FAR FROM THE growing hype of a Six Nations, Test rugby international Rob Gannon starts his Saturday mornings by watching a snow plough dig out a patch of green turf in Oslo.
You have to work a little harder to play the sport you love when you’re outside the traditional hotspots.
The Dubliner is braving the sub-zero Scandinavian temperatures to shape up for the new domestic season with Oslo Rugby Klubb.
The campaign will be a short one in terms of fixtures on the board, but when he’s not marshalling the Oslo RK back-line against Stavenger or Bergen, he is uniting the best players from those clubs under the Norwegian flag.
Working in a marketing firm, the 29-year-old is thoroughly enjoying the Scandinavian pace of life and its sensible, balanced working days… but rugby? He could do with some more of that.
“St. Mary’s, that was like six days a week,” the utility back says of his club days in Templeville Road.
“Training on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Break on a Friday, game on Saturday and recovery on Sunday.”
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“Here,” he says while The42 shudders at the mention of temperatures around the -15 mark, “during the season it will turn into twice a week with a game on the Saturday, but the club might only have eight games in the whole year.”
In a school side containing Jonathan Sexton (a year older), Gannon was a talented fullback with an innate ease under high balls. He was kept in close quarters with Leinster’s academy during his formative years, but missed out on the call to represent Ireland schools while peers like Cian Healy and Luke Fitzgerald easily made the grade.
Rugby in Norway is unquestionably a minority sport, but immigrants to the nation are helping to bolster the skill-set and, with time, spreading the gospel of the oval ball game to reach more homegrown players.
You go from playing with Jonathan Sexton as my number 10 to playing with guys who have stumbled upon the sport in the park as we’re playing.
“You get a lot of guys who have played at a good level in England or France. Some very good ones, we had a guy who had been in the Clermont Auvergne academy, a French prop…. then you’ve got guys who haven’t picked up a rugby ball in their life and we’re all expected to train together in the same team.
“The challenge for the coaches is to try and manage guys who have played to a good level, but also integrate people who have never really played before.”
Sexton celebrating a hard-fought AIL win for St Mary's in 2007. Cathal Noonan / INPHO
Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO
One of the key men who has certainly played to a high level is the current vice-captain in Norway is Nathan Cummins – older brother to the notorious Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins.
The elder Cummins is no less a character than his Wallaby brother, each cut from the same cloth as a father who has taken to traversing the globe from Perth for Norway’s rare international games.
On that scene, Gannon probably has more in common with an Irish football international than a rugby one. Watching Ireland’s Euro 2016 qualifier against Bosnia and Herzegovina, before the fog took over the screen Gannon could see the very hotel he stayed in on his own team’s tour to Zenica.
Norway’s European Nations Cup campaigns stretch across two years and fixtures come in short bursts after long long gaps. This season, they have three international fixtures ahead of them. First up, the return Nations Cup tie at home to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who lead Division 2D. Then come home and away ties with Turkey who prop up the table. Norway find themselves second in the group, 12 points behind the Balkans.
Improving attitudes
Gannon wasn’t eligible to play when his friend and compatriot Peter Burke was in charge of the national team in recent seasons. Yet soon after seeing out his three-year wait he made the step up and then some, taking over the metaphorical armband from the old warhorse Andreas Fyri.
Gannon picked up where Burke left off in crusading for better conditions and facilities for his teams. And while he takes a philosophical approach, accepting that rugby is far from any Norwegian’s favourite spectacle, important strides have been made in improving approaches and attitudes.
“I would have just been coming on board when I had a bit of a blow-up about the professionalism involved.
Obviously, you’ve to deal with whatever resources you’re given and it’ll always be an issue over here that you’re not a major sport: it’s not skiing, it’s not any winter sport… nobody really knows what it is.
“We have gotten access to Bislett stadium in Oslo, where the big athletics meets happen, Usain Bolt has run races there. They do try and divvy it out quite evenly. We are a national team so we get the right pitches for the game and so on. It’s just in-house where things could be better.”
When he first followed the love of his life home to Oslo in 2010, Gannon’s experience and knowledge of the game was required at the heart of every move. So he was installed at out-half in Oslo despite having never held aspirations of being the man at the wheel.
In more recent years he has reverted to the centre with a move out to centre and now, to take his ageing back and knee a little further from the firing line he is completing a circle of sorts by slotting back to the number 15 jersey.
The end goal for the Dubliner and his fellow amateur imports is evolution rather than revolution. Not simply to sustain a connection with the sport he loves in a foreign land, but to leave a lasting legacy and be replaced by homegrown Scandinavians when they do hang up their snow-breaking boots.
'From playing with Johnny Sexton to guys who stumbled on the sport in the park'
FAR FROM THE growing hype of a Six Nations, Test rugby international Rob Gannon starts his Saturday mornings by watching a snow plough dig out a patch of green turf in Oslo.
You have to work a little harder to play the sport you love when you’re outside the traditional hotspots.
The Dubliner is braving the sub-zero Scandinavian temperatures to shape up for the new domestic season with Oslo Rugby Klubb.
The campaign will be a short one in terms of fixtures on the board, but when he’s not marshalling the Oslo RK back-line against Stavenger or Bergen, he is uniting the best players from those clubs under the Norwegian flag.
Working in a marketing firm, the 29-year-old is thoroughly enjoying the Scandinavian pace of life and its sensible, balanced working days… but rugby? He could do with some more of that.
“St. Mary’s, that was like six days a week,” the utility back says of his club days in Templeville Road.
“Training on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Break on a Friday, game on Saturday and recovery on Sunday.”
“Here,” he says while The42 shudders at the mention of temperatures around the -15 mark, “during the season it will turn into twice a week with a game on the Saturday, but the club might only have eight games in the whole year.”
In a school side containing Jonathan Sexton (a year older), Gannon was a talented fullback with an innate ease under high balls. He was kept in close quarters with Leinster’s academy during his formative years, but missed out on the call to represent Ireland schools while peers like Cian Healy and Luke Fitzgerald easily made the grade.
Rugby in Norway is unquestionably a minority sport, but immigrants to the nation are helping to bolster the skill-set and, with time, spreading the gospel of the oval ball game to reach more homegrown players.
“You get a lot of guys who have played at a good level in England or France. Some very good ones, we had a guy who had been in the Clermont Auvergne academy, a French prop…. then you’ve got guys who haven’t picked up a rugby ball in their life and we’re all expected to train together in the same team.
“The challenge for the coaches is to try and manage guys who have played to a good level, but also integrate people who have never really played before.”
One of the key men who has certainly played to a high level is the current vice-captain in Norway is Nathan Cummins – older brother to the notorious Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins.
The elder Cummins is no less a character than his Wallaby brother, each cut from the same cloth as a father who has taken to traversing the globe from Perth for Norway’s rare international games.
On that scene, Gannon probably has more in common with an Irish football international than a rugby one. Watching Ireland’s Euro 2016 qualifier against Bosnia and Herzegovina, before the fog took over the screen Gannon could see the very hotel he stayed in on his own team’s tour to Zenica.
Norway’s European Nations Cup campaigns stretch across two years and fixtures come in short bursts after long long gaps. This season, they have three international fixtures ahead of them. First up, the return Nations Cup tie at home to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who lead Division 2D. Then come home and away ties with Turkey who prop up the table. Norway find themselves second in the group, 12 points behind the Balkans.
Improving attitudes
Gannon wasn’t eligible to play when his friend and compatriot Peter Burke was in charge of the national team in recent seasons. Yet soon after seeing out his three-year wait he made the step up and then some, taking over the metaphorical armband from the old warhorse Andreas Fyri.
Gannon picked up where Burke left off in crusading for better conditions and facilities for his teams. And while he takes a philosophical approach, accepting that rugby is far from any Norwegian’s favourite spectacle, important strides have been made in improving approaches and attitudes.
“I would have just been coming on board when I had a bit of a blow-up about the professionalism involved.
“We have gotten access to Bislett stadium in Oslo, where the big athletics meets happen, Usain Bolt has run races there. They do try and divvy it out quite evenly. We are a national team so we get the right pitches for the game and so on. It’s just in-house where things could be better.”
When he first followed the love of his life home to Oslo in 2010, Gannon’s experience and knowledge of the game was required at the heart of every move. So he was installed at out-half in Oslo despite having never held aspirations of being the man at the wheel.
In more recent years he has reverted to the centre with a move out to centre and now, to take his ageing back and knee a little further from the firing line he is completing a circle of sorts by slotting back to the number 15 jersey.
The end goal for the Dubliner and his fellow amateur imports is evolution rather than revolution. Not simply to sustain a connection with the sport he loves in a foreign land, but to leave a lasting legacy and be replaced by homegrown Scandinavians when they do hang up their snow-breaking boots.
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