The tour that just didn't deliver

INTERVIEW:Back in the home of Munster rugby, Ronan O'Gara talks to JOHNNY WATTERSONabout his Lions Tour and 'that' tackle in the second Test

OUTSIDE THE grounds of Thomond Park a man is pushing the mower in summer sun. He vanishes into the shadow of the west stand and all you can hear is the motor chugging and idle voices echoing around from a balcony up in the east stand.

It is early August and the Munster players have collected for the new term. They goof around, giddy with new-season promise and sprawl with bags of kit, boots, track suits and their new, even redder, shirts.

All have tales from around the world. Canada and the US and Eddie O’Sullivan’s Eagles; Japan and the under-20 World Cup; South Africa and the altitude of the high veldt. For the Lions players, it is their first week back. Others have been in pre-season for four weeks. Some like Tomás O’Leary and Jerry Flannery are still injured; Jean de Villiers has not yet arrived and the younger players, who are biting around the fringes, are coltish fit.

“The boys around here,” says Ronan O’Gara. “They’ve four weeks off and they’re f***ing back training after one.” Wiley dog O’Gara looks at their audacious efforts to gain an edge with suspicious approval. They look for angles. He smiles, but at 32 years old the outhalf remains vigilant and watchful of the other pack members. Today, though, he is grounded. So, niggles from “The Tour”?

“I’m struggling,” he says. “Knee, shoulder, hand – I’ve had them all checked. No major damage. I tried to hit the ground yesterday but I was off the pace.”

O’Gara-the-player would be nothing with out O’Gara-the-person. The two have never been easy to separate. In the merry dance that is a media interview he can be sullen and look at his shoe laces for 15 minutes or he can be engaging and provoking. Interestingly flawed and perhaps the most complex person in the squad, he can play the media but he has never been tiresomely corporate. Belligerent, clever, saturnine, intelligent, street smart and candid, he’s a product of Munster’s eternal belief that they are the best in the world, while reserving the right to savagely cut anyone down that believes in it too much.

But his tour to South Africa was not a happy one. A lasting image is of O’Gara holding the smoking gun as the hopes of the Lions crashed and burned in the second Test, triggering a thousand pub disagreements about what he should or should not have done in the dying seconds.

“For years you think you are the man and now that’s not the case . . . in their eyes,” he says somewhat discomfited by the realisation that for the first time in many years he has not emerged from a tour unblemished.

THAT KICK, that tackle. It was the second last kick of the second Test.

The kick O’Gara lofted high to Fourie du Preez and chased. The kick that led to his unconvincing tackle on du Preez that gave replacement outhalf Morne Steyn a fantasy ending to the match from 53 metres out, one that killed off Lions’ hopes of an historic series win.

And there was the earlier tackle on Pierre Spies that sent O’Gara wobbling to the defensive line before Jaque Fourie ran through him for the Springbok try. O’Gara’s 13 minutes on the pitch rocked with hapless incidents and prompted the self-serving former Lion and England centre Jeremy Guscott to say that he should “hang his head in shame”.

Captain Paul O’Connell, knowing the character of his Munster team mate, was more measured. “He was disappointed and very low but he is a tough guy and he is mentally very tough and that is his biggest strength,” said O’Connell. “What happened won’t be lost on him, no doubt about that.”

Plenty of supporters have been rolled out to list O’Gara’s lengthy honours list and revisit the matches he has won single-handed for Munster and Ireland. But sport is not about the mean average of a career and citations on the outhalf’s outrageous talent with the boot in other jurisdictions may serve to actually amplify the final disappointment.

In the meeting with Fourie, O’Gara’s luck was that he was required to perform his least accomplished part of the game, the tackle, when his head was still spinning from the earlier collision with Spies.

“I’ve spoken about it,” he says flatly. “I got knocked out [by Spies] and I tried to get back into the defensive line and missed a tackle . . . I was aware of Shaun Edwards [Lions assistant coach] in my ear going ‘are you badly hurt, get back off the ground’. That’s exactly what I was trying to do. I wasn’t really badly hurt. I was knocked out and didn’t really know what I was doing. I can’t recall the incident . . . I was knocked out. I just remember trying to throw myself at Fourie and I couldn’t see him properly, you know. So I missed him.”

In the match footage O’Gara is later seen waving to Tommy Bowe to prepare to push up as he shapes to kick the ball out of defence in the dying seconds. “Under the posts I kind of had a little time to get myself together. I remember calling [Tommy Bowe] . . . to kick that ball, chase that ball and I remember that. But that [decision] doesn’t cost me a second thought because I’d do the exact same tomorrow. People ask me, ‘would you not kick it out’ but it never entered my head to kick the ball out. I couldn’t see what a draw would do for anyone.”

O’GARA’S strength is that he has always backed himself and it has paid off most of the time. Last year it brought Munster the Heineken Cup, this year Ireland their first Grand Slam since 1948. Backing his rugby instincts has been profitable.

His garryowen call, despite the Lions at that stage being down two first-pick props and two centres, may have worked but the decision was exacerbated by what 2001 Lions manager Donal Lenihan called “a reckless mid-air collision” on du Preez. “Some referees would give it [penalty]. Some referees wouldn’t,” says O’Gara, suggesting fate played a role but perhaps missing the point that maybe he shouldn’t have carelessly fouled the Springbok and afforded the referee an opportunity to make such a critical call at that stage of a Test match.

“The way I look at it you want the win. I know a draw is better than a defeat,” he explains. “But it didn’t enter my head [to

go for touch]. I kick a contestable garryowen and maybe we’d retain possession, score the other end of the pitch if we could put ourselves in possession and score a drop goal. That’s the way my mind works anyway.”

O’Gara remembers back to the Rugby World Cup in 2007. Unerringly optimistic, he sees a similar storyline unfolding. After a month in Bordeaux the motley crew of Irish under- performers found themselves in the same popularity league as Pol Pot and OJ Simpson.

“A lot of it is on par with World Cup 2007,” he says. “That was hugely disappointing and we had to come back from that and show how to play rugby. I suppose in a weird way or an evil way or whatever way my mind works, it makes for a very good two or three years ahead.”

With distance O’Gara can look back and say that it was an enjoyable tour. But it has taken the month or so away from the game and a holiday in Spain with his family for the wounds to heal. When the first Lions Test team was picked he was crushed as Ian McGeechan set him aside for Stephen Jones. After the team was announced he sought out the management and asked them to explain the call. They did. O’Gara prefers to keep what they specifically said to him private.

“I was sitting in the meeting fully expecting to be selected. I thought I was in poll position. When it was announced it was a big blow,” he says. “I did expect to come on at half-time in the first Test, but that didn’t happen. With 15 minutes to go it didn’t happen. I was saying, I’m seeing this game differently from everybody else. I just got back to my room and thought I don’t think I’m in with a shout here.

“They talk about combinations. I don’t belief for one moment it was about combinations. I’d have no problem playing with Mike Phillips.

“I didn’t disagree [with management] because there wasn’t much to disagree with in what they said,” he explains. “I felt I’d get an opportunity but that opportunity never came and that was disappointing.

“Maybe this management had their minds made up that they wanted Stephen. The game didn’t go well for him in the first Test but they picked him again. I’d set targets, I was happy with the form and I was playing really well.

“Obviously now people will remember my Lions [Tour] for the incidents in the second Test.”

The debate will inevitably rage about his decision to kick high rather than long, whether he had fully recovered from earlier hit by Spies and whether he would have had a more positive effect if selected from the beginning. But claims that he wasn’t given an opportunity may fall on deaf ears.

“What frustrated me was with Paul as captain, I thought it was a great opportunity to win a Test series,” he says. “It was a massive opportunity in both our careers and I felt we left the Test series behind. I find that hard to take and the fact that I didn’t have much to do with it.”

Faithful to himself and in the comfort of Thomond Park, O’Gara believes it. It’s another of his strengths. Not the first or last time that he will filter the rugby world through his own prism.