Garry Ringrose can’t wait to get going.
It’s a torrential Saturday in Terenure and Ringrose is wrapping up a video interview with us as part of Maxol’s involvement with the Irish Universities Rugby Union [IURU] Festival. During the interview, the 22-year-old spoke about missing the buzz of playing big matches for Leinster and Ireland while recovering from shoulder surgery. “I’m guilty of being a bit of a rugby nerd,” he admitted.
Cameras switched off, Ringrose asked about the kick-off time for Munster’s Champions Cup clash with Racing 92. Upon learning it was 5pm, his eyes lit up. “Great, that means I can watch Leinster [vs. Glasgow], then watch the Munster game and then go see Leinster A in Donnybrook.”
The lad isn’t all talk. He really does love rugby.
That he will have to sit in the stands and watch Ireland take on South Africa, Fiji and Argentina in the November internationals will be a source of considerable frustration but Ringrose scoffs at the suggestion that the No.13 jersey is his to give up.
“Whether you’re playing or not, you can never get comfortable,” he says. “I’m well aware that with the opportunities I got, there were a lot of luck involved.”
Ringrose is 11 caps into his international career but had turned so many heads – in the green jersey and the blue of Leinster – in such a short space of time that he was widely tipped to make the British & Irish Lions squad. He narrowly missed out but was still contacted by Warren Gatland with some positive words about his rapid progress.
With so much praise coming from so many quarters, it would be tempting for a young man to get carried away with it all. Ringrose, however, has a fail-safe method for remaining grounded. He says:
“I still live at home with my family – that’d be my parents, my younger brother and younger sister. My older brother is in Australia at the moment.
“Any sort of privilege that would be associated with being a rugby player is left at the door when I get in the house. I think that’s pretty good for me. I enjoy the fact that I’m still there with my family.”
https://twitter.com/ringrose_g/status/290179382075613184?lang=en
Ringrose went from Blackrock College to UCD so they remain his side, should he ever be required to lace up the boots for a club rugby match. “I’d love to play as my younger brother has actually joined UCD too,” he says,” so it would be a dream to get and play for them, and with him. He’s a centre. I’d love to get another crack but I don’t know if I’d be able to just yet.”
Slightly further from home but still within the family circle, Ringrose heeds the sound words of advice from his grandfather, Des.
“My granddad tells me to just enjoy the moment, which is good advice. I can’t forget how lucky I am, the position I am in, and just to enjoy every second of it and the people around me. It’s a pretty cool environment that I’m in and I know people would give an arm and a leg to be in it. So never forget that enjoy every second.”
The centre does use his odd break away from rugby to play golf with friends or to try keep on top of his Business & Law studies at UCD. Most of the students he began the degree course with have since graduated and Ringrose is already beginning to feel his age.
It was not so long ago that Ringrose was the fresh face. When he first came into the Leinster set-up, he got to meet and greet legends like Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy each morning as part of an initiative started by then-head coach Joe Schmidt. He recalls:
“It was pretty surreal to be shaking the hands of guys I grew up watching in The RDS or at the Aviva. Guys I looked up to and found myself trying to copy.
“I got a bit of slagging, then, as as year or two previous I had bumped into Johnny Sexton and Rob Kearney and asked them for a picture. My dad dug it out and brought it in one of the days so I got a bit of slagging for that. It’s pretty cool, even today, to work with lads like that.”
Ringrose got the snap with Sexton and Kearney around the time he got this gem with the visiting Wallabies team:
https://twitter.com/Ringrose_G/status/399874923591905280
He got his first glut of Leinster games on the wing with Leinster and was indebted to Isa Nacewa and Fergus McFadden for their help. “I’ll never forget some of the stuff I learned from them at the start.”
It looks as though Ringrose will not return for Leinster until late November so Irish fans will have to wait until the 2018 Six Nations to see him in action again. He can’t wait to get back playing, though, and having a direct hand in the game he loves so much.
