Keith Earls has been waiting to get some stuff off his chest for the past month.
It has been a little over a month since Keith Earls was red-carded during a Champions Cup win over Glasgow Warriors that doubled as an emotional, rousing farewell to former head coach Anthony Foley.
Earls had been charged up, like many of his teammates, to deliver a non-stop performance in honour of Foley, who had passed away on October 16 in Paris. Perhaps he was too charged up. He up-ended Fraser Brown and got an apologetic sending off. No-one wanted for it to happen.
Earls sits down in the same Carton House room that Joe Schmidt has, 25 minutes earlier, occupied to name him on the left wing to play Australia. Having missed out on the two fierce Tests with New Zealand, Earls featured in the 52-21 win over Canada and gets another crack against the Wallabies.
First up, though, Earls revisits that Glasgow match and the frenetic farewell to ‘Axel’.
“The week was crazy but I suppose for a lot of us, it put things in perspective. Down in Munster, it’s been a tough two years.
“Axel went through a tough two years and we kind of said ‘He’s not here anymore. His wife and kids are at home and their lives have been turned upside down.’.
“We got worried about a lot of rugby matches. I was like ‘It’s stupid really. We need to go out and relax and take the chances.’ And that’s what we did against Glasgow and that’s what we’ve done ever since.
“I suppose it’s a pity that it’s after taking our head coach to die for us to play the way he wanted us to play. But that’s what it is.”
Earls missed out on that God-awful trip to Paris, where Foley passed on. He was back home and recovering from concussion but the news hit him extremely hard. He admits the whole week in the lead-up to that European tie was demanding.
“It was a massive game, it meant a lot to us,” he says.
“It was a tough week in general from burying your head coach and then an hour later doing a captain’s run. It’s just not right.
“I suppose the only thing I do apologise for – I don’t apologise for anything else – is kicking the bottles on the side of the pitch. I wouldn’t like to see young lad doing that at underage or some young lad at Thomond Park. I suppose I’ve been waiting to be interviewed to apologise for that. I don’t apologise for the rest of it.
“I spoke to Fraser Brown on the phone and I felt he could have done a bit more, yes, I did lift his leg but I felt he could have done a bit more to save the impact, the way he went, I thought he was going for it a small bit to be honest with you. I spoke to him and he said he was just trying to protect himself.
“I felt I was cheated really going off the pitch, they denied me an opportunity to put in a performance for my head coach and the Munster supporters so I kind of lost it a bit coming off the pitch.”
As CJ Stander noted after that game, though, Earls tried his level best to put his personal disappointment to one side and get behind the team from the sidelines.
Since that game, Munster have kept up the winning run. That includes a hard-fought away victory over Ulster, the 33-0 thrashing of Ospreys and a riveting 27-14 result against the Maori All Blacks in front of a sold-out Thomond Park.
For Earls, the past month and the past four games have seen Munster’s fighting spirit ignited for the first time in a long time.
“That was the thing with a lot of the young lads who came through. They [heard] about this Munster family and probably thought ‘Jeez, this thing is a bit of a myth’ because we had been shocking for two years.
“Just the response of all the ex-players around that week and how much together Munster actually is. Some of the stuff that went on for Axel and the young lads were like, ‘This thing is for real’.
“Even myself, it was mind-blowing, some of the tributes to him. People coming from Australia, John Langford and that lads coming home for Australia. It was ridiculous.
“That hit home with the young lads and they’re really starting to play now, which is great. A lot of us [senior players] were missing for the Maori game and the Ospreys game but they were two massive performances and Ulster away which is not an easy place to go.”
The upturn in Munster’s fortunes is very much welcomed but Earls, a father to two young children, is not getting away from the tragic loss that has brought the squad closer.
“There isn’t a day that goes by,” he says, “that I don’t think of him and think about his family and his kids.”
Many people have spoken about the seizing, draining pressure that dogged Foley during his two years as Munster’s main man. Earls, however, can attest to the fact that Foley was a man revived after South African Rassiec Erasmus was brought in as director of rugby.
He was free to get back to his men on his training pitch. Earls says:
“You’d say something if it was two years ago when he dies, you would have been like, ‘Yeah, jeez he’s stressed. The stress of the job has done it to him’.
“But he was actually really happy. He was getting messages across clear. Himself and Rassie were really starting to click.”
One small custom introduced by Erasmus since the start of the season now means the world to Earls.
When Munster win a game – and there have been 10 so far – the Munster lads get out some boxes of beer, pass them around and raise a toast to each other.
“There’s not much speaking in the dressing room straight afterwards,” he says. “We’re just enjoying the win.”
Munster had to plunge some awful depths to realise that life is all about those little highs.
It’s not about making them last, because what lasts? It’s about making each one count.
Dick Clerkin makes his GAA Hour debut to talk about a wonderful career and argue passionately with Colm Parkinson over Sky Sports GAA. Subscribe here on iTunes.
