kiwi No10’s rugby intelligence is widely known.
‘I think he’s a pretty awesome rugby brain, that boy,’ says Holland. ‘I think he will make an awesome coach when he finishes playing.’
Holland quickly rose through New Zealand’s coaching ranks and was recruited by Hurricanes head coach Chris Boyd in 2016. The franchise claimed their first Super Rugby title later that season.
When Boyd left to link up with
Northampton in 2018, John Plumtree, who served as Ireland forwards coach under Schmidt for a year in 2013, was promoted to the top job. Holland’s influence grew even stronger in a squad brimming with talent, including the likes of Beauden Barrett, Ardie Savea and TJ Perenara.
When the Crusaders arrived into town for a Super Rugby clash that season, Holland was greeted by a pair of familiar faces in the opposition coaches’ box. Robertson, his former head coach at Canterbury, and O’Gara, who had recently arrived in New Zealand to broaden his coaching horizons.
‘We’d go and have a coffee before the game and talk like as if weren’t even playing footy against each other later in the evening. I’m sure ROG got a lot out of that Crusaders experience.’
Holland’s big break arrived this season when Plumtree agreed to join Ian Foster’s backroom on the new All Blacks coaching ticket, paving the way for his first head coaching role.
Things were going well for the Hurricanes before Covid-19 struck. They had four wins from six, their last competitive game was a thrilling 27-24 victory against Warren Gatland’s Chiefs in Hamilton on Friday, March 13.
‘A few things were starting to click so it was a shame and we were due to play the Crusaders the following week when the Covid hit.
‘So it’s a shame but we just have to hit the ground running when the comp gets going again.’
He’s trying to keep busy and productive in this rugby-less vacuum. He and former All Blacks centre Conrad Smith, now coaching Pau in France, recently analysed each other’s teams.
‘We did a little exercise where we pretended we were playing each other and we sent through the previews of how we’d attack and how we’d defend if we played each other,’ Holland explains.
‘It was good to see what other people think of you.
‘So you spend a whole day on Pau, where we see their strengths and weaknesses.’
New Zealand have been ahead of the curve in their reaction to the coronavirus as well and there is hope that rugby may return later this summer. For now, Holland is trying to enjoy the rare break from the all-consuming life of professional coaching. He is just after finishing a catch-up on Zoom with his cousin, Stephen Donald – the unlikely hero for the All Blacks in the 2011 World Cup – when we catch up on Friday morning.
‘This is the most I’ve ever switched off ever, I reckon,’ he adds.
He didn’t miss a beat that afternoon in Bordeaux 20 years ago.