D'Arcy delighted to be still living the dream

LAST YEAR Rob Kearney was put through the blender by the IRFU over the renewal of his contract. It was hurting the Irish fullback. It was hurting his family too, who were unused to seeing him, in a rugby sense, discomfited. He was coming back from injury, struggling to realign his name with the best fullbacks in Europe and might even have been allowed to doubt himself. Not a bad thing for the governing body when negotiating a new deal. They squeezed.

These past weeks Luke Fitzgerald knows all about the contractual clench. Fitzgerald’s confidence may be taking a bruising but he needs to look at Kearney and understand while the real peculiarity of the raft of Leinster contracts announced on Monday was it didn’t include his name, he may be tempted to hold out until his eyes water. “We want him to stay and he wants to stay and that’s a good starting point,” is as much as a Leinster official could say yesterday. It is after all an IRFU issue.

Contracts have become occasional battle zones between the union employers and the provinces and the more Leinster continue to flex in Europe the more relationships become fraught. Gordon D’Arcy added another yesterday when he pondered where to go and why to leave what is currently the best team in Europe.

A perception that Leinster is the gold standard also narrows options. While D’Arcy was among the 18 contracted players and two new signings to Leinster, the Irish inside centre had to arm wrestle with the union before landing a two-year extension. For a 32-year-old, who has never had to do much begging, he’ll take that.

“Obviously if it was a three-year contract I would have taken it. I was looking for the best, the most I could get and they were obviously trying to give the least they could,” says D’Arcy. “Listen, it was done very, very quickly. It was done very positively. How do you leave one of the best teams, if not the best team in Europe to go somewhere else? I have been in this team since I was 15. I’m part of this province in some way, shape or form since I was born. Everybody I meet who has retired says to me ‘keep going, keep going, keep going until you stop enjoying it’. And I swear to God I absolutely love it.”

D’Arcy is seen now to be a venerable war horse, you sense a light has been switched on for him. Another European final and again in the play-offs in the PRO 12 on Saturday week, his ability to trump the younger players like Fergus McFadden continues to cast him, along with Brian O’Driscoll, as ever relevant, the Bono and Edge of the Leinster rugby scene.

“Shaggy (Shane Horgan) was talking about almost a Leinster DNA and the way that affects the younger guys,” he says. “They relish the thought of playing for Leinster. I think it is a privilege for them, they know they won’t just get it. There is no sense of entitlement, they have to earn it. I think all these things are hugely positive for Leinster and I would love to be in the position to play for another two years in two years’ time.”

Leinster came through Sunday physically intact, Isaac Boss taking a minor knock on the head. But if D’Arcy has the respect the players say he has, his influence will colour the next few weeks. “I remember when Vinnie Murray was my coach at Clongowes and we’d go out in torrential rain and he’d say, ‘I love training on days like this, you get to slide in from 20 metres’,” says D’Arcy. “There are positives in everything. Joe (Schmidt) reminded me of him last week when we were training in horrendous rain. As we were jogging out he was like, ‘good players train well in the rain’.I thought, ‘Okay, that’s where we’re at’.”