Mature leader braced for the ultimate test

RUGBY/INTERVIEW RORY BEST:RORY BEST made his debut against the All Blacks in the grim autumnal campaign of 2005 when he came on with four minutes to go in the 45-7 defeat. So would begin a fairly peripheral start to his Test career.

Then 23, Best would be on the bench for the ensuing eight Tests. He appeared for three more minutes against Australia and came on in the 80th minute in the Six Nations, with Ireland leading Wales 31-5, before again being an unused sub in both of the June defeats to the All Blacks. Three caps totalling a paltry eight minutes from his first nine selections on the bench.

“Is that what it was? Jeez, I don’t even like to think about it,” he says. It looks like another case of Eddie O’Sullivan’s aversion to using the bench but Best assumes all responsibility. “I probably wasn’t in the greatest shape. I was more like a prop forward then if I was being brutally honest about it.”

It was getting up close – if not too personal – to the All Blacks in the 34-23 and 27-17 defeats which, he says, were his big wake up call.

“There was one moment in the second Test when I got the call to come on. I stripped off with about 25 minutes to go but never came on and Niall O’Donovan came up and told me the message had been mixed up. It was supposed to be Neil Best to come on. And I just said: ‘to be honest, I’d rather you hadn’t told me that’. But that was the big one that told me ‘I’m not ready for this standard yet.’”

Having only made his Ulster debut a year before his first Irish cap, he put in a serious pre-season later that summer and with Jerry Flannery injured chances came quickly and regularly. Flannery’s greater dynamism was often preferred until his calf problems of the last two seasons. But when Flannery briefly returned at the last World Cup, Best admits the presence of his friend and rival brought the best out of him.

“I knew the pressure was on, that I had to bring something more, and that’s why it was so good. When he pulled out of the World Cup, me and him had a few drinks and because we’d been through so many tests neck and neck it was quite sad. I was very sad for him and I did hope that he would come back.”

By then, Best has taken ownership of the Irish number two jersey and there’s more of a chest-out presence about him now. Aside from the ex-prop’s renowned scrummaging and improved darts, he is immensely strong in the tackle and particularly good at bouncing to his feet to contest for the ball on the ground, while also carrying more. His leadership has also become more valued. While you wouldn’t rule Paul O’Connell out of the next World Cup, failing that, the Ulster man looks best placed to lead Ireland to England in 2015.

Sitting on a high stool looking out on a wet and windswept Auckland day, Best had just completed his afternoon weights session and admits to feeling more confident in his Irish team surroundings nowadays. Returning from a neck operation in August 2009, to be recalled to the Irish bench after 50 minutes for Banbridge and 40 minutes for Ireland ‘A’ and then to start the final three games of that Six Nations had been a big lift.

“It was nice to feel you were needed by your country.”

There had been a certain symmetry to that comeback. Following in the path of his grandfather Don and father John, and where brother Simon is now assistant coach, Best had started playing with Banbridge under-8s.

A particularly fond memory, up there with all the big Ulster and Irish games, is one outing for the Banbridge fourths when John, Mark (a scrum-half) and the then 18-year-old Rory all played.

His father is a farmer in Poyntzpass and, on leaving Portadown College, Best also emulated his father and older brothers by studying the first two years of his agriculture degree in Newcastle. Indeed, it was while studying there that John Best had met the future Pat Best, who hails from Middlesbrough.

Best also played for the Newcastle Falcons under-20s before transferring to Queen’s. “It was good craic but that’s why I could only do two years of it. If I’d done a third I’d be very surprised if I was sitting here now.”

Allen Clarke, one of the most astute talent-spotters in Irish rugby, brought Best into the Ulster academy, as well as steering him to the newly promoted Belfast Harlequins under the slightly zany but helpful coaching of Andre Bester.

Besides his family, Clarke was one of the most influential figures in Best’s formative years and, as an ex-hooker, this included one-on-one scrummaging sessions in Clarke’s office. “If somebody had been looking through the window they would have thought ‘what are these two idiots up to?’”

Simon was also a guiding light. “Coming from a fairly rural background and a school that wouldn’t be known for its rugby to Ulster, where all the Belfast guys knew each other, I found it tough enough. So it was good having him in the Ulster squad and then the Irish squad.”

There has also been much to remind Best of how precarious a rugby career can be, notably the heart condition which prompted a sudden end to Simon’s career midway through the 2007 World Cup. Dr Gary O’Driscoll had been a huge source of comfort to the Best family then, and they took solace in there being more to life than rugby, not least life itself.

“That softened it a bit, and he’d played until his 30s and had been involved in Triple Crowns and achieved a lot. Me and him had also played together at Murrayfield in ’07.”

There was also the enforced retirement of his good friend Denis Leamy. It hit Best hard when asked who he wanted to room with on this tour. He can’t remember the last tour when he didn’t room with Leamy. He’s rooming with Darren Cave.

“You need the earplugs for that,” Best says good-naturedly.

“He doesn’t stop. Talk, talk, talk.” All of this, along with his own neck problem made him realise “this isn’t going to last forever, much as I’d love it to.”

Also luring him home from Newcastle at the time was the fact that his then girlfriend, Jodie, was studying to be a teacher in Belfast, and they have since married and moved to one of the 200-acre out-farms on his parents’ farm. When convalescing from the aforementioned disc operation, he began buying pedigree Aberdeen Angus cattle with his father.

“We have a joint herd of about 29 cows now. In the summer after training if it’s a bad day I’ll spend about an hour looking around them to give me a bit of release.” Jodie has also given birth to Ben, who will blow out two candles on the day of the third Test against the Kiwis in Hamilton.

“Rugby is obviously very, very important but I don’t get so fixated with the future and just worry about now. A couple of years ago I was so obsessed; ‘I have to play well for Ulster because I want to play for Ireland.’ You plan ahead and lose focus with what’s in front of you. The neck played a part in that but also Ben being born. And when you get a wee bit older you get a wee bit more relaxed.”

The neck operation also prompted him to readjust his throwing technique with help from Clarke and invent the “contraption” which he built in his barn. “It’s an old meal bin for feeding cattle and I kind of cut it and welded it and put a target in it. It’s a big, free-standing structure and it loops the ball back round and I can throw whatever, 70 or 100 balls.” He should patent it.

Since that debut and those two wake-up calls on the bench, Best has suffered three more defeats to the All Blacks. No team has beaten the Kiwis more than the Springboks and he takes succour in the attitude fostered by his South African team-mates at Ulster, notably in the way they stormed Munster’s Thomond fortress, to show anything is possible.

“Sometimes it just takes sheer bloody-minded aggression, just forget about your body and throw everything into it.” No better man than Best for that.