INTERVIEW/KEITH EARLS: GERRY THORNLEYtalked to today's Lions debutant before he departed on the lions tour to South Africa
THERE’S A banner in the Moyross estate in which Keith Earls grew up. It has a picture of him in a Lions jersey and says: “Corpus Christi Parish Moyross. Congratulations to our Roaring Lion Keith Earls.” The first day he saw the banner it gave him a shiver, and every day since. “When I drive past, I get the goosebumps, to know that the people of Moyross are proud of me.”
The feeling is mutual. Earls is proud of his roots and is exceptionally grounded as well as a gifted young man. Still only 21, he makes his Lions’ debut today. It’s remarkable to think he’d never started a game for Munster before this season. Yet he’s already scored a try within two minutes of his Test debut, played against the All Blacks and scored 10 tries in 22 starts for Munster.
Heretofore he’s been given the Ryan Giggs treatment by Munster. But on a Thursday before his departure to link up with the Lions’ squad, he’s ready and waiting in the University of Limerick cafe.
In trendy jeans and t-shirt, he has the “street cred” of any 21-year-old and in response to some ribbing, he gently chides a couple of the Munster backroom staff that they couldn’t wear his look. Yet it almost comes as a surprise he is so softly spoken and unassuming, less so – given Paul O’Connell, Ronan O’Gara and others have admiringly said how he’s a credit to his parents, Ger and Sandra – that Earls is also polite, chatty and good-humoured. Over an hour later, he’s gone through his fledgling career in fairly minute detail.
FIRST AND foremost, he is, of course, son of Ger, the famed Young Munster openside tearaway; widely held to be the best Munster player never to have played for Ireland. “I looked up to him in a rugby sense. He did everything for me. He brought me training, even if he had hangovers on a Sunday morning after playing with Young Munster the day before . . . But in life in general, he always looked after me. He often sucked his thumb on the weekends to buy me a game for my Playstation or something.”
Even in Earls’s underage days with Thomond, his dad always made sure that he had polished his boots and that his gear was pristine. The day before he watched his dad play with Munsters at Greenfields on a Saturday. He was always looking to be involved, often bringing on the kicking tees for Mick Lynch or Aidan O’Halloran. “Back then the crowds used to be massive and I was a small fella giving Aidan or Mick the tees. Sometimes I used to say hello to my dad but he was so concentrated on the game he didn’t notice. I used to wonder why he was ignoring me.”
Another boyhood hero from early in those Young Munster days was Paul O’Connell. “Paul was one of the first professionals and one of the first superstars I would have got to know. Paul joined when my father was there and I used to always go over and try to talk to Paul, and try and be Paul’s friend. I looked up to him.”
From the age of eight he loved playing. “Thomond means a lot to me and my family. Myself and my father started there. They’re really passionate people, they never forget where they come from and they’re always proud of the club.”
Earls has league and/or cup medals from under-11s to under-18s with Thomond. “We were known as ‘the famous youngsters’ in Thomond,” he admits modestly. “We’d one of the best teams there for a long time but Thomond won the under-15s cup this year so things are starting to pick up again.”
He went to St Munchin’s briefly, but at first things it didn’t work out, and his parents moved him to St Nessan’s to be with his friends. “I was kinda depressed out in Munchin’s but then as I got older I made my own decision. I rang John Broderick and asked him could I go back to school in Munchin’s and play rugby there. It was fine getting an education as well, but the education didn’t work out too well,” he says with a smile.
When 15, while at St Nessan’s, Earls was invited to a rugby trial, an unusual invitation for a player from a B school, prompted by his games-master, Michael Johnson. He was surrounded by players from Christians, Pres, St Munchin’s and the like. “I knew one or two from Munchin’s but not too many and I was really on my own down there. But once I was on the pitch it was a different story.”
The story of his life.
OFF THE PITCH, he’s not especially self-confident, and such has been his meteoric rise he’s often been pitched into what he perceives as more established or older company. But however much he might look on in awe, once he starts playing the enjoyment takes over from the fear.
“I just love playing the game of rugby. You can lose a bit of steam when you’re out on the pitch as well and I just love to get the ball and do a bit of running.”
They had three trial games, and Earls recalls scoring about four tries.
St Munchin’s was different second time around, once again when it came to rugby. It’s always been about the rugby. He has qualified as an electrician but, partly inspired by Munster’s exploits in reaching the 2000 Heineken Cup final, Earls was determined rugby was what he wanted as a career; proof that heroes can inspire boys to become heroes themselves.
Some days, even in the middle of the week, he and his friends would walk the short distance to Thomond Park after school just to hang around. “We played ‘manhunt’ as we used to call it, around the whole stadium. It was good craic. I had loads of friends, Gary O’Donnell, Declan Cusack, Joe Hickie and some of my cousins as well.
“Some days Rog (O’Gara) would be practising his kicking and we used to run over and start shouting at him. ‘Go away scobes,’ he’d say, messing. He was always great craic. We’d ask him for socks and stuff, and a few of the lads told him I was Ger Earls’s son and then he came over and shook my hand and said: ‘Tell him I was asking for him’.”
Earls is proud of his father’s heritage and of his Moyross roots, the tight-knit community and loyalty, and is almost apologetic for the two causes of any disconnection from there. When he was 13, he met his “childhood sweetheart” Edel Magee, from Woodview, separated from Moyross by nearby St Nessan’s, which meant jumping over a wall and through a few gardens to spend more time there.
It’s only because his parents moved from Moyross about a year ago that Earls did likewise. Were they still living there, he probably would be. But at 21 he thought it a bit silly to be moving on with them.
“It’s only because my parents had a great opportunity to buy a house they moved. If that opportunity hadn’t come up for them I would still be living in Moyross. I love Moyross, and if anybody asks me on this Lions tour I won’t say I’m from Castletroy, I’ll say I’m from Moyross. I love Moyross and I’ll always say I’m from Moyross, and if someone bad mouths it, I’ll always stick up for it.”
When not playing rugby, he was usually playing football with Ballynanty Rovers. But, at 15, when his father asked him to choose between the two, there was never going to be much of a decision.
Earls was a flanker all the way through to Thomond under-15s until one day they were playing Garryowen in the cup. “One of the lads never showed up and the coaches at the time, Pat Didigan and Henry O’Neill, asked me would I play in the centre. It was like: ‘No I don’t want to be a centre, I want to be a number seven.’ I wanted to be like my father. Just this one time, they promised. But I enjoyed the day, I enjoyed being out in the centre and I stuck there from then on.”
Needless to say, he scored too.
In his second and final year with St Munchin’s they won the Munster Schools’ Senior Cup, Earls scoring in the quarter-final, semi-final and final against Pres, Cork, although it could have turned sour after he was sent off in the quarter-final when stepping in as one of his team-mates took a pummelling of fists on the ground. However, the mother of one of his team-mate’s, Liam Óg Murphy, was American and had a camcorder at the game. “Typical Yank as I say,” he laughs, absolutely no disrespect intended. “Liam was a lad who came in from Ennis and boarded at Munchin’s. A big fight broke out but his mother had it all on video so although I did get a week’s suspension I was able to play in the semi-final and final.”
BROADER RECOGNITION followed, although he would play for Irish Schools before he played for Munster Schools, only because he broke his ankle before the interprovincials. So how was Earls in that rarified environment? “Coming from Moyross I obviously wasn’t used to it and the lads with the Dublin accents. They were a bit posher than us, but it was good, I got to know a couple of lads. I like to mix, so it wasn’t too bad.”
Luke Fitzgerald, Cian Healy and Dave Pollock were amongst his team-mates and he blows heavily when asked about Fitzgerald at the time. “He was just a class act, he’s a top man. He was a bit of a superstar from Blackrock at the time. I remember our first game against England – it was down on Cork Con’s pitch – he was playing fullback. England cleared the ball and he just counter-attacked, and whatever he did, just a couple of steps, and I remember an England defender just falling back on his arse. His feet were ridiculous.”
After leaving school he played for a year with the Thomond senior team but it was felt in the Munster academy that he should be playing Division One rugby, and with Young Munster also in Division Two at the time, so he joined Garryowen for a year.
On his 19th birthday, Declan Kidney rang asking him to a Munster session in Thomond Park. “What a present! All the lads were really friendly. Peter Stringer was one of the first fellas to come up to me and said: ‘It’s great to see you here’. Then when I got home I found out my mother was pregnant,” he says the happiness of that day almost etched on his face.
As usual, he was initially over-awed on that 19th birthday. “I was pinching myself. I grew up watching these fellas playing rugby and I dreamed of some day hopefully playing with them and here I am training with them, and they’re talking to me and I’m actually passing a ball to them and receiving a pass from them.”
It was Kidney who gave him his break with Munster and then with Ireland, and it’s clear he’ll feel the debt for a lifetime. “Declan would have been my first professional coach and he’s a man who I’ve great respect for. His man-management is brilliant.”
He reverentially describes current Munster coach Tony McGahan as a genius. “The knowledge that man has of the game is actually a bit frightening. You wonder is he spending any time with his family, constantly on laptops and constantly doing research, it’s ridiculous.”
Last August McGahan pitched him into the pre-season game against the USA Eagles and the Magners League opener, a try-scoring debut away to Edinburgh. Against the Dragons a week later, his Gaelic football-like flick into his hands as he crossed the line for one of his three tries drew gasps from the Musgrave Park crowd for each repeat viewing on the big screen. He’d only made half a dozen starts in total when he made a Test debut against Canada at Thomond Park, scoring with his first touch on the ground where he used to play manhunt. “A day that I will never, ever forget,” he says.
A week later, he was pinching himself again, coming off the bench at Croke Park against some blokes in all-black. “It was class. If there was a break in play I’d be standing and just looking at Dan Carter and Richie McCaw, ‘like jeez, I don’t believe I’m on the same pitch as these guys’.”
Earls was frustrated the torn quad from the last pool game against Montauban ruled him out of the Six Nations Championship opener to France. When he was ushered onto the podium to collect a medal at the trophy ceremony in Cardiff, he did so reluctantly and doesn’t feel he deserved it.
EARLS RETURNED TO action in prolific form for Munster and he was tipped as the kind of surprise packet Ian McGeechan might incorporate for the Lions proving true with his inclusion today). He had been included in the provisional squad and on Tuesday, April 21st, Earls finished training and asked his father to come over to his house, just in case.
“I didn’t think I had a chance but I was still nervous. My father arrived out with my uncle and I was like: ‘what did you bring him for? It’s tough enough being disappointed in front of you’. So the three of us were waiting for the squad to be announced. Lee Byrne’s name came up first and he was wearing a Lions’ jersey, so did a few more, and I thought: ‘I’ve never tried on a Lions’ jersey, I mustn’t be on it.’ Rob Kearney, Tommy Bowe, Luke, Shanklin, Roberts, Halfpenny, and then my name came out! I just heard Keith and three of us jumped around the room. We went mad, absolutely crazy.”
The only other blight on his season was that Heineken Cup semi-final defeat to Leinster, “probably the worst day of my life”. The feeling of letting down supporters, team-mates and coaches was still raw.
However, as diversions go, a Lions tour ain’t bad. “I just want to go out and give myself a chance of being selected on a Test team. A great thing my father always talked about is Paul Wallace.
“He just went over as a replacement for Peter Clohessy in 1997, but he trained hard and his attitude was right, and he played in the Tests. He showed anything is possible.”
Indeed, a bit like his career to date, and to come, his tour could be anything. Talents and young men such as Earls don’t come along too often.
