‘They bounced back into camp’ – Gary Keegan insists Irish players’ belief system remains strong

The sun was shining the last time Gary Keegan sat down with members of the Irish media too, but the world was a very different place. Back then, in the claustrophobic tent behind the team’s training centre in Tours, the IRFU’s performance guru spoke about his belief that this team was different.

They’d just beaten Romania and had Tonga, South Africa and Scotland to come before the quarter-final that, they hoped, would truly set them apart from any other team in Irish rugby history.

In the end, they hit the glass ceiling just as hard as all the others.

Nine months on, you could argue that Ireland are still coming to terms with that quarter-final loss to New Zealand.

In South Africa, it’s being used as a stick to beat the tourists who are at pains to say as little as possible to fuel the sense that they’ve been overrated. The players did win a Six Nations, but their defeat to England denied them a Grand Slam and saw them collapse mentally in the final stages.

None of the provinces finished the season on a high, with the large Leinster contingent suffering a harrowing pair of knockout defeats, Munster imploding when the stars had aligned and Ulster and Connacht falling well short.

They’re into the 13th month of a season that began with a belief they could do something no other Irish team had done, so it would be understandable if they were running on fumes.

But the sun is still shining in Sandton where they’re preparing for the Springboks this Saturday. “It’s been a long season, probably the longest season these guys have ever experienced,” Keegan said.

“They bounced back into camp. You can anticipate it’s going to be a bit difficult, but as soon as they’re back together, they’re talking, laughing, engaging.

“They’ve settled in really well and see the opportunity with these two games.

“The environment in the camp is very open. Players are now having those conversations with each other. Because they’ve had similar experiences, they know what they’re talking about. That has been powerful, it has been an advantage for us that these players do a lot of healing together.

​“That has been very useful and they’re very familiar with this environment. It’s very different to the environments they come from because you’re essentially bringing four teams together. It’s something that positively distracts them away from the previous experience.

“They have come in quite well given the season they’ve had and they look in good shape. Energies are high. A lot of players are very proactive, they check in for their one-to-ones and we’ve had a good volume of players coming in to have conversations, but nothing we would be concerned about.”

The World Cup stung, but didn’t scar.

“The lead-in, preparation, and performances at the World Cup were at a point where the group were so tight, so connected ... in my experience, if you’re performing well, you can walk off the field with your head held high,” he said.

“The team performed exceptionally well, even in that final game. While there was some aspects you’d like to go back and revisit, overall we were happy we got the performance out of the team.

“Huge disappointment, there’s no question. There’s so much investment and commitment that everyone is going to be significantly disappointed coming out of that. We had support in place for them post-World Cup and players had an opportunity to check in.

“It wasn’t long until they were back with their provinces, most of them had around three weeks off and were back in and had something else to focus their mind. There was support there, a number of players tapped into that, others didn’t.”

How much, we wonder, was the New Zealand performance down to being mentally off. “It’s hard to tell. We had not lost 20 minutes in a game, we had won every 20 minutes up to that point so there was certainly something there,” he said. “But it’s hard to strip it apart.

“You might be one or two individuals [off], which has an impact, but we’re doing a lot of work in this space. We feel we’ve made significant progress, there’s always room for more growth because it’s a shifting space. But we’re on it, we’re targeting it on a continuous basis.”

The next step is winning a series in South Africa, beating a team with an apparently bullet-proof mentality.

“It’s very hard for us to observe that from the outside,” he said of the Springboks’ mental preparation as he revealed he hasn’t watched the Chasing the Sun documentary about the world champions.

“That’s the piece you can’t see, it’s very hard to analyse that because it’s potentially cultural, it’s potentially a mindset piece that they’ve built within the group and don’t really talk about much.

“Whereas you can observe how they play rugby but not how they prepare mentally. It’s a huge opportunity for us. Two games against the world champions in their own backyard, so it’s important to us,” he said.

“The next step. I think we’ve always looked to elevate the opportunity and this is a big opportunity for us.”

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