STEPPING UP
Sheehan ready to take on a leadership role as Leinster seek way back to European summit
SHORTLY after South Africa squeaked past England in their World Cup semi-final, Siya Kolisi sat behind a table in the media auditorium of the Stade de France. He was asked about Jacques Nienaber and provided a memorable answer – and you do not need to be a veteran of the often punishing post-match quotes beat to consider that unusual.
Kolisi got to know Nienaber when the Springbok captain was a teenager at the Western Province academy. Erasmus was director of rugby at the Stormers after moving from the Cheetahs, and brought Nienaber with him.
They would visit the academy as part of their roles, and Kolisi began his relationship with the two men who helped make him a two-time World Cup-winning captain.
‘He knows my kids by name, asks me how I am doing as a person and that is why I can go and give him everything on the field, because he cares about the person, he cares about Siya from the township,’ said the captain.
‘For the teams, especially in big moments, he talks about each and every player’s journey.’
Emotion has been a crucial part of South Africa’s astonishing mix over the past five years, and that ability to make players care, as well as absorb the necessary tactical and physical details expected of the world’s best team, has usually been credited to Erasmus.
Nienaber has been the silent partner in the most effective coaching team in the professional age.
That he could introduce that emotional aspect to Leinster is an intriguing proposition. Michael Cheika relied on passion to an important extent when inspiring the province’s breakthrough in 2009, but Joe Schmidt and then Stuart Lancaster introduced a level of excellence that made them as good as any club side in the world.
Leo Cullen has moved in a markedly different direction now. With Andrew Goodman in charge of attack, it appears Nienaber will major on defence, his speciality – but with that remit involving him in wider aspects of the game-plan.
‘You can feel the energy off him already,’ says Dan Sheehan of Nienaber. ‘We had our first session where he had just an observing role. (On Tuesday), he was straight in, taking a few meetings and he basically controlled all the session, which was great. (We got) just a few new insights on different things and the energy you get from having a world-class coach in.
‘Also, the set-up is so different this year because we have an attack coach and a defence coach, whereas Stu
(Lancaster) took over both those roles last year. It’s nice to be able to transition your mind easily between the two, rather than it all mingling into one. It just gives a bit more life to defending or attacking, rather than rugby in a general sense.’ Sheehan is shrewd, and that observation about aspects of the game mingling into one is interesting in light of how the coaching responsibilities are now distributed.
But as relevant for him could be the aspects of Nienaber’s influence that inspired Kolisi’s effusive commentary on the coach.
The South African captain is the natural successor to Martin Johnson and Richie McCaw as the game’s outstanding leader, and to hear his testimony about the holistic qualities to Nienaber’s coaching fits with what was said about him at Munster. The benefits of working with him for a young player like Sheehan, who looks the candidate best-suited to succeed Johnny Sexton as Ireland captain, could be far-reaching. ‘It comes I guess with age I suppose; you have to earn your stripes within the squad,’ he says of stepping up as a leader.
‘You don’t want to be that new kid coming in and speaking your mind. You’ve got to earn a bit of respect in the squad you’re in, to show you’re saying the right thing.
‘It hasn’t really been a big point of “This is what I want to do now”,’ he says of ambitions in that regard.
‘I sort of let it happen. It’s good that Leo and other people are sort of recognising it a little bit – I think it’s just a general progression.’
Most are not singled out for leadership through captaincy, though, as Sheehan was three weeks ago when he led Leinster to victory on day for gritted teeth, away to the Dragons in Newport.
The fact he cut short his postWorld Cup break and contacted Cullen, asking to return early to training, may have merely confirmed for the Leinster chief what he has observed of Sheehan’s progression.
Sheehan brooded at home as the cloud cast by defeat to New Zealand refused to budge. He got away for a long weekend over the Halloween Bank Holiday, to Lisbon, but on his return, the rain outside mirrored his emotions.
So he picked up his phone.
‘The first week was awful, just replaying things in your head. I was kind of thinking, “God it’s going to be hard to go back into Leinster and do it all over again, and start going to back to URC,
Champions Cup”, but after a week I was sitting on the couch absolutely bored and in a bad mood, so I actually texted Leo to say, can I come in again?
‘I would rather be here with the lads than sitting at home. In that sense I loved coming back in and getting back playing games, back with the group.’
Cullen then asking him to captain the side provided a boost far greater than he might have expected.
‘It was on a Monday morning and I was a bit shocked,’ he recalls.
‘I think this year over the summer I got confidence… I don’t know, my leadership role has come on a good bit I think.
‘I would have been quite a quiet player coming up through the years. As I’ve come on and shown what I’ve been able to do, confidence has grown and leadership has grown.
‘Something that I’d probably like to kick on this year is making sure that I’m a voice in the room and making sure that I’m contributing in other areas, as well as just playing.’
Cullen would welcome that, too, and not just because the dressing room has lost a powerful voice in Sexton. Despite his World Cup debut being delayed by the foot injury he suffered in the warm-up win over England, Sheehan was up to his best levels quickly, and is now one of the outstanding hookers in the game.
The pressure is on the squad to now absorb the new man’s message ahead of the trip to La Rochelle in a week’s time.
‘We don’t have time to hang around with the way our group is.
‘It’s a competitive group, especially with La Rochelle first away, so we have to go over there with a winning mindset. It’s not trying to test things, it’s about putting the game plan that we’ve picked into practice and do it as perfectly as possible.’
Ronan O’Gara’s team have now emphatically dislodged Saracens as Leinster’s most intractable opponents. They have ended their last three European campaigns, the latter two, famously, in finals.
‘It’s always been at the back of everyone’s mind in the Leinster circle, I suppose since last (season). It’s a team we’ve obviously struggled with in the last three years, three on the bounce.
‘I’ve never played away there. I’ve been 24th man in an empty stadium but I remember the crowd that gathered outside the stadium were very vocal and almost football-like, which is brilliant.’
It’s the voices inside the dressing room that will have the bigger impact. Jacques Nienaber brings his, but hearing more from Sheehan will be as central to Leinster’s designs on reconquering Europe.
I was sitting on the couch bored so I texted Leo to say, can I come in again?
the weather warnings and against the backdrop of Christmas lights, the club season hurtles towards its climax.
It does so with the obligatory revelation around an absurd charter recently doing the rounds by an apparently ‘leading club’ that makes joyless demands of players for the 2024 campaign. The usual privations are there: no holidays, no alcohol, no smiling, no point to it all.
Cue more talk of crisis, but this will only be addressed when officials – not just in Croke Park but in every club in the country – stand up to managers.