WITH LEINSTER’S INTERNATIONAL contingent heading into Ireland camp yesterday, the challenge for head coach Leo Cullen on weeks like this is to keep the group motivated and focused ahead of a Friday night URC clash away to the Scarlets.
As his players regathered at the province’s UCD base on Monday morning, his task was made a little easier by the presence of two-time World Cup winner, Kieran Read.
The former All Black captain was in London last week to attend a ceremony where the New Zealand High Commissioner presented him with an honour cap from the Rugby Centurions Club, and has extended his stay to take in a couple of days in Dublin.
Read took in Leinster’s defeat of Munster at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday before spending time at the province’s UCD training base yesterday, where he spoke to the group and caught him with some old friends.
“He’s had a bit of a relationship with Stuart [Lancaster], he came today and was very good with his time,” explained Cullen.
⚫️ | A very special guest.
— Leinster Rugby (@leinsterrugby) October 24, 2022
Former New Zealand @AllBlacks captain, Kieran Read joined us for today's training session.#FromTheGroundUp pic.twitter.com/rQuyCNiNol
“The lads were picking him up individually, but he talked at the team meeting at lunchtime and was great, yeah, he was very good in terms of his sharing of his different experiences, particularly because we’ve got a young group this week, it was great to have him in.
“He has plenty of different connections there, he would know Andrew Goodman and Mike Ala’alatoa, even Jason Jenkins, they played for Toyota Verblitz together. So there are some good connections there.
“He was in the UK last week so he came over for the game on Saturday and was around for the weekend, he met a few of the lads for lunch yesterday and I would have met him last night for a bite to eat and he was obviously in first thing this morning. He’s been around all day. He’s been great, very good, just in terms of mindset, he’s one of the iconic figures of the game, really.”
One of those who managed to corner read for some words of wisdom was fellow number eight Max Deegan.
“I was the one asking him questions, asking him about being a world class number eight and how did he get to that point. I call him the best number eight in the world for almost 10 years,” Deegan said.
“So, what did he do, what kind of small things did he do outside of training, the extras that he would have done. I thought he was unbelievably skillful. He could do things that other number eights couldn’t, and I was just asking him about how he fine-tuned his game and go from that level a lot of other people were at, to being world class.
“I think especially back then a lot of number eights were unbelievably physical, like [Pierre] Spies, whereas a number eight I liked was Kieran Read, or even [Taulupe] Faletau, where they’re very skilful, their catch-pass is really good, good offload, good feet, and then obviously great ball-carriers.
That’s kind of something I would look at in my game. The ability to catch-pass at the line, make good decisions, be a smarter rugby player than the opposition. I might not be as physical as some number eights, say over in South Africa, but being a smarter one. Being able to work smarter, pick my moments, things like that.
“I kind of found myself on the edges a bit too much and I’m trying to get ‘in’ more. More workload, more carries, more involvements, more impacts. That’s something I’m looking to do at the moment.”
Deegan himself has enjoyed an encouraging start to the season, captaining Emerging Ireland twice on their tour to South Africa and earning a call-up to the Ireland A panel ahead of their game against a New Zealand XV at the RDS next week.
The 26-year-old has been capped once by Ireland at Test level, featuring against Wales during the 2020 Six Nations before an ACL injury suffered later that year stalled his progress.
He’s keen to kick on again over the course of the season and having spent an afternoon in Read’s company, he highlights the former All Blacks’ approach around the scrum as something he can look to add to his own game.
“A few bits about little small things he would have done around the base of the scrum, like he would have worked a lot around the control of the ball at the scrum. He would have done little bits blindfolded.
“In the scrum you can’t always necessarily see everything, so he’d be able to feel where the ball is, to get in the right positions for the scrum-half.”
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Originally published at 07.00; Updated at 20.04
