Best ploughs a purposeful furrow in his new life

The former Ireland rugby captain is searching for purpose but enjoying his new role as a cattle farmer. He talks to Barry Egan

PITCH TO PASTURE: Former Ireland skipper Rory Best is savouring his new responsibilities at home and on the land

TWO weeks ago, Paul O’Connell said on The Late Late Show that he doesn’t miss big games or rugby’s routine. What he missed was the sense of purpose he had playing for Ireland and Munster.

“We’re all in pursuit of a purpose in some shape or form, especially when you recently retire from rugby,” agrees Rory Best, who succeeded O’Connell as Ireland captain and retired after the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

“That purpose was very much the match and the training. And when you retire, there is a massive void to try to fill. I don’t think you ever fill that very quickly,” Best told the Sunday Independent.

“It’s the purpose of ‘what am I going to be?’ I am no longer Rory Best, the rugby player.”

So what is he now?

“I’m not sure what Rory Best is going to be,” he says.

“At the minute, it is blank. I’m trying to figure out what I want to be, what’s going to get me out of bed, what’s going to drive me on, what’s going to give me that sense of achievement.”

One of the hardest things to deal with is getting his head around the fact that achievement will no longer come in a five- or six-day period, “where you come in on Monday morning and you plan for a game at the weekend. Then, you play that game and you get your results within a short timeframe.

“Whereas a lot of the stuff you do after rugby is going to be maybe years of hard work and toil where you go, ‘Yes, that was right’ or potentially, ‘That was wrong’”.

Does he ever ring Joe Schmidt? Or O’Connell? Or Brian O’Driscoll? Has he stayed in touch with any of them during the lockdown?

“I was texting Brian O’Driscoll about the chocolate biscuit cake he made, and a roast that he put on — just to get the ins and outs of how it’s made. I was talking to Paul a few months ago about a different event. I stay in touch with Joe.

“Everyone has their own lives, everyone is busy. If I ever need advice or a favour, I know I can ring these guys and the same applies to them. I speak quite a bit to Iain Henderson. He is new to captaining Ulster and these are very strange circumstances. I’ve never captained a team through something like this, but there have been different challenges along the way.

“We do try to do a conference call with myself, Johnny Sexton, Keith Earls, Pete O’Mahony, Conor Murray, and all the wives. We try to do that once every couple of weeks, to have a bit of craic and to see how everyone is doing — and to see what Earlsy’s changing hairstyles are. Just a bit of a catch-up.”

In the foreword to Best’s recent autobiography, his former Ireland coach Schmidt was possibly joking when he wrote that Rory “masquerades” as a farmer. Whatever about that, he seems to have taken to farming now in earnest.

“You know, it’s a nice routine,” he says. “You get up in the morning. You go out to the cattle. It is this time of year where we’re calving the cows and we’re trying to get everything out into the field. It’s a lovely feeling — to drop the cattle out of the trailer and they have spent the winter in sheds, confined. You give them these open spaces and you watch them take off. There is something very satisfying about that. So, there are a lot of rewarding times and the weather has helped.”

At the start of the Covid-19 crisis, his middle brother Mark and sister Rebecca both returned from London to the family home in Co Armagh.

“That meant mum and dad and them were staying together. They self-isolated for two weeks. So, then dad wasn’t really allowed out. I took over doing all the farm work and tried to fill that void as much as possible.”

He studied agriculture at the University of Newcastle and says: “I am trying to fill my dad’s shoes, very badly. I am ringing him a lot to check in. All the stuff that he knows is stored in his head and I need access to that, to make sure it’s all done right.”

Does he ever ponder now on what might have been for Ireland, after the disappointment of the World Cup in Japan?

“I don’t cope well with sitting and pondering. But, look, you stray. I don’t think much about the changing room in Tokyo. That was a moment in time, that last moment of pulling off the jersey. Obviously the whatmight-have-beens pass through your head. I don’t think you are ever going to get away from that.

“Because of the way I and a lot of the rugby players are wired, you are striving for perfection that you are never going to reach. Look, your mind ponders what you could have done better, especially now that your career is over and you know you don’t get another crack at it.”

Still, the positivity he was able to bring to his rugby days is helpful in the era of Covid-19.

“A positive mindset is really important. A mindset of going, ‘Right, OK, I can get these breaks with the kids [Ben, Penny and Richie]. But also, let’s use this downtime now to get organised at home.’

“I feel a lot better within myself when I’m organised. It is a time when the world is standing still and I get a chance, post-retirement, to go, ‘What are my values? What do I want to do? And what do I need to do in the time at home to put myself in the right position to do that?’ It keeps it focused on things other than the global pandemic and all the fear and anxiety that is associated with that.

“There is also a to-do list that has probably been 10 or 12 years waiting to be done. I mean, it is five years since we moved into the house; so I am under a lot of pressure to get that done.”

For Rory and Jody, his wife of 11 years, “a lot of the fun during the lockdown has been with the kids. I raised the flowerbeds from some wooden sleepers we had at home. We had fun as a family planting those.

“I think, in this crazy world, you don’t ever think you have time to do these simple things.

“When you put it into perspective and you put it into that context, I think we just have to get on with it. We know what is happening. We know it is for the best, to stay at home and to stay isolated… and,” he continues, “to remain positive. Otherwise, you’ll send yourself mad”.

‘I’m trying to figure out what’s going to give a sense of achievement’