Keith Earls has his priorities in order, and no doubt about it.
Each and every time Earls is interviewed, we reveals another piece of himself. Many players keep themselves hidden behind clichés and buzz words but that is not in the Limerick man’s nature.
As he is soft-spoken, it is often mistaken that Earls does not have much to say. Anything but. Earls always delivers the goods. Sometimes you just have to listen out for the killer line; the true insight. Other times, you ask a simple question and walk away shaking your head; eager to type up what he has just said.
Today was a fine example. We went into our ‘live’ interview with Earls wondering about Chris Farrell, the return of Wales’ three Lions and whether Ireland could keep up their winning start.
We walked out, nine minutes later, thinking about ‘gel in the ears’, eye training and musing on the ongoing, devastating war in Syria.
First up was idle chat about Saturday’s game – to Earls, it will be a massive challenge against a Wales side trying to play more expansive rugby – and then about how he was a lot more relaxed about the big games now that he has been 10 years in the Test game.
On his new perspective, he touched on the Syrian Civil War that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since it erupted almost seven years ago. Earls commented:
“It’s weird, I can’t help being relaxed now going into games. A big thing for me is putting things in perspective and it’s something I do every day, every half an hour, every minute.
“When you have kids, you see some of the stuff that is going on in Syria and if I needed to be grounded or if I’m worried about a game I go back and look at that and see how lucky we are.”
Earls moved on to talk about the eye training that has helped him in terms of taking passes at cross-field kicks at high speed, out on the pitch. “I’m at an age now,” he remarked, “where every one percent counts!”
In his team announcement press briefing, Joe Schmidt revealed that getting Farrell back from France and into the Ireland set-up was a ‘long-term project’ of his. Earls revealed Schmidt was not the only one.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on him as well because I know ‘Prendie’ (Mike Prendergast) fairly well and they’ve been on about Chris.
“Obviously, I knew he was Irish playing in France so I was looking at that league and meeting Prendie on holidays this year, he was telling me how excited he is for me to play with Chris with his passing game but… he’s a monster as well!”
Farrell may not be in that ‘defensive captain’ mold of Jared Payne or Robbie Henshaw just yet but Earls has seen enough of his Munster teammate to expect big things from him.
“You would have had JP (Jared Payne) and Robbie but the massive thing for us was that everyone being a defensive leader and Chris has proven it this year with Munster and he’s proven it during November that, you know, we work on who we have and not who we don’t have, you know?
“So he comes in and everyone will back him and hopefully we get a few turnovers off defensive at the weekend.”
Joking that maybe he could do with contact lenses, instead of this intense eye training, we took our leave of Earls as he readied himself for another interview.
He is delivering on and off the pitch in a big way these days.
