A MEMORY CAME through the letterbox. Inside an envelope was a colour photograph of a team he used to coach. The faces were stubble free and innocent; the plain, collared jerseys a reflection of an Ireland that was poor and unspoiled. A letter accompanied the picture, sketching out an east Clare childhood in a series of idyllic scenes.
They played soccer on muddy pitches and in open parks, in dank Novembers through to green and blue summers. They were from a small village, these Davids, the townies from Ennis impersonating the big, mouthy Goliaths. David may not have possessed a sling but he had his own โSupermacโ, a farmerโs son from ten minutes out the road, who was devastatingly quick and skilled.
โSupermacโ was Noel McNamara, now the rising coach that everyone in Irish rugby is talking about, then a kid who hurled, ran cross country, played soccer, golf, badminton, participated in every sport really, except rugby.
You can see him in this photo, third from the right in the back row, wilful and free. Patrick Donnellan, who would go on to captain Clare to their 2013 All-Ireland senior hurling title, is third from the right in the front row, three years younger than the rest of them, utterly fearless.
The man in the back row, with the diamond jumper, was their guide and coach. โA great man,โ says McNamara of his childhood mentor, Gerry Buckley. โAs a child you donโt think too deeply about things.โ
But as an adult you do. You remember the little gestures, the pound note each man of the match received; the trips to the chipper after games; the constant encouragement.
โIt shaped me, those games,โ says McNamara. Gerry, his coach, was a Mullingar man, but work had taken him to Clare for a couple of years. That was when soccer in Kilkishen took off. Theyโd win a county cup; reach another final, punch way above their weight.
The more established town teams from Shannon and Ennis initially didnโt respect these little guys and thatโs why Gerry stayed with the team. Work had taken him back to Westmeath but for two years he commuted to Clare at his own expense; saw the Kilkishen boys through underage soccer, felt the glory of their big wins, the hell of losing penalty shoot-outs. โHe coached us about life not just football,โ says McNamara.
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So, years and years later, when a letter arrived through the post, Gerry remembered names and faces. The author was one of McNamaraโs team-mates who thanked his old coach for everything heโd done, getting the team up from nothing, providing them with a lifetimeโs worth of memories. Then there was a line right at the bottom of the letter.
โRemember Supermac?โ the author wrote. โHeโs the Ireland rugby Under 20s coach now. They are just after winning the grand slam.โ
โHeโs after doing what?โ Gerry thought.
Heโd watched the decisive game the previous Friday on RTร. โSo, thatโs the same Noel McNamara,โ I said to myself. โJeez, I was stunned. Like, he was incredibly driven as a kid, sincere, attentive, coachable; likeable. I knew heโd go places.โ
But he never thought itโd be to rugby. Certainly he couldnโt believe itโd be to Durban, South Africa, where today heโll coach the Sharks in the United Rugby Championship quarter-final. For some, it sounds outlandish, how a farmerโs son from Clare could end up as an educator in a sport he never played. But when fate and passion collide, strange things happen.
He came to rugby just after the game went pro. He got lucky. A college degree in Law and European Studies didnโt float his boat so he switched after a year to study P.E. knowing teaching was where his future lay, even if the money wouldnโt have been as good.
It was the smartest choice he made, because it put him on a path to meet PJ Smyth. PJ had a link to Eddie OโSullivan. PJ knew rugby and knew a personโs potential. In McNamara he saw a mirror image of his younger self, putting him on a path to learn about rugby and the decision-making process elite athletes make.
Heโd give McNamara envelopes stacked with research papers. Once it was a document filled with notes from seasoned tennis players who had cameras attached to their heads, to help them figure out what they were seeing. Was it the racquet, the opponentโs body, the opponentโs face? Another day, another document; this paper written by fighter pilots who had undergone training programmes around the decision processes they go through.
Between them, Smyth and McNamara transferred these concepts into a rugby context. โThat was my awakening,โ McNamara says. โPJ saw the game through different eyes to most in Irish rugby back then. Forwards should be able to pass as comfortably as backs, he believed; backs should be capable of being a jackal threat. Nowadays this is a given; back then this was a vision.โ
The tutor also had a vision for his pupil. He guided him through college, helped him land his first job and while McNamara calls himself an accidental coach, in truth, heโs anything but. A coach is drawn to a rugby field like moths to a light; they live their lives through a different set of norms. So, to mere mortals, the idea of sitting down in your front room at 11pm to scroll through three hours of gametape might seem a tad excessive, to coaches, the shortening of their sleeping hours is simply part of a daily routine.
This was the life he chose for himself when college finished. By now he was teaching, in Glenstall, Limerick. The Under 14s needed a dig out and while the person they turned to had no playing CV to talk of, but did possess something much more useful: fearlessness. โI was unbelievably open-minded,โ McNamara says. โI didnโt have a set view on how the game should be played. But I had no fear of failure. โHow do I fail?โ I asked myself. โThere is no expectation of meโ.
โIn any case, failure isnโt anything that defines you; ultimately it is your reaction to failure and what happens after that that defines your whole life. Iโd be very clear on that.
โWhen you train, you actually need to have a certain level of failure because if you donโt, you arenโt getting better. But the environment has to exist where there should not be any fear of mistakes.โ
That has existed right through his rugby life, firstly with the under 14s at Glenstall, later in his next teaching post at Clongowes, then in the Leinster academy and with the Irish Under 20s side, most recently with the Sharks, who he joined last July as their attack coach.
The best coaches, though, know that niceness has a boundary. While it is all well and good to possess empathetic qualities, unless you also have an edge to your personality, youโre really just a cheerleader with a clipboard and pen.
That was why the discovery of McNamaraโs attitude to sloppy errors โ โunacceptableโ โ was informative; why he knows he must look kindly on a playerโs struggle but be cold-hearted enough to realise there has to be a cut-off point. โIf the person canโt change, then you change the person.โ
This is a three dimensional character, weโre writing about, one who realised from an early age there was a world beyond the garden gate in Clare. In many ways he had it made, the secure job in a fee-paying school; the guaranteed pension, the freedom to pursue his passion for coaching away from the stress of a volatile profession.
Yet he gave all that up when a conversation with Les Kiss โ the London Irish coach โ triggered something in his mind. โAn element of risk can make you better,โ Kiss told him. More than that, McNamara had to be true to himself. He was always telling his pupils to follow their dream. Now he had the chance to do just that.
Thatโs why he took the call from the Sharks, why he said goodbye to the teaching profession, why he and his wife sat with their three children to say they were moving house. โIn fact, we are moving to a different continent,โ he informed them.
We can only imagine how that played out with his three daughters.
But if art does truly reflect life, then we have an idea.
There is this scene from Friday Night Lights, Peter Bergโs drama about high school football in a small Texan town, where the coachโs daughter, Julie Taylor, overhears her parents having a conversation about her fatherโs job offer in a faraway city. โOh great,โ the 15-year-old daughter says. โWeโre moving again.โ
The camera captures the subtle change of expression on the fatherโs face, as joy turns to confusion. The audience can guess his thoughts. โHow is my dream not hers?โ Julie turns and walks away. โThe doorโs going to slam,โ Eric, the father, the coach, exasperates.
Sure enough, the last thing the audience hears before the titles roll is the bang of a door, and everything about those little moments, the shooting of a programme in a real Texan house, with everyday furniture and gaudy lamps, allows your mind to drift beyond a football field.
We donโt just see a coach; we see a dad. We learn about an angst-ridden teenager, a wife torn between being happy for her husband and concerned for her daughter. We see their suffering, the effect mortgage repayments have on their lives, how a better-paid job can ease those issues.
Thereโs one difference: In series one of the show, Taylor had just one child. McNamara has three.
You guess telling them about the South Africa relocation was a tough conversation. Certainly the one he had with his father, telling him he was leaving teaching as well as Ireland behind, brought a reminder of the no-nonsense world he grew up in.
โYou are doing what?โ my dad said when I first told him.
โTo him, me giving up the pensionable job, that was the ultimate definition of lunacy.โ
Yet he did it.
โCoaching for me is an addiction,โ McNamara explains. โI love it, I crave it. Now obviously you can coach at different levels, and it can be very fulfilling. But I want to go to the highest level I can. Plus there is another thing. Every player I have ever coached always got the same message: leave no stone unturned to be the best possible version of you.
โIf that is the message you are giving, then you have to lead by example.โ
The good news is the girls have settled in Durban and a few weeks ago all three of them were in their dadโs office at the Shark Tank, Kings Park. โIt was carnage,โ McNamara says.
The look on the Sharksโ forwards coach, Akvsenti Giorgadze, confirmed McNamaraโs assessment.
โNoel,โ Giorgadze dead-panned, โis this happiness?โ
โWell, for me, happiness is seeing a team get better, seeing them score tries, winning, understanding the work you put in has an output.โ
But teams donโt always win. Even very good ones, like Leinster, taste defeat. The Sharks have had that taste six times this season, three times in the first four weeks of the season.
Thatโs the tricky part of being a coach, stopping yourself sulking when you walk through the front door, stopping yourself obsessing over the try that wasnโt scored, the game that was not won. Thatโs when you stop and recognise the sacrifices Sinead (his wife) and the girls have made.
Stuart Lancaster used to tell him this story, about how the life of a coach is one where you have to juggle three glass bowls in the air; work, family life, and your health. โMake sure none drop,โ he advised.
He works hard to get the balance right, referencing a piece of advice Joe Schmidt gave him after reading Stephen Coveyโs book, โthe seven habits of highly effective peopleโ. โThere is a story in it about how in this life you have big rocks, gravel, pebble and sand, and basically you have to put them all into a jar. Now the only way you can do it is by putting your big rocks in first, then your gravel, your pebbles and your sand.
โIn life you take care of your big rocks first and those, unapologetically for me, are family and work. And if other things drop off then so be it.
โIn any case, kids have an amazing habit of putting things in context. I came home after our early season tour of the UK.
โMy eldest daughter greeted me with a question: โhow many games did you win, daddy?โ
- โOnly one.โ
- โWell, why didnโt you win more?โ
โIt was a great question and the truth is because we werenโt good enough.โ
The following week he showed his Sharks players a clip of Brian Cody speaking after an All-Ireland defeat. โIt wasnโt the referee, it was not the rub of the green; we just were not good enough,โ Cody said. The point McNamara was making was simple. Forget travel, forget the difficulties caused by lockdown. โAs soon as we accept we werenโt up to scratch, we can get busy getting better.โ
The players listened. Theyโre certainly a different team to what they were at the start of the season, deservedly reaching the quarter-finals. A McNamara reunion with Leinster is on the cards if both teams win today.
Beyond that, who knows where this rugby journey will take him? All we know is he carries big ambitions and the motto of John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach. โAchieve what you are capable of achieving,โ he says, quietly. โWe should not be afraid of those challenges.โ
He never has been.
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Munster are looking good.!.
@Locojoe: They really are starting to look very good. Iโd expect a but win and five points and would fancy them to run Castres close in France.
I see Joey is trying out the new invisible skipping rope. They have it all down in Munster.
@DeShawn Jersey:
Carbery, โGee whizz Iโm going to be playing next to Conor Murrayโ
Murray, โHere we go againโ
Should be a pretty strong team picked today. Barring injury at 15 the only number Iโm not sure of is 12. He could go with scannell or blyendaal there with the other covering the bench. Looking forward to seeing carbery in the middle of Murray and Farrell. Also looking forward to seeing loughman and what he can do in a big game against a good side. Iโd expect a munster win by about 10 points I think.
@Jim Demps: Loughman is a good losehead he just wasnโt going to make it as a tighthead. He was right to leave, now with Cronin being injured he has a real chance to progress his career. Just hope he doesnโt end up going to the world cup with the US as that would rule him out long term for Munster.
@Jim Demps: Scannell starts. He might not be that highly rated, but in the last 3/4 years he has made that 12 jersey his own under successive coaches.
@Darren Byrne: I dont think loughman will be lining out for the states. He must be firmly on the radar of the Irish management for the future given that Healy, McGrath, kilcoyne and cronin are all in and around the same age and around the 30 mark now
@Jim Demps: guessing Blyendaal on bench to cover 12, Scannell to start( left foot), team kinda picks itself after that. Butterflies starting, can see Murray Carbery axis being what has been missing. Leinster have Jonnie, but Conor and Joey trump even him. 3 more sleeps.
Thereโs a Heineken cup or two in this young and developing squad.
@Paul OโConnor: naw, nobody is going to beat Leinster this side of the World Cup in France.
2nd row selection will be interesting in the absence of Jean Kleyn.
@retsnuM: Surely Holland comes in and Wycherley takes the bench spot, as he seems to have jumped OโShea in the pecking. In terms of locks we are a little light. DOC2 could cover but he is injured, maybe POM can cover in a crisis. Definitely an area we need more depth.
@Johnny 5: well there is a certain Tipperary man out of contract in Paris this summerโฆ
@Johnny 5: I agree re Holland and Wycherley but I seem to remember that OโShea looked good recently โ including in the heavy going in Zebre, I think. I really hope that he develops into Munsterโs Devin Toner โ heโs only an inch shorter that Dev, is still only 25 (26 next week) and has good players and coaches to learn from. Maybe uber-tall players take a bit longer to develop. As we know, 6-9 / 6-10 comfort blankets are very handy in the line-out for provinces and Ireland.
@Glenbower: I donโt doubt itโs possible and he has all the physical attibutes required, but he is back 2 years and looks like he is moving backwards in the pecking order. Itโs not like lock is very competitive spot for Munster at the moment. He is competing with Holland (33 and without the physical attibutes to be top level lock) and Wycherley (only 20), OโShea should really be pushing on and playing games if he is going to make it.
@Niall Collins: that would be great, but considering we couldnโt afford to keep him 2 years ago, and he has spent the last 2 years tearing up trees in Paris itโs hard to imagine him coming back. Plus the carrot of playing for Ireland at the RWC isnโt even guaranteed if he returned with the emergence of James Ryan and Beirne since he left
@retsnuM: Big Billy & Tadgh
Looking forward to this pairing. Suspect Cooney โ Carbery might make for a fine combination as well though.