JOE’S MR RELIABLE
Mike Ross driven to reward the faith shown in him by Schmidt
MIKE ROSS laughs out loud. Praise from his teammates for some important interventions this month? No chance. ‘They always take the p*** out of you. “I see you’re carrying your Mars Bar in your shorts”,’ says the veteran prop, making light of his tackle on Edoardo Gori, who spilled forward a potentially try-creating pass in the opening minutes for Italy in Rome, and his snaring last Saturday of fleet-footed French wing Teddy Thomas who would have been in the clear from deep but for Ross.
‘Thank God for stretchy shorts,’ he quips about the latter tackle. ‘I’ll take that. It’s always good to chase down a winger.
‘You can’t just be walking from scrum to scrum, you know, as much as it would have been nice to do that. The way the game is going you have to be in the defensive line – you can’t be left behind when the ball goes out.
‘You have to be getting round to where you’re needed to be. It’s international rugby. Everyone feels under pressure and you’re always a bit paranoid.’
Perched on an exercise bench in the Connacht gym, having been consigned to the dubious pleasure of a nearby watt bike after getting pulled from the running part of last Wednesday’s Ireland training session, Ross is relieved to be repaying Joe Schmidt’s unwavering faith in him.
Winter wasn’t plain sailing. There were hours of loneliness battling injury to be right to play a full part in Ireland’s November clean sweep. Then came desperate December: scrum trouble in successive weeks against Harlequins accompanying the disappointment of a one-year IRFU contract renewal when he had hoped for two.
Come January, he was out of the Leinster team and had to reroute to Cork with the Wolfhounds to get himself back on track. No wonder he looked pleased with himself when spotted later that night working his way through a “cheat meal” at McDonalds in Cashel on the drive home. He’d gotten his appetite back.
‘I’m around long enough and know what is required, know the self-talk you need to get through it,’ he says, reflecting on his winter blues. ‘But I also had a chat with [sports psychologist] Enda McNulty, who is a good resource to have around the place. Unbelievably positive.
‘A lot of rugby is psychological, a lot of sport is psychological. I mean, someone like Tiger Woods right now is blowing up a bit and it’s probably all just mental.
‘Enda reminded me to go back to the good games you’ve had before, big plays or big scrums, good defensive efforts, things like that. He wants you to look at your greatest hits and it does help. It reminds you that have been there and done that. That despite what some people might say, you can do it when required.’
ROSS has been the only player to start in all 15 of Schmidt’s Tests and featured in 44 of the last 46 Ireland matches. Provincially, though, his diligent tutoring of upcoming tightheads, Martin Moore and Tadhg Furlong, came unstuck when they were handed last month’s Champions Cup slots.
‘It’s been strange. Generally you’d be struggling to keep your Irish place if you’re not starting those two European games after Christmas but Joe kept a bit of faith in me and gave me an opportunity, but I had to take it. He will give you an opportunity but if you don’t take it that’s it. Sayonara. Luckily I was able to do that against Italy and keep it up against France.
‘I’m telling him s*** now,’ adds Ross with a smile about the current dynamic in his relationship with Moore, who took the Leinster No3 jersey and is on his shoulder in the Ireland No18. ‘Look, that’s life.
‘It would be nice to think I’ll be first choice until I’m 40 but I’m going to keep going as long as I can and if he wants the place, he’s going to have to take it. That’s what happens. That’s sport. I’m not going to bury my head in the sand. I’m going to make him fight for every last inch.
‘Marty’s a very good chop tackler, has a quite low centre of gravity and he takes guys around the ankles – it’s good technique and he’s effective with it. So he’s developing all the time, and then you have Tadhg behind him. Ireland is going to be well served with those two over the next few years.’
Chop tackling is one thing but it’s the scrum where Ross prides himself and having struggled for Leinster with Jérôme Garcès in charge against Harlequins, Matt O’Connor felt it wasn’t worth risking Ross at Wasps a month later with the same referee.
‘European level is fine margins. Maybe he was worried because I seemed to have gotten on the wrong side of him against Harlequins that he might have something in his mind going into the Wasps game. We drew it in the end anyway, so one penalty in the wrong place could have changed the complexion of the game. He’s a coach and he has to make those calls.’
But still, the arbitrary nature of some scrum decision-making is a bugbear. ‘You go down, hear the whistle and you go which way is this going because you don’t actually know sometimes?
‘Look at last year’s Six Nations, most of our scrums stayed up. We’d a decent scrum platform. But this year there seems more collapses. You ask yourself what has changed and the hit and chase is creeping back into it. Remove the hit and you seem to have a steadier scrum… they just need to police that a bit better.’
Next Sunday’s policing includes silencing Joe Marler, the young England buck he knows from his time at Harlequins. ‘He’s a pretty larger than life character. You see him with his haircuts: I remember him carving a sausage into the side of his head. That was actually for Ollie Kohn’s business – the Jolly Hog – which has now taken over most (English) rugby grounds.
‘Marler talks a lot but I’d be of the mind that if you’re talking you’re obviously not putting enough breath into scrummaging. But I’ve been watching the England scrum and they’ve been doing pretty well. Graham Rowntree’s got them working hard as a unit.’ Hard enough to worry Ireland? ‘A winning camp is a happy camp but two from two going in against England, who are also two from two, one of us is going to lose that record.’
Joe will give you an opportunity but if you don’t take it, sayonara