It’s not just lip service, you know, when sports stars advise you to keep on the straight and narrow.
They’ve been there, as teenagers and young adults, and they’ve had all the distractions that come with those phases.
It’s tough growing up, having a social life, having friends, even enjoying yourself as much as you can but also trying to make it to the top of your sport.
Sometimes, you have to make the choice if your career is going to continue on an upward trajectory. You have to be sensible with your drinking, strict with your eating, disciplined with your sleeping and you have to give up hours upon hours dedicated to the cause of making it.
It was a bloody struggle even for someone like Garry Ringrose.
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The 22-year-old Ireland international – the man who seemingly has his place in the country’s team cemented for the next decade now – didn’t always find this stuff so easy.
Coming through the school system, Ringrose was emptying every last drop he had into being the best rugby player he could be but then, by his own admission, he was “bricking it” at trials and finding himself dropped and cut and the slog continued.
So he went at it even harder again but then he had to make sacrifices too. You can’t be going out getting pissed when you have a gym session at the crack of dawn the next morning. And you can’t be leaving the gym until later when you have training to get to.
All these things added up but they required some serious resolve from the Blackrock man who would be pestered on WhatsApp about reminders of what he was missing out on.
“I was watching friends going out and enjoying life but I’m getting up at 6.30 every morning to go to the gym,” Ringrose told the Irish Independent.
“It almost shaped where I am, it made me realise that there were sacrifices I’d have to make if I was to make it; that it doesn’t just happen for someone.
“Natural ability only gets you so far.
“I found it tough when they were all having a laugh and going out on the WhatsApp group and I’d be going to bed or woken up in the middle of the night by a load of messages. “
But the man himself says that once he got through that patch, he was fine.
He had his eyes on the prize and the prize, in his case, could be one of the best centres this country has seen. It took some wise decisions and pure dedication to give him that platform though.
It took the mute mode on his WhatsApp.
