Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
Speedy JGP and Ireland ideal fit
“I always knew from what I’d been told he was always a bit of a cheeky player and just a real fighter, and I can see that in the way he plays now, that streak definitely hasn’t left him.”
But then Aki didn’t always strike the right chord first up with others — their loss, suggests Mccartney.
“As much as he likes to joke around, any guy that’s played with him will tell you he’s a great personality to have in the team, but he’s actually also a very intelligent rugby player,”adds Mccartney.
“Some people might meet him initially and think that he is a bit of a class clown but when it’s time for business he switches it on.
“And, you know, he has been playing at a very high level for a very long time and he’s been coached by some of the great coaches back in New Zealand and then obviously with the Irish team and the Lions and I suppose with Connacht as well, so he’s got a lot of rugby knowledge.
“He’s definitely no mug and he’s very good at passing that on and demanding those high standards from other players as well.
“I guess another very important thing with Bundee is that he never wants to come off the pitch.
“I’ve seen him hobbling around injured and whatnot and he basically tells trainers to go away, he doesn’t want to come off, he wants to stay on the pitch and close out the 80 minutes and he doesn’t want to give the other team a sniff.
“He is a legend in Galway now and they will probably have a statue up to by the time by the time it’s finished!”
Back then though Pat Lam had sold Aki and Mccartney a dream.
“We had this idea implanted by Pat Lam that we were going to try and turn the programme around, that it was a team on the rise with Pat there and we wouldn’t just be outsiders. Obviously, Mils Muliaina had just come over, George Naoupu was there as well.
“So we could see from the guys we aware of and from the squad, it was a really young squad as well, a lot of guys coming through the academy at Connacht.
“Some of them are still playing now, like Finlay Bealham and Denis Buckley and what not.
“So one thing that stands out for me was that it was the Pro-12 back then and the best that Connacht had ever finished was seventh.”
Low
This seemed a low bar to the new arrivals but their first season didn’t deliver.
“Bundee and I came over sort of probably late November, so not quite half-way through the season but getting close and while the team got off to a pretty good start we ended up finishing seventh.
“At the prize-giving/awards at the end of the season some of the older, kind of stalwarts really celebrating like it was a great result.
“And I remember talking with Bundy over a beer just saying ‘Man, we didn’t come here to just finish seventh!’ And the next year we won it!”
TOM mccartney didn’t play club rugby with Jamison Gibson-park but they had two seasons together at the Blues franchise in Super Rugby.
“Jamison was another one, a little bit like Bundee, I suppose, who kind of just got an opportunity to go over the Leinster and grabbed it with both hands.
“Once again, I don’t think anyone in New Zealand or even Ireland thought he was going to be that good, otherwise there would have been a few more people lining up for him because he’s just so instrumental and influential for Ireland now.”
Key
He sees the handover from Joe Schmidt to Andy Farrell as key.
“From the look of it, Ireland wanted to play, really wanted to kind of speed things up a little bit, go away from the box kicks to a carries sort of game and really get that tempo going, and Jamison just suits that game to a tee.
“So there was probably a little bit horses for courses and then once he got in there, you could just see Ireland just shift to another level.
“The horrible part of rugby when we played together in New Zealand was there was this test you had to do, think it was called the ‘yo-yo’ where you couldn’t pause and you had to keep going until you fall over.
“Jamison was quite often the last one standing, so always a very, very fit player, always very competitive and quick.”