After a long and seemingly endless trail of trains, planes, automobiles and hotel rooms covering the Six Nations Championship, I arrived back home last Sunday and it was like stepping into a warm bath sprinkled with Epsom salts.
So on St Patrick’s Day, I put the phone on silent, placed it at the back of my socks and underpants drawer, and declared that any conversations regarding politics and religion were fine, but there would be no rugby talk. I needed to refresh my mind, body and soul.
On Tuesday morning when I liberated my phone from its sleepover with my underpants, I saw with some trepidation, that I had received a text from a young coach I had helped over the past few seasons. He had been an assistant coach with my local club in France, and this year he was placed in charge of the under-16s. He is a good man and a fine young coach.
As his team is facing a big match this weekend he asked if I could come to training and help on Tuesday night.
Mentally I felt I needed a break from rugby but years ago, in my first year of coaching, I had made a promise. I had contacted David Brockhoff, the only Wallaby to win the Bledisloe Cup as both a player and coach, to ask him for advice. Later he would become a generous guiding mentor. He offered to help me under one condition. I had to promise to pass on his wisdom and help other teams and coaches in the future.
So with “Brock” hanging on my shoulder, I dug out my training boots and on Tuesday night, reluctantly, I trudged off to train some under-16s.
The evening session was being held at the club’s original ground where for more than a century the ancient turf has been fertilised with the sweat and blood of the local youth. The single grandstand is a pre-second World War concrete warren of small “vestiaires”, all smelling of the heady combination of liniment and the desperation of those who compete.
The single-storey clubhouse is crouched behind the western goalposts, filled with the photos of long dead champions and a trophy cabinet stacked with the oxidised successes of the past. The long zinc-topped bar has witnessed many victory songs and waked too many aching defeats.
With volunteers cooking food and serving drinks it is a rugby Valhalla. Totally my kind of joint.
As the wind blew in the chill from the last winter snows on the Pyrenees, with some guilt, I had to admit that I could not have wished to be anywhere else on the planet.
In the beauty of the French culture, you know you are finally accepted into a French rugby team when your team-mates deliver you a “bise,” which is an air kiss on each cheek. There are more air kisses at French rugby training sessions than at the Oscars.
So my first task was enduring the double bises of the unshaved faces of several old mates before I needed to address some rugby realities.
Part of my task was to deliver a 15-minute session on the technical work required at the breakdown. Communicating effectively with your team in your native tongue is hard enough, but doing it in French is a real challenge.
Experience told me that young French players are like wild stallions. They love the freedom of open play and they detest the confinement of technical drills.
However, my worries were unfounded as these young men were students of the game. They listened well. Worked hard and attempted to be as technically correct as they could. They are good kids.
Their must-win game this week is a daunting six-hour bus trip to Oyonnax near the French Alps. They will depart at 5am. Play at 2.30pm. Then another six hours home.
And despite these odds, or because of them, they will fight, attempting to tame this game that refuses to be tamed.
As I looked at their young faces I realised that I was the best part of half a century older than these young men. Despite the generational difference, there was a link. A type of unspoken unifying gravity, that while we all loved the game, we also loved to compete. The communion of our club and the connection it created meant that we would hold together and stay strong.
While they practised defending mauls I watched their young hooker trip and fall to the ground. I then saw his hand get accidentally trodden on by a big second row forward in the maul. I witnessed the metal stud on his skin. It was cold and I knew it hurt.
He stood up and shook his hand. I asked him if he was okay. He looked at me like I was questioning his character. He shook his head. “It’s nothing” he said.
I knew he was lying but I could not help but admire him for it. Being mentally tough is a learned skill and he was learning. As players in Sydney, our fitness trainer would bark at us as we sweated in the heat of a preseason conditioning drill that “pain is weakness leaving your body”.
As I observed their practice I began to remember that the essence of our game is not on show in the Six Nations or the World Cup. Rugby’s true power resides in its original purpose. As a magnificent educational tool within schools, junior clubs and the community game.
Rugby in these institutions produces people who are dedicated, hard working, resilient and physically healthy with a competitive drive to succeed. And like our young hooker, they are tough and they take those positive attributes into our communities.
After training, as the players headed off to meet their parents, I knew what my friend, the coach, was going to ask.
“Can you come back next Tuesday?”
As the wonderful Patrick Kavanagh so beautifully wrote: “On the stem of memory imaginations blossom.”
Perhaps it was the memory of my own schoolboy coaches who helped to shape my life, or remembering the promise I made 30 years ago to a titan of our sport, or maybe it was the simplicity of this one cold night, working with an under-16s team. Combined, they shamed me into remembering so many things I should never have forgotten.
So next Tuesday, I will be back to deliver part two of Contact Skills 101, now fully aware of one other eternal truth − that we learn from those who we are humbled to teach.
