“If it’s a defeat, he’s sitting and shouting at himself in the changing room.”
Stephen Ferris played with some combustible characters during his nine seasons of professional rugby.
One man stood out, though, when he was asked to name the angriest man he ever played with.
The Ireland dressing room will be a [slightly] safer place for sensitive ears, this weekend, now that injury has ruled Paul O’Connell out of the tournament.
Ferris says, “I was sitting there after one game when I heard, ‘PAULIE, why did you do that? Why the HELL did you do that.’
“Because I was playing 6 and Paulie was playing 5, I would sit beside him in the corner. I’d look at David Wallace, who would [later] say ‘Don’t worry about Psycho, Fez. He’s always like that’.”
https://youtu.be/ySMnTpaH7xU
Ferris also told us Ronan O’Gara’s white-line fever [uncompromising on the pitch, a gentleman off it] and that Brian O’Driscoll could also have quite the temper.
“He would lose the rag in training all the time,” said Ferris, “because the standards were not good enough.
“At the 2007 World Cup, in training, there were too many balls down, which wasn’t good enough.
“Brian would stop training and started into everyone, saying it was unacceptable and not good enough. Everybody listened to Brian but especially when he was shouting and going on.”
