Painful defeat but belief is still strong

ON RUGBY:Unfortunately sport, like life, is about taking chances and we weren't clinical enough against Leinster at Twickenham on Saturday evening, writes BOB CASEY

MANY EMOTIONS vied for prominence when referee Nigel Owens blew his whistle for a final time at Twickenham on Saturday night. The most obvious and instantly suffocating was one of crushing disappointment. A Heineken Cup campaign that began so brilliantly merely exacerbated just how awful we felt in the immediate aftermath of the game.

The damage was done at an earlier juncture in the pool in losing those two matches to the Scarlets. The phrase highs and lows of professional sport can probably be filed under “cliche” but it is one with which I empathise.

I don’t consider my profession to be in any way superior to many other trades but in talking to friends, family and people in general over the years I have come to appreciate that in professional sport we are very privileged in terms of the occasional high points, that moment of raw, undiluted pleasure that comes through mental and physical excellence doing what we love.

In many jobs the low moments would not be as extreme. After our penultimate pool defeat to the Scarlets I did not want to talk to anyone for days. Messages went unanswered, calls unreturned. Everyone differs in how they deal with disappointment but it’s a bit of an anomaly in that even though you play a team game, you feel incredibly alone following a poor collective performance – I find it very hard to reconcile my feelings and literally have to force myself to fulfil the post-match duties that go with the role of captaincy.

I slept for one hour the night we got back from the Scarlets because of recurring flashbacks to that match. The mistakes spool though your mind over and over again. I don’t think I slept properly for about three nights.

One thing that certainly cheered me up was the performance of Munster flanker Alan Quinlan. He produced an amazing performance against Northampton, especially for someone old enough for the free travel – when you reach a certain age it’s nice to think that you might still have a few years left. I’d also see it in the way Mike Catt conducts himself.

Last Monday I couldn’t approach the other players like some 6ft 8ins Grim Reaper. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and get on with things and it was hugely important that we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves. We were going to have some fun and that was an order.

The Heineken Cup is a superb tournament in every respect and it is when you’re deprived of any further participation that the pain is most acute. We know that we are a good team despite the hiccups but we have to discover how to become a great one.

There is a fixed window for us as a group of players.

We need not look any further than Leinster. They were pilloried in some quarters as under-achievers for so long yet they didn’t buckle, kept working towards a goal and got there in the end. There are certain hurdles we must jump that Leinster and Munster wouldn’t encounter.

We have a fantastic set of supporters who come from all over London but we’ll probably never really have a local identity. We train in Sunbury, we play in Reading. What we do have though is each other and it’s that fantastic spirit within the squad that has got us so far and is capable, with a little bit of good fortune and some rebuilding, to where we want to go as a club.

We put the Scarlets game to bed with a promise that we would never produce that type of performance again, ever. I picked up a slight back strain but it was actually a calf problem that threatened by participation against Leinster. It went rock hard during the warm-up and I thought, firstly that I mightn’t make the start, then wondered whether I’d get to the interval. In the end I managed the whole game.

We won 100 per cent of our lineout ball and once again caused them severe difficulties on their throw-in, pinching several. We were dominant on our own scrum ball, particularly in the second half when we had them under huge pressure.

Our breakdown work improved hugely in the second half having given away a few turnovers during the first 40 minutes. I thought our defence was excellent after the break and that we dominated territorially and in terms of pressure.

Unfortunately sport, like life, is about taking chances and we weren’t clinical enough.

We were inaccurate at times and probably overindulged in going for little chips but I have to say that despite coming up short of where we wanted to be at the full-time whistle I am proud of the boys. I couldn’t have asked for any more effort or commitment. I got the boys on their feet in the dressingroom and Paul Hodgson, our scrumhalf, spoke very well.

We do believe that we are good enough to do something special. It might not be in this season’s Heineken Cup but we still have a couple of other tournaments to chase after and given some decent luck with injuries can harbour genuine expectations.

I went to O’Neill’s Irish bar in Richmond after the match with my parents, my girlfriend, Shauna, and her family. The Leinster fans were gracious. Yesterday I managed to enjoy a lovely lunch with the families and having been given a couple of days off I’ll go up to Northampton to see Barry Everitt as I am godfather to his youngest.

It would be remiss in the week in question not to pay a tribute to the voice of rugby, Bill McLaren. My favourite memory was when he said during a match commentary that he had been speaking to the then Irish coach Murray Kidd who had said to McLaren about Ken O’Connell “that he (O’Connell) would run through a brick wall and then come back and rebuild it for you”

To cap it all Maynooth lost in the All-Ireland Intermediate club football semi-final. It proved to be one of those weekends.

NB: In last week’s column there was a reference to the fact the minimum Guinness Premiership salary of a player was £75,000 (€85,500). It should have stated average rather than minimum.

“The Heineken Cup is a superb tournament and it is when you’re deprived of any further participation that the pain is most acute . . . To cap it all Maynooth lost in the All-Ireland Intermediate club football semi-final. It proved to be one of those weekends