Being mangled by Gats was good career move
ONE of my toughest opponents was Warren Gatland. That guy is incredibly strong. He was a 34/35-year-old All Black who was transitioning into coaching with Galwegians and I was a little scrawny so and so barely into my 20s playing for Clontarf in the All-Ireland league.
He came on for the final 20 minutes and totally screwed me over; in those days there was a hit in the scrum, and I was seeing stars every time we packed down. I had no idea who he was until the lads told me afterwards that he’d sat behind Sean Fitzpatrick for most of his career.
It might not have felt like it at the time as my body was being twisted into places it had never been twisted before, but fate had played me a good hand as Warren was invited back to Ireland the following season to coach Connacht after they failed to agree terms with Eddie O’Sullivan.
Rugby was just going pro and there were five full-time contracts for each province and 15 part-time deals. I was studying international marketing and Japanese at Dublin City University, and was set to move to Japan for the final year of my three-year degree.
But Gats, below, was after a hooker and he must have remembered me from that game. When I explained to him my situation, he said, “I think it’s important you get your degree, but no one knows if rugby is going to take off or not. If it does take off and you’re away for a year, it’s going to be very hard to get back in. If it doesn’t take off and it’s only professional for a year, you’d be one of only a handful of Irish players who were ever pros.”
We had a great year. Gats was brilliant at bringing the group together and we took some notable scalps in Europe. We were the first Irish team to win away in France in Europe. Gats got the Ireland job as Brian
Ashton’s replacement off the back of that and selected me for a five-week tour to South Africa in 1998. However, it would be another seven years, ironically in Japan, in 2005, before I finally got capped.
Part of the reason for that was down to me playing at Sale for a couple of years. If you were playing in England, you were largely overlooked unless you were someone of the class of Geordan Murphy.
I don’t regret going to Sale, though, not one bit, as I really developed as a player there and enjoyed playing in a side that had a mix of stars like Jason Robinson and good homegrown youngsters like Charlie Hodgson, Steve Hanley and Mark Cueto. We finished second in the league and won the Challenge Cup and Dimes (Steve Diamond) offered me a new twoyear deal with a view to me converting to loosehead. It was tempting but I wanted to try my luck in Ireland again.
Munster and Leinster were both interested but, unfortunately, a groin problem led to me failing the medical. So I got a job in the real world as a pharmaceutical rep for a year and dropped back into club rugby although, to be fair, there wasn’t that much difference in standard at the time because a lot of pro players would still turn out for the clubs. I led Clontarf up from the Second Division and I scored a lot of tries in our first season up when we finished at the top of the regular season table. Things were going well, and I was back on the radar of the provinces.
By now, Eddie O’Sullivan had replaced Gats as Ireland head coach and he advised me to go back to Connacht, although I’d always had my heart set on playing for my home province of Leinster. With Woody (Keith Wood) and Frankie Sheahan at Munster, Shaun Byrne at Leinster and Rory Best as the Ulster hooker, Connacht was the best place for me to get noticed and further my international ambitions as I doubt, very much, that I’d have got much game time at any of the other provinces. Clearly, it worked because, at the end of my second season back there, I finally
realised my dream of playing Test rugby. It was a good trip all round. I’d just got married and my wife flew out for the second Test for what was effectively our honeymoon. Knowing Japanese as I did also made me a useful tourist.
It was great to get that first cap but when you had one – especially in Ireland – you wanted your second pretty quickly. I say that because Anthony Foley, god bless him, used to love making up lists of ‘One-Cap Wonder’ Ireland XVs when he was sat at the back of the bus, and you wanted to avoid ever being included in the discussion! Thankfully, I went on to win nine caps up until my last in 2008.
GAA was in my blood so to be one of only 35-40 players to play at Croke Park was pretty special. I missed out on the year Ireland played England there, but I played in the Six Nations the following year in the games against Italy, Scotland and Wales.
The highlight of my time as a Leinster player was at Croke Park, too. I’m a Leinster man. I went to school in Leinster, I went to university in Leinster, I played club in Leinster (for Lansdowne and Clontarf) so when I was playing for Sale or Connacht in the Challenge Cup,
I always had an eye on Leinster in the Champions Cup. I was very envious of my friends who were playing for Leinster or Munster or Ulster in the top European competition.
It was always a goal of mine to be part of the first Leinster team to win the European Cup, and I achieved that in 2009. We were massive underdogs for the semi-final against Munster because they’d already won it twice. But we put past failures behind us and won convincingly, 25-6, in front of a world record crowd of 82,000.
I had five years under Michael Cheika, and he was unbelievable for Leinster. He was ruthless in demanding excellence and consistency of work, but he was exactly what we needed at the time because we’d flopped on the big stage before. We then went on to beat Leicester in the final at Murrayfield.
I was always coaching club sides alongside my playing commitments, so it was a natural progression for me to make that transition. I went to Grenoble for a year and ended up staying five: I loved it so much. Sadly, my next role at the Dragons didn’t work out how anyone would have wanted – I think learning Japanese was an easier challenge to be honest – and now I’m back in Ireland combining my job as an account manager for Refinitiv – a global provider of financial markets data and infrastructure – with helping out coaching at my old school, Newbridge College, under head coach Johne Murphy.
For 50 years, Newbridge hadn’t won the prestigious Leinster Schools Cup but this year we thought we had a better chance than any having made the final (versus Clongowes) only for Covid to cause the game to be cancelled. At least we got to share the cup. The other day, the captain of the 1970 team, former Irish international outhalf Mick Quinn, and the coach back then, now a 94-year-old Dominican priest, Father John Heffernan, presented the trophy to the current captain and coach. To see the effect it had on them was a really nice moment to end the year on.
“It was always a goal to be part of the first Leinster team to win the European Cup”