It’s the kind of job most ambitious coaches would crave. A high-achieving, trophy-garlanded, well-run, capital city club with an academy churning out young talent. Against that, there’s been the Joe Schmidt era. Follow that? Matt O’Connor takes a sanguine view.
“The expectation, and I’ve said it a lot since I’ve arrived, is a good thing. You’d much prefer it than to be coaching where the expectation wasn’t such. The expectation drives the environment to be good, and it’s easier than the alternative. It’s not pressurised in that regard because you back yourself to be good and you back the boys in the environment to be good.”
While he's from Australia, O'Connor would like to think he has something else going for him in that he comes here via four years as head coach to Richard Cockerill's director of rugby at Leicester.
“It’s a tough job if you’re new to the Northern Hemisphere and new to that level of expectation. It’s probably too tough a job. But off the back of the environment I’ve come out of, and the expectation that existed in that environment, and understanding better than most the ins and outs of European rugby, it’s a little bit easier.”
O’Connor likes to buy into the culture, put down roots and stay a while. But he doesn’t like to outstay his welcome and, while not in a rush about it, he is ambitious and has self-belief without being remotely cocky. He’s also his own man.
He left the ACT Brumbies in 2008 after four seasons as assistant coach when passed over for the job to succeed Laurie Fisher. “I missed out on the top job at the Brumbies that I thought I would get and probably thought I deserved to get, so at that point it was time for a new challenge.”
He then had five richly enjoyable years at Leicester.
Timing was perfect
"Everybody presumed we would be there for another 12 months without the piece of paper being signed. When Ireland came in for Joe and Leinster let him go the timing was perfect from our perspective."
His wife Jo and their three kids, Sara (16), Harry (12) and Ryan (10) are already settled in Dublin, with Sara in St Andrews and the boys in Willow.
O’Connor accepts the limited “windows” for training mean he and his staff have to be smart in using that time effectively and without being too radical. They are “nowhere near” where they want to be.
It’s no secret O’Connor has sought to improve Leinster’s line speed in defence, so as to increase turnovers and reduce the defensive workload.
As regards Leinster’s game with the ball, O’Connor says: “There’s probably a little bit more shape, although it probably hasn’t been seen yet, but there’s probably more emphasis on using the ball and deception, as opposed to recycling quickly and beating teams around the corner. That’s evolving. It’s not right or wrong. It’s a matter of using what’s been there before, what the players know, what they deliver on really well, and just getting a little bit more balance in relation to that.”
If there has been one primary influence on his career, it is his father Kieran, who played rugby league with Queanbeyan Kangaroos in Canberra at lock (equivalent to number eight). O’Connor snr worked with the Australian department of defence and when he was 27, went with his wife Viv and first-born son to work in the Australian Embassy in Washington DC for three years, thereby calling a halt to his rugby career.
To all intents and purposes, O’Connor was reared as well as born in Canberra. “A brilliant place. It gets a bit of a bum rap,” he says, in relation to its elevated and therefore relatively cool Australian climate, and also its image as a relatively cold, man-made city of government.
“But from a kid’s perspective, the sporting facilities and the ease in getting around and the purpose-built nature of the place, make it a very easy place to exist in.”
O’Connor is the eldest of four, and “fortunate enough” to be sent to Marist College; he played league on a Saturday and union with his school on a Sunday. “It was a great contrast because the schools side was brilliant. I think we lost one game from under-8s through to the first XV (under-17s) and the rugby league was battered every week.”
He played for Australian Schoolboys, whereupon his dad insisted he went to university. After a degree in education at the Australian Catholic University, O'Connor did a sports science degree at University of Canberra.
Keith Wood
He captained ACT for two years and in 1994 won his only cap, in a 33-13 win in Brisbane, when Keith Wood was among the Irish debutants.
O’Connor played outside Michael Lynagh and inside Matt Burke, with David Campese on the wing, Phil Kearns, Ewen McKenzie, John Eales, Tim Gavin, David Wilson and other 1991 World Cup winners.
“To be associated with all those iconic names of that generation was special. These were guys that I watched win the World Cup in ’91.”
O’Connor had a bit of a run-in with Peter Clohessy that day. “He stomped on me,” recalls O’Connor, chuckling, and stresses the knee injury which he sustained that day was a separate, accidental incident.
“It wasn’t anything malicious and I had to have surgery the next week, and that’s why I didn’t play in the second Test, and Dan Herbert scored first touch,” he adds.
After that Tim Horan recovered from his knee injury. “I couldn’t have played any better and I was never going to be as good as him. He’s probably as good a “12” as I’ve ever seen.
“We got married in 1995 and when the opportunity came along to have a crack at Super League I thought it was one of those things that ‘you’ll never do if you don’t do it now’.”
He played with Hunter Mariners in Newcastle, but they became embroiled in court cases. He was loaned out to North Queensland, where he badly injured his knee.
He joined Paris St Germain in Super League in 1997, who promptly folded. Whereupon a mate offered him the chance to play in Japan.
“We hummed and hawed but we ended up there for six years, playing and head coaching and then just head coaching.”
O’Connor was with Kubota Spears, who had just won promotion to Japan’s Top League.
In his second year he became backs coach, co-coach in the third season and head coach in the fourth, before he was asked to assist Fisher at the Brumbies in 2005 after the franchise had beaten the Crusaders in the final for their second Super title in 2004.
For three seasons, the Brumbies finished just outside the play-offs as four of the six players to have won 100 caps for the Brumbies gradually retired. The club have always had a name for developing innovative, cutting edge coaching.
"It was very much like the Leinster environment, or Tigers environment or Crusaders environment, in the sense that those significant players of a generation, iconic players like the Gregans and the Smiths and the Larkhams and the Mortlocks drive it to a place that they wanted to be driven to.
'Fulfilling'
"It was quite fulfilling to go back because a lot of that stuff we started in the early 90s."
He also worked with Australia A during that period, alongside Ewen McKenzie and Les Kiss, but when Fisher’s tenure came to an end, the Brumbies opted for Andy Friend as head coach. Cue the move to Leicester, and now Leinster.
So why be a coach? “I always probably approached the game with a coach’s hat in relation to developing my own mantra, and developing my own philosophy. I had some very good coaches throughout my career but it was always about challenging the norm, really, and looking at what you can do and not looking at what you can’t achieve in the game under any circumstances.”
He traces his “coach’s hat” to that contrast between his underage League and Union sides, and how the latter were simply driven by an expectation to win, and the interest from his dad, whostill rings each week with observations.
O’Connor has been here almost four months. “The place is very healthy. The culture is very healthy. The standards of the facilities eliminates a lot of excuses in relation to performances.”
The departures of Johnny Sexton and Isa Nacewa are liable to be followed, under his watch, by the retirements of Brian O’Driscoll and Leo Cullen as well as, conceivably, Gordon D’Arcy and Shane Jennings.
Win trophies and at the same time ensure a smooth transition from the last of the “golden generation”? Not even Schmidt, much less Michael Cheika, had a comparable in-tray.
O’Connor cites Leicester’s last two Aviva Premiership finals, when the team which atoned for the 2012 defeat to Harlequins at Twickenham by beating Northampton 37-17 last May had nine changes in the starting XV.
“So it can be done. The environment, and the robustness of the environment and the expectation of the environment, are massive drivers of the organisation. And my experience is that if you don’t have that level of robustness, for the right reasons, you can’t achieve.”
A helluva job, though.
