When Ronan O’Gara walked down the tunnel of Thomond Park last year for Racing’s Champions Cup visit to Munster, it was the first time he had touched the playing surface, in an official rugby capacity, since his playing days.
O’Gara had played 240 games for Munster across a glittering 16 year professional career, but like all good things, his playing career was inevitably going to come to an end.
Munster’s all-time leading scorer may have spent the best part of four seasons at Racing when he returned as their defence coach in January 2017, but when he did make that walk down that famous tunnel again, it was like he had never left.
Not again ROG! Old habits die hard… #tothelefttotheleft #MUNvR92 @RonanOGara10 pic.twitter.com/aippjGofHN
— Munster Rugby (@Munsterrugby) January 21, 2017
Old habits die hard, and when O’Gara emerged for his side’s Champions Cup visit to Munster last year, he did the exact same thing he had done for 16 consecutive years, he smiled and turned to the right to warm-up with the home side.
Ever since he first declared an interest in coaching, O’Gara has been eternally linked with a return to his former club, and his answers on the matter have naturally varied but loop back to one recurring theme: experience, and a lack thereof.
In 2012 it was: “”I love rugby. I love Munster and Irish rugby, but I don’t know (about coaching).”
Last year, on The Hard Yards rugby podcast, with four years of experience as an assistant at Racing, he said:
“I am enjoying it and, in relation to Munster, it would obviously be something I’d be really interested in but the timing is nowhere near right.
A few months later, in an interview with the Irish Independent‘s David Kelly, he said he was undercooked:
“I am not looking at what is happening in Munster. I’m not really into that, you know what I mean?” he said.
“If I want to be the Munster coach, I would need to give myself and the team the best chance of winning titles.
“I wouldn’t be doing that if I accepted the job now. Because I’m under-cooked.”
On Thursday, speaking to the New Zealand Herald ahead of the Canterbury Crusaders Super Rugby season, where O’Gara is an assistant coach with the Christchurch based club, he said ‘there was no draw for him’ to ever go back to Thomond Park.
“I enjoyed playing in Munster but I don’t think coaching the players you played with is a good idea. I didn’t want that so there’s not a big draw to ever go back there.
“If the opportunity with Ireland presents itself it’s a different decision. At the minute I’m at a massive club with a big responsibility and something that really interests me. I enjoy the day-to-day coaching and interaction with the players and international rugby is very different. You need to be hugely experienced to do that and I’m not that.”
O’Gara later clarified his comments by saying he would welcome a return to Munster, but not until after the players he used to play with had moved on or retired. But O’Gara has always had a prickly relationship with predicting the future.
In May 2012, just over a year before his retirement, he said that he would play international rugby until he was 38, ‘definitely’ until he was 37.
O’Gara probably over-rated his own ability to extend his playing career at the time, but now he could be underselling his own ability as a coach, having served at one of the best sides in Europe in Racing for the last four years, before being welcomed with open arms to the best club side in world rugby in the Canterbury Crusaders.
If O’Gara was still riding his cotails as a player he wouldn’t be in Christchurch in 2018, that’s for certain, but the question is then, when will he be ready to take on a head coaching role?
Joe Schmidt had spent seven years as an assistant coach before he eventually took over the reins at Leinster. Ulster Head Coach Jono Gibbes spent nearly a decade as an assistant coach before he was granted the Ulster job, and even still, he has a Director of Rugby in Les Kiss peering over his shoulder.
O’Gara will also have seen how Anthony Foley fared when he was thrown into the Munster hot-seat six years after his playing career had ended, as well as how Leo Cullen struggled in his first season at Leinster.
But then there’s the likes of Dai Young who transitioned straight into a head coaching role with the Cardiff Blues just months after retiring as a player. There’s Pat Lam who became head coach of his native Auckland just two years after his retirement as a player.
There’s Scott Robertson, O’Gara’s current coach at the Crusaders, who took over Canterbury six years after his retirement, where he won two titles in three seasons.
There’s no perfect amount of time to wait, there’s examples of successes, and failures, on both ends of the spectrum, and while O’Gara will benefit immensely from his experience with the reigning Super Rugby champions, Munster is his home.
A competitor like O’Gara, a man who mercilessly battled Johnny Sexton for years to retain his spot as Ireland’s first-choice fly-half, and a player who had the desire to play international rugby until he was 38, will always aim for the highest possible honour.
Entering his fifth year as a professional coach, O’Gara may not be ready to assume a head coach’s position at a professional rugby club right now, but that day will come in the not too distant future.
At some point in his coaching career, an opportunity may present itself to return to Thomond Park, and if he ever has any aspirations to coach Ireland, who nearly always promote from within, he will most likely have to coach a province first, ala Warren Gatland, Declan Kidney and Joe Schmidt.
Re-watching the brilliant ‘Anthony Foley: Munsterman’ documentary recently, it was heartbreaking to hear how his family had commented that the Munster head coaching job had started to take a toll on him.
That it had started to suck the joy out of rugby for him. You could see it in Anthony too. You could see the pain in his face after they lost to Leinster at a post-match press conference, or when he had to speak to the press after a loss to Connacht, it was crushing for him to see a side he loved so much fall so far short of his own expectations.
O’Gara will be wary of the weight of the role at Munster should he ever ponder a return, but he will also relish the challenge, and you must ask yourself, when has Ronan O’Gara ever backed down from a challenge?
Munster are flying under Johan van Graan at present, but should a vacancy open in the future, it would be hard not to consider O’Gara as a contender, and that’s not because he’s the club’s all-time leading scorer and a familiar face, it’s because he has coached at, and is being sought out by the best rugby clubs in the world.
Munster definitely fit that bill, and O’Gara may one day too, by the grace of god.
