When Irish paid price for having a genius like Hogan

RUGBY’S long-running fascination with military techniques continues apace with the Crusaders, the reigning Super Rugby champions, sending assistant coach Brad Mooar to spend some time with the US Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

The Crusaders identified three areas to work on: Strategy and planning, leadership identification and development, and emotional and mental well-being and recovery.

In particular, the reigning Super Rugby champions were keen to discover how soldiers ‘de-load’ and morph back to a normal person after an operation or patrol – there are obvious parallels with players needing to ‘decompress’ after a big win or a bad loss.

England under Sir Clive Woodward trained with the Royal Marines when the priority was identifying leaders and working as a team under stress, while Dick Best organised pre-season camps for London Irish at Sandhurst.

The Irish camps were good craic. On one of those ‘how do you cross the river without getting your feet wet’ problems the Army instructor sternly warned there was only one possible answer.

Within ten minutes Ireland scrum-half Niall Hogan, right, a surgeon at the age of 27, had devised three separate ways.

The Army got their own back by telling the Irish that the Gurkhas would be infiltrating their camp that night and would steal one personal item from every player. Not a wink of sleep was had by the Exiles and at one stage prop Gary Halpin spent half an hour chasing a Gurkha he had heard approach his tent.

Except he was imagining things. The Gurkas spent all night in the mess watching TV before enjoying an early night and eight hours sleep.