DIRECTING TRAFFIC IN
TONY McGAHAN is thinking aloud at the wheel of his car. Te mpor a r y Wedne s d a y - evening traffic restrictions in Melbourne have meant that the usual number of parking slots to drop his sons, Joe and Sam, off to rugby training at the Harlequin club in Ashwood are scarce, but it’s only a fleeting inconvenience.
A space eventually materialises, his boys are off and running and dad is left to talk about rugby and life practically two years to the very day that he and his family stepped on board a plane in Shannon Airport and left behind life as they had known it in Limerick.
Seven years McGahan had toiled by the Shannon, the opening segment as defence coach in Declan Kidney’s two Heineken Cup-winning campaigns before assuming the top role at Munster. But even though he is now a long way from Ireland, some things have followed him across the globe.
Michael Cheika, his nemesis in the famed 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final that was lost to Leinster at Croke Park in front of a then world club rugby attendance record, still lurks in the shadows. Cheika’s Waratahs dished out a 41-19 Super 15 drubbing to McGahan’s Rebels on Friday.
But the losing coach’s disappointment won’t be allowed to fester, not with the Brumbies, coached by Laurie Fisher, McGahan’s assistant at Munster for two years, next on the Rebels’ drawcard.
Super 15 wasn’t the workplace McGahan traded hemispheres for. He’d been offered an extension by Munster but his head was turned by an assistant’s role with Robbie Deans’ Wallabies. Smitten, he elected to come home but his stint in Test rugby was short lived.
Fourteen tumultuous months, culminating in series defeat to the Lions, and that was that. The game was up. Sensing the end was nigh, McGahan had already made a play for the Rebels role, landing a two-season deal.
It’s a new club that he can build up virtually from scratch, but would he not prefer to be still in Limerick given what should have been a dream job with Australia turned out to be such a bruising experience?
‘Look, you just make a decision at that point in time,’ he says, refusing to dwell on the life-changing slidingdoors moment in February 2013
Mwhen he had two options on the table and chose to uproot his young family and move home from Ireland.
‘We’d been away from Australia for eight years [they spent a year in Japan before Munster]. We were still very keen to stay on and continue the job that we had been doing, but going back to the Wallabies job was really exciting.
‘You make a decision and get on with it. Libby [his wife] and the three kids are really enjoying being back in Australia and this particular role I have now, I’m really enjoying that.’
Working with Australia became an onerous task due to mounting criticism and player unrest, but the fledgling Rebels have given him a project he can sink his teeth into without a similar level of scrutiny as Melbourne is a city besotted by ‘rules’, not rugby.
Kurtley Beale and James O’Connor, the pair infamously pictured in a late-night fast food outlet ahead of a Test against the Lions a few days later, were offloaded, handing McGahan, who prefers not to talk about his Wallabies stint, a near blank canvas to launch his blueprint.
‘It’s really completely different,’ he says, comparing his Rebels role with what he’d known during four years in charge at Munster. ‘You’re dealing with different ends of the spectrum. UNSTER had such a wonderful history, in a rugbymad environment. It was pretty much like an AFL environment – geographically based, family tradition, players that are really accessible and there was a real tribal following.
‘Aussie Rules has that feeling in Melbourne. It dominates media, news, office talk and rugby is probably completely at the other end of that spectrum.
‘The professional side has only been down here three-and-a-half years and while amateur rugby has been played here for a long time, it’s a very small base. It has its positives, has its drawbacks.
‘One of the positives is we can work really hard with a low-profile envi-