Step up is child’s play for Hansen
From a job minding kids to Ireland wing sensation
MACK HANSEN jokes about ‘spoon-fed private-school boys’ that now constitute most of his Test colleagues but behind the teasing is a story that the finished rugby specimens produced by that system must find exotic.
Hansen is the Canberra boy who has exploded into the Test game during this Six Nations, the son of an Irish mother who left Cork as a four-year-old in the late 1960s, one of a family of eight children that emigrated with their parents.
He eventually climbed through the system high enough to play Super Rugby for the Brumbies in his native city, but it was only after his move to Connacht was agreed last year that he was on the verge of establishing himself there.
He was an unknown to Irish rugby watchers before his Connacht debut, but his brilliant start to this campaign – six tries in nine games – pushed him into national reckoning.
And his acclimatisation to the Test environment convinced Andy Farrell to pick him on the left wing in Ireland’s first two Six Nations matches.
A superb catch and run put him over for his first Ireland try in Paris, the score helping to check a storming French start which had threatened to consume Hansen and his team-mates.
But when he jokes about the contrast between himself and James Lowe on the one hand, and the phalanx of stars schooled in Ireland’s exclusive private centres as ‘the exact same no-good kids nobody wants and they’re the preppy school boys; we love to live off that’, Hansen’s humour is informed by a blue-collar background.
While he was good enough to earn a place in the Brumbies’ academy, the system in Australia is not as fully formed as the one found in Ireland’s provinces. Academy prospects in Australia trained in the evenings after a day’s work; they were not full-time athletes.
That sent Hansen down a career path as an electrician that he recalls didn’t hold much promise; he once described himself as ‘probably the worst electrician in Canberra’.
When serious injury prevented him continuing in that line of work, he found a very different alternative.
‘Yeah, I did a little bit of childcare when I ended up rupturing all the ligaments in my ankle and couldn’t really do my trade anymore so I ended up doing that, where I would just literally sit down,’ he recalls.
‘And I actually had long hair back then as well and the girls would braid my hair and I’d get paid about $35 an hour so it was perfect,’ he laughs. ‘It was good, I was going in for rehab with the Brumbies and it was very easy to fit around rugby.
‘I enjoyed it, I loved hanging out with kids, it was good fun. It was probably some of the easiest money I made. In hindsight, I didn’t have to do too much, just make sure none of them ran off anywhere.
‘I didn’t have to clean any bums or anything like that,’ he clarifies.
It didn’t turn out to be his career, but it sounds like a more enjoyable tilt at a working life than his time as a wannabe electrician.
‘I was literally just terrible at it,’ he says now. ‘They wouldn’t let me do any hard jobs at all. I was pretty much just nailing the line that we’d run the wires through.’
Rugby proved to be the path to a more fulfilling career. The story of Hansen’s arrival in Ireland has Connacht coach Andy Friend at its centre.
Friend is from Canberra and his son worked in Hansen’s local bar. The Connacht chief then found out about the Irish link and with the province in search of a back-three player, the logic of a move started to become clear to both parties to the deal.
He had made his debut for the Brumbies in 2019 and kicked a famous winning penalty in a win over the Queensland Red the following year.
By last season, he had earned a starting place on the wing, but the move to Connacht was an irresistible offer. The deal was announced last April.
‘It was just a couple of wingers went down, that was why I got into the starting team,’ he recalls.
‘Before that, I was still a good bit behind and it felt like it kind of wasn’t going to happen, so fortunately for me, and unfortunately for the other guys, I got an opportunity and was able to show what I could do a bit more.
‘It was nice but I had kind of made my mind up pretty early on that I was going to take off.’
He has adapted to the Irish system, first provincially but since at Test level, with an ease that neither he nor Friend might have dared believe.
‘In provincial games and provincial teams you have a whole pre-season to learn the moves on the run,’ he reflects.
‘You get a bit more time to get your head around everything. Coming into this, that was the toughest thing: you’ve got to get your roles right pretty much straight away, because it’s a shorter amount of time and you just want to hit the ground running, which we were lucky enough to do in round one against Wales.’
Lowe’s return from injury will put pressure on Hansen, but his form so far justifies Farrell retaining him in the team.
In the medium-term, Hansen could prove
valuable come World Cup time. He can cover the back three but also has experience at outhalf. This opens up the possibility of Farrell bringing two specialist No10s to France next year, with Hansen providing extra cover.
He says he has not yet trained at out-half with Ireland.
‘No, none of that so far. I’ve just been hanging on the wing and been enjoying my time on the wing as well. There’s been no chatter about that but wherever they need me to fill in for the team, I’m more than happy to.’
That dutiful attitude doesn’t fit with the laidback Aussie having his hair braided by giggling kids, but adaptability is all in the modern game. Hansen gets that.