TWO YE ARS I N THE PLANNING
Director of operations Gerard Carmody explains what it takes to put together a Lions tour
WHAT’S ON your checklist when booking a hotel? Location? Pool? All-you-can-eat breakfast? When it comes to a Lions tour the list is significantly longer. If Lions director of operations Gerard Carmody is looking at a hotel there are numerous boxes that need to be ticked. Is there space for a team room that will be ‘the hub’? What about rooms for the medical team, analysts and media conferences? How would these be laid out? Has the hotel hosted rugby teams before? Can they provide the necessary catering?
Then there are the bedrooms: are they big enough for two players to share? Can the players all be roomed on the same floor? How noisy is it?
The final criteria is the location and striking that balance between the distance from training venues and players having the ability to pop into town.
With so many requirements, it’s little wonder that this Lions tour has been two years in the planning logistically. Carmody made his first recce to New Zealand in June 2015, where he also looked into training venues, gyms and so on – although it was something of a guessing game because the match venues had yet to be confirmed – and made plans for moving 20 tonnes of equipment around. Plus, there was no coach; it wasn’t until Warren Gatland was appointed that they could confirm arrangements.
Before then, Carmody was working with sponsors like Canterbury on the kit. “The weather conditions are the biggest challenge in New Zealand,” he says. “It can be cold, wet and windy, then lovely and warm. We worked to have kit for every type of weather.” What makes the logistics of a Lions tour so much more tricky is that there are no full-time staff, unlike with a national team. Carmody is on secondment from the IRFU, where he has worked for 25 years, and when asked to compare the Lions to an Ireland tour, he says: “With a country the players may change but you have the same staff and you know how to work together. The unions have established staff; the Lions have to bring people in for that period of time and gel quickly. As a result, the number of staff is bigger.”
With all the effort put in, there is also reward. Back in 2013, Carmody was part of the advance party, heading to each destination the day before the Lions to ensure everything was ready for their arrival. That meant he could see only a couple of games live. Four years on, he is able to watch all ten.