IF YOU’VE EVER been struck by the thought that Caelan Doris seems like a mentally capable player, someone who doesn’t seem too fussed by the pressure of top-level rugby, then his background makes total sense.
Doris’ parents are both psychotherapists. His dad, Chris, is also an artist whose most famous work is perhaps 40 Days and 40 Nights, in which he lived on the summit of Croagh Patrick for that length of time in 1999. RTE Radio did a documentary on it that’s worth a listen.
Ireland number eight Caelan describes his father’s work, which also includes painting, printing, and drawing, as “esoteric.”
“Open paintings, he calls them,” says Caelan of some of Chris’ other work. “They’re kind of meditative in a way and look very simple in some ways, but it is the layers of colour and how they make you feel that’s the idea behind them.
“I was actually back in Mayo a couple of weeks ago and went to a local show he had there. It looked good.”
Caelan’s mum, Rachel, specialises in Hakomi psychotherapy, which is a body-centered form of the practice. It made for a unique environment to grow up in at home in Lacken in Mayo.
“They’ve both practiced meditation for about 30 years now,” says Doris of his parents, “before it was mainstream.
“It used to be a bit embarrassing for me when they were doing it but it has been a pretty big part of their lives for quite a while.”
Caelan’s brother, Rian, also works in matters of the mind. He has a Master’s degree in neurophilosophy and is now the CEO of the US-based Flow Research Collective, a “peak performance research and training institute” that counts Formula 1 and Deloitte among its partners.
Rian is based in Los Angeles, so Caelan used a recent down week from Ireland’s World Cup pre-season to visit.
“It’s a different world over there,” says Doris, who enjoys the fact that rugby is not very popular and so he can forget about it for a while.
Not that Doris is mindless about his own work. He has followed in his family’s footsteps by studying psychology at University College Dublin alongside his professional rugby career, while he also calls on his family’s expertise as he needs it.
Dealing with the disappointment of Leinster’s defeat to La Rochelle in the Champions Cup final in May was difficult. He remembers the second half as “suffocating.”
Doris still hasn’t fully watched the game back or looked at the review Stuart Lancaster sent out to players before he left for Racing 92. But one thing that helped Doris was doing some work with his father.
“I ended up doing a mindfulness session with my dad,” he says.
“I hadn’t fully felt it, this was on the Friday after. I felt that let things move through a little better for me, I found that quite helpful.”
That said, Doris doesn’t like discussing rugby too much with his dad, even though he’s there for nearly every one of his son’s games.
One aside that comes up while discussing his family is the fact that Doris could have played for a few countries besides Ireland. His father was born in England, his mother in the US, and one of his grandfathers in Scotland. There was never a decision to make.
Next on the agenda for Doris’ fan club will be getting to the World Cup in France. It’s Caelan’s first involvement in the tournament and the sense of excitement is different. The first World Cup he really engaged with was in 2015 when he was at boarding school at Blackrock College.
Now he will travel as one of Ireland’s key players. He has always had confidence in his ability to get to this position but it takes fairly relentless hard work too.
Doris spent the past week in Spain with team-mate Ciarán Frawley as Ireland broke up from camp, so the pair of them trained hard together. Next week, the real build-up begins as Andy Farrell’s men play their first warm-up Test against Italy.
All pre-season, Ireland have spoken about the need to keep improving, even if they’re coming off the back of a Grand Slam win. Farrell has stressed that everyone else is going to be better.
“A lot of that growth comes through just getting better at the fundamentals of the game, doing what we do well more consistently for 80 minutes,” says Doris.
“But then there are other areas of the game and layers where we can evolve and show different things so it is probably a combination of both.
“We do a good exercise with Paul O’Connell as well as individuals, sort of writing out a sheet of areas where we want to improve on and the plan to do that as well.”
The growth mindset is strong.
