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Billy Stickland/INPHO

Pandemic-imposed time-out a world away from rugby's successful sabbaticals

Richie McCaw is one of a few high-profile rugby players to sit out six months to prolong his career. Covid-19 provides no such certainty for the current crop.

โ€œI HAVENโ€™T MISSED being stiff and sore on Sunday mornings,โ€ said Richie McCaw as he prepared to make his comeback from a self-imposed sabbatical in 2013.

McCawโ€™s case has been the bad penny, continuously turning up while weโ€™ve been rummaging around in search of positives for athletes during the ongoing absence of sport amid the Covid-19 crisis.

The All Black captain looked like a man eking the last droplets of willful energy from his body as he helped New Zealand win the World Cup on home soil in 2011. Four years on, he was in better nick, unburdened now by a foot injury, when he repeated the achievement in Twickenham.

The common consensus is that the six-month stint away from rugby served to replenish McCawโ€™s powers enough to bow out with that second Webb Ellis on the table in 2015.

Dan Carter wore the black jersey for the last time on the same night in London having also exercised a clause in his NZRU contract to take six months off. The captain in opposition, David Pocock, then took time away from the game in 2017.

In sportswriting, we may routinely refer to a playerโ€™s miles on the clock, the mounting toll on an athleteโ€™s body is not so easy to measure as the odometer on their cars.

โ€œPeople say it must be great, you must be feeling good, well, I donโ€™t actually feel that different,โ€ McCaw said in an interview with Otago Daily Times before his return.

While itโ€™s hard to avoid the assumption that there must a boost to be taken from the absence of numerous body-on-body collisions week after week, the Coronavirus pandemic presents a different set of circumstances for players and athletes.

There is not yet anything like clarity over how long social distancing will have to be sustained. So there is no finish line in sight for when life, never mind sport, will get back to normal. The current crop cannot relax on the comfort of anything resembling concrete timeline.

ireland-players-dejected Billy Stickand / INPHO Billy Stickand / INPHO / INPHO

It may feel like an age, but tomorrow marks five weeks since Irelandโ€™s elite rugby players last took to the field and suffered another dispiriting defeat to England. The provinces (bar Ulster who were scheduled to visit northern Italy) played a week later. So even amid all the necessary disruption, professional players on this island remain a long, long way shy of the six-month reprieve taken by the trio of 2015 World Cup finalists.

Physically, a break in play would absolutely have value when viewed as a part of the season as a whole: after pre-season began in June, Tests began in August and the draining World Cup season was then set to run right through to Irelandโ€™s tour of Australia in July.

Recovery for athletes is an ongoing process between taxing sessions and events. Though their peers in other nations are often expected to wear their boots week in, week out for the full extent of a season with club and country. Rugby players in the Irish system are continually assessed, monitored and managed with rest windows built in. The same management will apply, imposing rest windows if and when an intense series of fixture catch-up is to be played.

To walk into a bar or restaurant and for no one to give you a second look was actually really nice,โ€ said McCaw, summing up his refreshed feeling after his hiatus, โ€œafter a while the constant stuff here got on top of you. But you come back and you realise itโ€™s not that big a deal at all, really.โ€

There can be major mental benefits to this break for rugby players, particularly after a disappointing World Cup. However, as we touched on in these pages last week, social distancing presents its fair share of challenges for athletes. Irish rugby players are figuring out ways to entertain cooped-up kids, sustain a work-out routine and team unity withou proximity. McCawโ€™s time away saw him travel to the US, catch up with friends, take in a David Letterman show and go skiing.

Pocock used most of his time to join up with an anti-poaching group in his native Zimbabwe and showcased some ingenious ways of getting a workout done with a rope acting as the most state of the art equipment on show.

Carter, who was somewhat unfairly said to have taken a sabbatical when he signed for Perpignan in 2008, used his time in 2014 to follow McCawโ€™s path to the US, though his scene was more Coachella. There will be no such grand tours for players here, no matter how long the restrictions are in place.

And while the break away may well be timely for experienced players, giving them a break from the treadmill โ€“ metaphorically if not physically, stopping the odometer in the final third of their career, there must be a danger that development for younger stars may also slow.

For every trial for the individual then, there are multiple complications when attempting to slot them back within a team. Pocock and the Kiwis then had the benefit of returning to sides who had remained ticking over throughout their absence. Rugby teams in the current climate will have to effectively begin their season anew whether the fixtures before them are at the business end of 2019/20 or not.

Some players who were struggling with injury will take solace in the fact that they are not missing out on big matches. But when they resume training their fit and well team-mates will be working up from a similar base and it will be intriguing to see which sides settle back into cohesive patterns of play quickest.

Or, indeed, if they alter their gameplans to accommodate any rust accumulated during the shutdown.

Thereโ€™s no fun to be found in waking with a stiff and sore body every weekend, but players will be forgiven for missing the reassuring familiarity of it.

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    Mute Danny Mike Hennessy
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 7:37 PM

    And Iam one of them.. from Aherlow to Madrid Harps!!

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    Mute Felicia Spells
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 9:58 PM

    Thatโ€™s the legacy of Fianna Fรกil and you still will get idiots that will vote for them

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    Mute Steve M
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 9:59 PM

    Colm Keaveny says they have changedโ€ฆ.surly he couldnโ€™t be wrong

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    Mute Jack Strong
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:21 PM

    Of course they will, because their TDโ€™s great-grand-uncle 14 timesโ€™ removed handed DeV a glass of water in Bolandโ€™s Mill when he asked for a drink. Ironic really seeing as we replaced one monarchy with anotherโ€ฆ

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    Mute Fong Wannapho
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:27 PM

    Green Thumb.

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    Mute joe o'reilly
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 11:14 PM

    Itโ€™s sad to hear but money pays the bills not playing GAA.

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    Mute Plucky Duck
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    Dec 4th 2013, 11:59 AM

    If these guys played for Dublin there would be alot more help available to themโ€ฆ. Anyone elseโ€ฆ On your bike ladsโ€ฆ!

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    Mute YourAuldLady
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 9:57 PM

    Sad sign of the times. Our club were county champions 2 years ago, of the 30 on the panel 16 have left as no work in the area and 14 of those have left the country.

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    Mute Lad
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:02 PM

    What? What club is that

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    Mute Kevin Beakey
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 8:24 PM

    Ahhhhhhhh come onโ€ฆโ€ฆ.
    any of the 600 gone wouldnโ€™t have stopped Clare winning the all Ireland this yearโ€ฆ.

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    Mute Tomรกs Tiernan
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 9:17 PM

    Ridiculous statement!

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    Mute Paul White
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    Dec 4th 2013, 10:12 AM

    Clare ha..one back door all ireland in near twenty year and cocky all ready eh. Not even munster champsโ€ฆroll on next year.

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    Mute Kevin Beakey
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    Dec 4th 2013, 10:18 AM

    Yea canโ€™t wait back to back all Irelands

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    Mute Dave Dson
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:33 PM

    Incredible that they only went to U.K. ,U.S. and Australia. 100%.
    It was a very narrow-minded group of people.

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    Mute Spoddgy
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:41 PM

    And where did you go to Dave? North Korea? Iraq? Afghanistan?

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    Mute Shawn Rahoon
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:50 PM

    Spoddgy you left out Limerick

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    Mute Dave Dson
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:58 PM

    I am in Budapest. 8 years. Why?
    They may end up joining their armies and end up in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.
    Why not got to Canada, Germany, New Zealand, The EUA or anywhere in Scandinavia? They all speak English if that is their problem.

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    Mute Padraig Culbert
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    Dec 4th 2013, 11:28 AM

    Listen? Hear it? Thatโ€™s the yawning sound of ignorance. Mark it well because it is often disguised as informed opinion.

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    Mute Niall H
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 9:54 PM

    600 new club members in Dublin gaa?!

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    Mute W.j.d.
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 11:02 PM

    Ever hear a tipp man speaking English โ€ฆ. Ha ha ha here comes the red thumbsโ€ฆ

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    Mute Daddy De La Noche
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    Dec 4th 2013, 2:11 AM

    Anyone who has been to Tipperary will know that emigration is better than a life stuck there, coming from someone who lives here and will be leaving soon.

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    Mute Sean Lawlor
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    Dec 4th 2013, 1:06 PM

    You will be a major lossโ€ฆ Hope the rest of us can manage without you in the premier county!

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    Mute Richard O'Gorman
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 10:00 PM

    No worries, plenty have arrived to take their places.

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    Mute Reg Holdsworth
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    Dec 4th 2013, 2:02 AM

    Ya mary, more like a spent force!

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    Mute Mary Walshe
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    Dec 3rd 2013, 11:52 PM

    Kilkenny on the way back, in force !

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    Mute Conor O Callaghan
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    Dec 4th 2013, 8:02 AM

    The Tipp crowd are no good

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    Mute Elvio Verdi
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    Dec 4th 2013, 7:58 PM

    GOOD.

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    Mute Brian Hurley
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    Dec 4th 2013, 5:44 PM

    Is that all? Lucky they still have 500+ Most counties would be lucky to have 50

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