RONAN O’GARA HAS never been a man to twiddle his thumbs or sit around waiting for opportunities to come his way.
So it was no surprise that when he announced the biggest decision of his professional life to date and retired from rugby, he was thinking a few steps ahead and ready to hitting the ground running with his next move.
On 1 July the former Munster and Ireland out-half starts a new life in France and his new job as a coach with Racing Métro, the Parisian heavyweights who lured Jonny Sexton away from Leinster with a lucrative deal that will make him the best-paid player in the Top 14.
After 16 seasons in the comfort of the Munster family, it will certainly be something different: a new club, new culture, new methods, new language.
O’Gara got his first taste of what lies in store earlier this week when he flew out to meet the two men he will be working alongside, coaches Laurent Travers and Laurent Labit. First thing on the agenda: brush up on the passé composé.
“I’m handy enough at French but with the tenses, I’m very rusty,” he explains. ”I’m far from fluent and it’s very important obviously because playing is probably easy but coaching and delivering a message, it’s how you say it as opposed to what you’re saying sometimes.”
And, often, who you are saying it to. When news of the move broke last month, it didn’t take a massive stretch to connect the dots between O’Gara, Sexton and Racing and form a picture in which Ireland’s record point-scorer would play the teacher; the man who dislodged him and made the green jersey his own, his pupil
“I don’t know where these things come out of,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not a kicking coach to Jonny Sexton. That’s part of the brief but it’s 10% of the brief.”
With Sexton away on Lions duty and preparing for Saturday’s First Test against Australia they haven’t had too many opportunities to pick each other’s brains, though there were a couple of text messages this week.
It’s different. It’s going to be challenging for the two of us but it’s great that the two of us are there. We’re good friends at this stage. I spent an awful lot of my last four years with Jonny Sexton. There’s huge respect there. I admire him, he admires me and that’s hugely important I think.We’re going to be there together, the two of us are out on our own: he’s a player, I’m a coach. I think if you’ve respect and friendship, it will lead to promising avenues.
Their new paymasters will certainly hope so but if the 10-hour marathon meetings with Travers and Labit proved anything, it’s that O’Gara’s brief will be much wider than a simple focus on his old sparring partner.
“I had a meeting with the two Laurents all day Monday and essentially I am their junior. There’s only two coaches and 42 professional players and I will be in charge of all of the kicking elements of the game which is quite a lot — strategy, restarts, defensive plays — and then I’m essentially a skills coach on individual skills, video reviews. It seemed to me that there was an awful lot involved.”
On top of all that O’Gara will have some involvement with the Racing academy and the next generation of stars but, he is keen to stress, that too is a relatively small part of the overall picture.
O’Gara, pictured with Aleashia Doyle at the launch of the 1% Difference Campaign in Dublin yesterday. (Sam Boal / Photocall Ireland)
“I think in the previous conversations I had with them they probably got the understanding that I want to do an awful lot with the academy. I want to do it with the academy because I want to know and understand how a young person thinks and develops at the start of their career. It’s probably going to be 90% with the first team, 10% with the academy.
“As I told them I’ll be there full-time. My whole family is moving, I’ll be there to work hard and there to learn as much as possible. I’m with the two best coaches in France.”
It’s only seven weeks ago that O’Gara was wiping the tears from his eyes, beaten but not bowed after that agonising Heineken Cup semi-final defeat in Clermont, but already he seems fully focused on the next phase and the challenges it will bring. Was it not all a bit of a rush?
I just wanted to go from something to something else, I suppose. I’ve always been hugely self-driven and I just wanted to have a crack off something. You can become stale by sitting around and it was important for me that I announce what I’m going to do as oppose to announcing my retirement.
“I’m finished from the playing point of view but I think I’ve realised now that there’s so much more to the world than the playing side of rugby and I just want to develop myself as a person.”
Paul O’Connell consoles O’Gara after the defeat against Clermont. (©INPHO/James Crombie)
Inevitably the talk extends beyond his immediate future at Racing, where he has signed a two-year deal, to his longer term plans. For a player so rooted in the Munster ethic and bootroom traditions, it makes perfect sense that some day he might play a part in the next wave of the province’s success.
He makes no bones about those ambitions — “that’s not for today, that will take a good few years to achieve” — but at 36, the time was right now to broaden his horizons.
“I think it’s hugely important because I only know one culture, well two cultures: there’s the Irish culture with the national team and the Munster culture.
I’m sure there are other ways of winning and other ways of achieving things so I need to see what that is. There may be easier and better ways of doing things. It’s all about combining the best methods and people and getting the best portfolio and coming back with better ideas.
