THE WEEK OF the Welsh match started off in Dublin on a high note, literally. Christy Moore, a hero of mine, agreed to come to our hotel in Killiney at short notice and treat us to a gig. He’d done this in the past, but everyone appreciated the vintage show he put on. There was a little audience participation and a few of the players were given the opportunity to sing with him. The hour and a half flew by and everyone was in rare form as they retired for the night.
After such a good start, later in the week there followed what could have been one of the greatest catastrophes in Irish rugby. It started innocently enough. Following a training session at the RDS, the players organised a race between the various members of the management. It was handicapped, based on age and infirmity rather than ability, so some started on the goal-line with others dotted at irregular intervals. I began on the halfway line, a mere fifty metres from the finishing post. Geordan Murphy was the official starter and, on his cue, I took off like rain on the wind.
That was certainly the image I had in my own head. I was mentally composing my winning speech as I crossed the twenty-two-metre line in a blur, not a soul in sight – then both my legs gave way. The pain was excruciating as I fell, landing on a couple of the match balls that the Welsh Rugby Union had sent across for us to practise with ahead of the game. I was screaming in agony.
The players didn’t know whether to laugh or be concerned, so they split into two groups. I had an oxygen mask placed over my face as one or two suspected I’d suffered a heart attack. The only face I could see was ROG’s and I’m pretty sure his were tears of laughter. There was a good reason I hadn’t run that fast in thirty years. In the meantime, forwards coach Gert Smal had claimed victory in the management race but unfortunately for him everyone was standing around me, still flat out on the ground. Willie Bennett and Dave Revins, our masseurs, helped me to my feet and from the pitch before driving me back to the team hotel. The boys worked on me for four days to ensure that I didn’t miss the trip to Cardiff.
There was no way I was giving that up. To this day, I don’t know what made me collapse.
For some reason, Warren Gatland decided that Wales would occupy the visitors’ dressing room for the deciding match. The day before the game, I asked for the Welsh paraphernalia that adorned the walls of the home changing room to be removed. There had been a quiet focus and resolution in the camp in the build-up to the game. The lads were well aware of what the match meant. It was there in black and white (newspapers) and Technicolor (television).
It was impossible to get away from the hype. Players are different animals when they’re in a changing room, different in the sense that some like to sit with their headphones on, others will chat quietly while some like to be alone with their thoughts. You get to know the personality types and their routines. That day everything was in sync. Determination and focus are difficult to measure, but they were almost visible. You sense things and notice body language, you’re aware of a slight difference. I’m not saying for one moment that I knew Ireland were going to win – I’d enough to be getting on with in terms of my duties – but maybe it’s because I was more aware of what a victory would mean to Irish rugby that I became hypersensitive to my surroundings.
Maybe hindsight has provided me with a greater clarity of what it was like in the dressing room that day. When I remember being in the dressing room before the match, I certainly mix in what players have said since about how they felt – it’s not as if I was just sitting on a bench daydreaming about what might be.
As I have said a million times, I have a small role to play but if I don’t do my job, I’m distracting the team and management from the task in hand, so I keep busy. Obviously I knew what the day meant, but me getting agitated and pumped up by the occasion wasn’t really going to help. One, I wasn’t playing and, two, you don’t need to be Charles Atlas to get the top off a bottle of mouthwash!
I usually stand in the tunnel outside our dressing room as the players run out for the start of a match and watch them go past. For a brief moment, I felt very calm but that feeling certainly didn’t last that day and I remember being in a perpetual state of anxiety for most of the game. I forced myself to watch Stephen Jones strike his last-gasp penalty. I like to think that I know a bit about rugby. My initial reaction was that the ball had risen too high, too quickly. I closed my eyes and when I opened them Geordan Murphy was waltzing down the in-goal area.
I sat on a bench pitch-side for a few seconds after the final whistle. Slightly disorientated by the moment, I returned to the dressing room, stuck a bit of Christy Moore on the sound system and sat there with my head in my hands, trying to comprehend what Drico and the boys had achieved. My good buddy Ger Carmody came to find me and drag me back to the pitch where the celebrations had reached fever pitch.
In my fifteenth season as bagman to the Ireland team, I now had the privilege of witnessing a Grand Slam. I was completely aware of how fortunate I was to be standing there. The celebrations continued in the dressing room but at that point, I also began to realise that there was plenty of work to be done. Ireland might have won a Grand Slam, but the van wouldn’t pack itself.
In a way, though, I was too happy to care. A primary source of that joy was remembering Ronan O’Gara’s drop goal. I was open- mouthed when it went between the posts. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I did nothing. I stood and stared, probably sporting a silly grin. When I am on my deathbed, I want ROG to come and re-enact that moment. If he smashes a window in the re-creation, I’m hardly going to worry about it.
This extract is from Rala: A Life in Rugby and the book can be purchased here.
The Wallabies are coming to Dublin next year as part of their ‘Grand Slam’ tour
‘I believe I’ve put more into this game than probably anybody in Ireland’
