LAST UPDATE | 22 Feb 2023
THERE’S 81 minutes and 15 seconds on the clock as France winger Ethan Dumortier spills the ball forward. Wayne Barnes sounds his whistle and the Aviva erupts to celebrate Ireland’s 32-19 defeat of France.
The television cameras immediately scan to Johnny Sexton, who has been watching from the bench since the 48th minute. The Ireland captain’s kids are waiting to celebrate another big win with their dad but the first person Sexton embraces is high performance coach Gary Keegan, who has been seated a couple of rows behind the out-half.
Always in the background.
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“Performance anxiety or stress, I do believe it was really relevant for us before and during the tournament.” – IRFU performance director, David Nucifora, December 2019.
Those words were always going to follow Ireland along the road to the 2023 World Cup in France.
Nobody needed to see the document to know Ireland had failed to sufficiently develop their gameplan and build on the highs of 2018. What was far more revealing was the admission that Joe Schmidt’s squad had struggled with the mental pressure of being the top-ranked team in the world.
“To be able to manage the stress and expectation of performance, I really do believe it’s an important area for us to look at and service better,” Nucifora added. “The whole area of psychology has to be improved as well as health and wellbeing.”
Twelve months later, Schmidt’s successor, Andy Farrell, brought Gary Keegan on board. His work behind the scenes has been a major factor in lifting Ireland from the ashes of the 2019 World Cup to an exceptional level of performance which has placed them right back on the summit of the world rankings. This time around, that status doesn’t feel like such a burden.
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You probably know that Keegan’s CV includes time working with the Dublin footballers, the Tipperary hurlers, Leinster Rugby, Irish boxing and Olympic medal winner Annalise Murphy, and that success has followed him every step of the way, but the earlier half of his CV is just as fascinating.
Keegan, who grew up in the shadow of Croke Park, had tried and tested a number of career paths before some of his friends had even finished school.
At 14 he started a six-month stint as an apprentice jockey. At 15 he lied about his age to land a job in a bar. Following the bar work the enterprising teenager embarked on a life at sea, joining the merchant navy at 16. By 19, another career change led him to the Irish army. In his mid-20s life had pivoted again, Keegan embarking on a run of overseeing a succession of small businesses.
A busy professional life didn’t stop the young Keegan from keeping an interest in sport, setting up Glin Boxing Club in Coolock when he was 18.
“I wanted to get out and work,” Keegan explained to The Sunday Times during a rare interview in early 2020. “I wanted to be a man before my time.”
Keegan expects the athletes he links up with to work hard. He doesn’t sell himself as a sports psychologist, preferring to be viewed as an “expert in performance.” He isn’t overly keen on the ready use of the word “culture” in sport, preferring to view teams and systems as environments that need to be “cultivated.”
And, like Farrell, Keegan understands athletes have a life away from their sport.
Ulster lock Kieran Treadwell, who was recalled to the Ireland squad this week, told The42 in November that a visit to Keegan’s office during camp might involve little or no chat about rugby.
“He’s very involved,” Treadwell said. “It’s quite free-flowing for me anyway. Some other people might want to keep the focus on rugby, but I always feel it’s more a free-flowing (conversation), you can be more honest and more trusting.”
That trust has been a pillar of Farrell’s Ireland camp. Players know they can be themselves and as a result, feel more comfortable in the environment. The knock-on effect is evident come matchday, as explained by prop Finlay Bealham, who is currently thriving in the system and playing the best rugby of his career.
“The first day (you come into camp) you know we want everyone to be themselves and get up to speed as quickly as you can, and most importantly be yourself, then express yourself fully around the pitch and to the lads, and get the best out of yourself.”
Happy people leads to happy players.
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The first time Keegan met former Dublin manager Jim Gavin, the pair spoke for three hours. It was the start of a relationship that would last five years and build an unprecedented era of success.
In his autobiography, The Hill, Bernard Brogan recalled some of Keegan’s work with that Dublin squad, writing “I can hardly think of a session where he didn’t hit the mark.”
One session in particular stood out. After Keegan spoke to the group about core values, character and enjoying the journey to their ultimate goal, he revealed a final slide which simply contained the word: WIN. Another core message which left a lasting imprint was “hard habits are hard earned.”
“In the hands of someone else, some of it could come across as abstract and pure corporate speak,” Brogan said. “But with him, you know he lives it, that he’s so passionate about it.”
The end of Keegan’s presentation was met with a standing ovation from the squad. Later that year, Dublin would become the first team to win five All-Ireland senior football titles in a row.
In that 2020 Sunday Times interview, Keegan revealed he never saw external pressure around the ‘five-in-a-row’ as an elephant in the room. “The elephant was the noise that was starting to infiltrate,” he told Denis Walsh. “‘Is that a factor? Is that making us tighten up?’”
This is where his work with Farrell’s Ireland is so fascinating. Having struggled to deal with the hype and pressure of being world number one back in 2019, this time around Ireland are wearing it with style. Farrell has called for his players to “embrace” the tag and the players have found Keegan’s work in this department to be hugely beneficial.
Most of his input takes the shape of individual chats with players, but he also occasionally addresses the squad in full. Much of his messaging is based around mindfulness and remaining moment focused when under pressure.
“He’s been class, he’s had some very good meetings with us and also one-to-ones,” explains Caelan Doris, another Ireland player in the form of his life.
“Lads have found that very helpful. He’s always knocking around, sometimes it’s a brief chat and a bit of smalltalk. Sometimes it’s a one-to-one that’s organised, go into a bit of deeper stuff. I’ve found it useful.
“My parents would be big into mindfulness and meditation as well. He’s a big advocate for that too, that’s something I go through phases with and some phases of not being so good.
That’s something he’s pushed me to be consistent with it, visualisation as well. Trying to be present. You might see us doing the breath work (on the pitch), taking a couple of deep breaths, that’s come from him as well. Trying to get ourselves back to neutral.”
That work has helped the players in how they handle setbacks on the pitch. Against France, Ireland were ripped apart by a sublime move, started and finished by Damian Penaud to put the visitors 13-7 up midway through the first half.
Ireland remained calm and responded by regaining the lead through James Lowe immediately from the restart.
“He’s a very, very smart man, who is able to identify and break down, or put things into a perspective that you understand as to how to make you better,” says Lowe.
“He’s obviously studied the mind and how people think, and I think he’s had a pretty significant influence on this team as a whole.
“It’s stripping everything back to the basics and understanding what you’re good at, and taking away some of that cloudy, foggy mindset that you can get in when the pressure comes on.
“Rugby is a pretty simple game at the end of the day. It’s about contacts, it’s about collisions, it’s about cleaning deep on rucks and creating quick ball, and when you strip it down and say it like that, it’s very, very easy; but then it’s about getting yourself into an understanding and a framework to be able to do that under pressure with 60-odd thousand people screaming at you and baying for blood. He’s pretty good at that.”
Keegan’s influence stretches beyond the athletes on the pitch. He likes to focus as much on the coaches as the players, acknowledging that they too have to manage the pressure to deliver success.
“Gary has come in and immersed himself in rugby. It’s not his first sport, but he understands the game,” explains Ireland defence coach, Simon Easterby.
He has a huge amount of experience and it’s invaluable for us as coaches to use him as someone we can throw ideas at. He makes sense of things that sometimes you’re not sure about. He’s been excellent for all of us.
“He’s massively connected to what we’re doing as coaches, so the messaging is consistent and he has individual time with players and has those one-on-ones which are invaluable, but they’re always connected to the game and how they can be better at what we’re trying to do.
“He’s a good sounding board for us as coaches but he’s also someone that the players feel really confident they can go to and speak openly and honestly, and try to do what we’re all trying to do, which is keep making this group better.”
So far, it’s working. Ireland’s defeat of France was the latest statement win in a 12-month run that has also seen Farrell’s side beat New Zealand (twice), South Africa and Australia. The France game represented a record 13th consecutive win at home – a run which started during Keegan’s first Six Nations as part of the setup (2021).
The performances have been excellent and it has been highly encouraging to see the players look so comfortable in the face of the hype and pressure such displays inevitably generate.
Of course, the real measure of Keegan’s work will come later down the line at the World Cup.
This time four years ago it was all beginning to go horribly wrong for an Ireland team struggling to manage that pressure. This time four years ago, they didn’t have Keegan.
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