Planning to finish on a high in final season

BOB CASEY DIARY:The new arrivals at London Irish during the summer will inject fresh hope for my last stand as a rugby professional

PLAYING THIS game has been the central cog in my life since September, 1993 when I first togged out for JCT training in Blackrock College. That makes it strange to be writing that my penultimate season as a professional rugby player ends next Saturday at Welford Road.

As much as everyone at London Irish wishes otherwise, the only value of this fixture is to ensure qualification for next season’s Heineken Cup. The Tigers are already guaranteed a home semi-final while we missed the cut in what must go down as a hugely-disappointing season considering especially the standards of recent times.

Still, Leicester are always the same. Go into that environment thinking they may be half-hearted and a severe beating is guaranteed.

Two days later I go for my now annual “nip and tuck” with Andy Williams. The eminent knee specialist will give my creaking Debbie Magees one last cleaning. At this stage Andy is just doing what he can on my degenerative joints. It is only a scope so I will walk out of the clinic and be back jogging within three weeks.

So, this is my last off-season. There was a time, many moons ago, when I would put my boots in storage for the summer holidays. Nowadays I allow myself just a week of loitering around the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Such a blow-out is essential for any sportsman’s sanity. A holistic lifestyle must be observed for the other 51 weeks but those first seven days of a four-week break is about doing nothing. Checking out both body and mind.

I’ll go see the family and friends who have been pretty much ignored for the previous 11 months as I adhere to my obsessive career.

In the first few days I let my body shut down, essentially becoming a zombie. My mam commented one year that I wasn’t myself. She was right. I need that week to find myself again.

Then, as Vince Vaughn would say, I start making some bad decisions.

Some players simply go home while others go on a lads holiday or a sun break with the missus. I try to do all three.

I will over-indulge for a few days. I might go crazy and play two rounds of golf in one day (this takes on greater relevance so I avoid embarrassment at my testimonial golf outing at Foxhills on August 31st). We are not allowed play during the season. Damn it, I will order that bacon butty on the turn for the back nine – “With mayo and ketchup please”. Later that night I will even tap the forbidden numbers of Pizza Hut into my phone. There will be pints on the Friday night. And maybe some more on the Saturday as well.

It is important for your partner too as they have to support your sacrifices throughout the season. They sacrifice too but without the reward of playing so they deserve your attention and the chance to have some fun together.

By week two the attitude has to back to normal. I remember, back in my roaring 20s, returning to the club looking like Peter Kay. You are behind the eight ball from the off and it is a nightmare to get yourself right. It also sends out a bad message to fellow team-mates about your attitude.

It helps immensely that Shauna will train with me for an hour or so every morning. It makes it easier to get down to the gym and not the sun lounger if there are two of us at it.

As I’m entering my last season at the club, I am determined to make an impact and finish on a high. Understandably, there is no guarantee I will be starting every week so I want to come back as sharp as possible and ensure whoever is being groomed to take over the number five jersey will have to forcibly rip it off my back.

This can be a tricky time of year for coaches trying to deal with players who have vastly different motivations.

You have your regular first XV safely closeted in a contract, then there is the fringe player who is desperate to prove himself (they won’t be gone for four weeks, I assure you). Then there are injured guys who can’t leave the club until medically cleared – making the booking of a holiday a nightmare. The club don’t, and can’t, care about the flights you have booked.

My mate and London Irish flanker Declan Danaher finds himself in a tough situation having undergone two knee reconstructions. He doesn’t know if he will make it back next season. Deccie has a wife and two kids.

The next category is those bidding us adieu. Be it moving on to pasture new, like Seilala Mapusua, or retiring like Chris Malone.

Retirement in the middle of your 30s is a scary prospect but Molly has it all worked out. He takes up a coaching position back home at Sydney University while Seilala is off to Japan to play for the Kubota Spears after five seasons at London Irish.

We’ll have the club BBQ next week and an awards ceremony when everyone brings their better half. With a few drinks on board it can become an emotional occasion.

I reckon the average foreigner stays at an English Premiership club for three, maybe four, years. Your wife may have settled and children struck up good friendships but the nomadic lifestyle interrupts all that.

Seilala’s wife Ana and their son Jacquain have become an integral part of the Sunbury community due to their involvement with the mini-rugby. Ana is organising the kids rugby festival this week and Jacquain, of course, will be playing.

You make binding friendships with guys when you go into battle with them week after week. Yet there is a very good chance that I will never see Molly or Maps again.

That’s life, I guess.

Ten guys leaving with another 10 coming through the revolving door so there will be a first-day-at-school vibe when I return from my break. It will be weird not having so many regulars around but the new arrivals will inject fresh hope for my last stand as a rugby pro.