Trimble full of heart and fight to the finish

Ulster winger Andrew Trimble is engagingly honest, about his own contribution for Ireland and in his praise for fellow winger Tommy Bowe, writes GERRY THORNLEY

THE 80 minutes were up against Italy. The game was too, by a long way, but Andrew Trimble still had some unfinished business. So when Eoin Reddan quick-wittedly moved turnover ball to Trimble, he saw a tiring Italian sit off, deduced that everybody was knackered and set off on a 60-metre gallop untouched to the corner.

The only problem was that Trimble was fairly knackered himself. In his second game in five weeks, he had already been cramping up badly. “Yeah, I tried to get up (after falling over the line) but I couldn’t. I was going: ‘I am so glad this is the last play of the game’. I was exhausted.”

There’s a trademark smile at the self-deprecating memory, but also relief that he’d scored. Against Russia in the World Cup, he’d ended a barren run stretching back 21 Tests (admittedly many off the bench dating back to a try against Namibia in the previous World Cup. The try against Italy was his first in the Six Nations for 18 Tests (again, the majority off the bench) since he scored against France in 2006.

Yeah, he was due one. He knows it. “I don’t know what’s going on. Just jealousy, so much jealousy of Tommy,” he says of his fellow Irish wing, way out there on his own with five tries in the championship. “Just everything he does just turns to gold. Fair play. He’s just brilliant at reading the game, he knows the game so well and there’s a lot of characteristics there I envy a lot.”

Such honesty is rare, but as well as being a polite, well-mannered and even-tempered bloke, Trimble is also engagingly honest. “Tommy just happens to be in the right position but I mean there’s no way that’s continually a coincidence. Every week, he just gets into the right position, scores a lot of tries and has a big impact on the game. That’s just appreciating where the ball is going to be, just being able to use your energy more efficiently.”

He enjoys being in the back three with Bowe and maintains they have many similarities, not least in a shared liking for the fast-up, umbrella defence belatedly unveiled last Sunday at Stade de France last week.

“I think it just takes a lot of pressure off you. Whenever you get off the line and you make reads and as long as everybody is making reads, even if you’re getting things wrong, it still put the guys with the ball under an awful lot of pressure and they have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to get round you or to get through you.”

Not that he’d preach playing like that ever week. “It’s handy to have that in your armour.”

From next season on, of course, Trimble will have Bowe as an Ulster team-mate – and also heightening the pressure for wing spots. “I know, go on the left mate, would you,” he quips, before lauding the prodigal returns of both Bowe and Roger Wilson, team-mates from Trimble’s breakthrough years from 2005 onwards, relatively carefree seasons too which he thus remembers fondly.

They’re home-grown too, he points out, and he is clearly a little peeved so many attribute Ulster’s upward graph solely to their recruitment drive.

“I think there’s an obvious criticism of Ulster, with the South Africans and I don’t like that. I’m sure people are going to jump to those conclusions, that these South Africans have come in and changed the way we play. That’s not the way it is. They’ve come in and brought something, certainly, but they’ve developed bits and pieces and we’ve developed at the same time, and in a big way and, important to know that.”

Trimble attributes Ulster’s improvement to the small details, such as making the right decision at the right time; being a little more streetwise to add to the game plans, the physicality and the intensity. He looks around the Ulster dressingroom and believes they have a “quality outfit” now but again becomes a little jealous when he thinks further in-field.

“I can’t help finding it a little bit frustrating, the emphasis on Munster and Leinster,” he says, but quickly acknowledges there’s only one solution. “How do you force your way in there? You play them at Thomond Park in a quarter-final and you win and that’s the only way you can do that. We’re not going to be considered as serious contenders for European Cups, Magners or Pro 12s, I think, until we produce a big performance and a result like that. I think that is the only chance of getting a real sea change and a different approach to what’s going on with Irish rugby.”

There’s been no banter about that upcoming Munster-Ulster quarter-final in camp. They’re in Irish-mode now. These are good times in his career with Ulster and Ireland. Even though frustrated at being on the bench for much of the World Cup, he felt in good form and that he was making a positive contribution. That’s critical for him.

He reflects on the bad times, circa 2009, when playing with pain in his knee and then a lengthy absence after surgery. It was the making of him in some respects though, and keeps him grounded.

Even in the midst of a horror night on the summer tour of 2010 in New Plymouth, when beaten 66-22 by the All Blacks, Trimble resolved there and then to just have a go.

“I don’t want to be in a position where we have to get a hiding for me to say, stuff it, I’m going to get involved here but that’s the way it was that day. We had nothing to lose and I just tried to get involved as much as possible, and show a little bit of heart and a little bit of fight and just a bit of dogged sort of mentality.”

You mention his blinding footwork that night, something he still works on regularly in the current Irish camp, and he notes, again at his own expense: “(Clement) Poitrenaud is definitely doing plenty of work on his feet, isn’t he?” in reference to the way the French fullback did him like a kipper last week.

He reflects fondly on those earlier years, “everything being new and being so, so enthusiastic about everything”. Now that he’s older, he worries more. “You start worrying, what am I going to do after rugby? I’m going to be unemployed. But that’s not something you think about when you’re 20.”

This is the new climate we live in, and his wife Anna is working as a junior doctor in a hospital in Dundee. “She didn’t get a job at home so there’s a lot of travelling over the weekends and stuff. It’s not ideal at all, it’s very frustrating but you just have to make do.”

Also, the older he becomes the more impatient he becomes to leave his mark. He says he’s felt a little anonymous in the last couple of games. “I just want to keep pushing it. I’m be careful enough about setting targets – where I want to be in six months’ time. But, for me, I want to finish off the Six Nations well. I want to feel like I’ve created more of an impact on the game than I have done in the last couple of matches. I want to use that enthusiasm and that confidence and bring it through to Europe and towards the end of the season.” He pauses. “I just want to perform well,” he says.

That’s all. But he wants it desperately.

Life away from rugby

Golf: "I'm playing a bit of golf at the minute but I'm struggling for a bit of form. I came back from the World Cup playing out of my skin, never played so well in my life, and then I haven't played well since really. I came back with golfer's elbow actually. I didn't play hardly any rugby and came back with golfer's elbow."

Cinema: "There's crap on at the cinema at the minute. My favourite movie of all time is Leon, with Jean Reno."

Your three favourite people in the world to ask around for dinner? "I'll invite around Jean Reno actually and Eric Cantona. I'll bring around Cantona because he'd be good craic. Actually, I'll bring around Balotelli as well. He'd be good craic."