MIKE ROSS INTERVIEW: GERRY THORNLEYprofiles the prop whose rise to the top echelons of the game has been far from meteoric but who is now indispensable to the Irish cause
THE SCRUM is back in vogue. It can have a seismic effect, either intangibly, or in the hard currency of points on the board – witness Eden Park a fortnight ago. Cue tomorrow’s assignment, and even before the dust had settled on Italy’s win over the Eagles on Tuesday, they were hollering from the rooftops about their scrum. Just as well Mike Ross is finally in vogue too then.
The Ross story is probably the most inspiring in the Irish squad, for he has had to plough his own furrow for the best part of ten years to become the anchor of the Irish scrum. His story has been a triumph of perseverance against all odds, and if ever there was a game for Ireland to thank him for doing so, it could well be this one.
For Italy to have any chance of winning, as they tacitly admit, they need to wreak damage in the scrum. Thus the degree to which Ross digs his heels in and refuses to budge, the better Ireland’s chances of reaching the quarter-finals. Either way, the thought of him not being here is almost scary.
His game has been criticised for being all about his scrummaging and little else, but his carrying and work-rate have improved immeasurably with more frontline game time at Leinster and with Ireland. Nonetheless, if he does nothing else tomorrow that will be dandy. It’s going to be tasty. It’s going to get very basic.
So it was in Rome last February; Ross’s first Six Nations outing and effectively his Test debut, given his previous two caps had been earned on the Americas tour of 2009. Entering the last ten minutes, Italy opted for another attacking scrum off a penalty (their fifth of the day at scrum time) with Romain Poite having also just put Cian Healy in yellow card territory.
The mark Ross made when literally digging his studs into the turf and refusing to yield an inch as the earth seemed to tremor for the concerted shove by the Azzurri pack was still visible long after the final whistle.
“I remember it,” he recalled yesterday in the Irish team hotel, in that low-key, Cork brogue of his. “We were actually about eight or nine metres out. I don’t know if they thought they were going to shove us over from there. It certainly would be a big blow to my pride if that happened. It was quite difficult and we just took it quite low and dug in.”
His “big day” last February had, as he notes, been a while coming and could have been ruinous in his mind. “I didn’t want to have on my CV my Six Nations debut and the first Irish team to lose to the Italians in the Six Nations. I said to Rog I’d buy him a few pints after he knocked over that drop goal.”
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and the scrum has become a weapon.
His own and the frontrow’s increased maturity, along with the influence of Greg Feek, have all played their part, he says. That day in Rome was the second day he had packed down in a Test with Rory Best, the first being 19 months previously in America, and the first time the trio had played together.
“Add up all the scrums, and all the scrum practice we’ve done, between then and now, and we know what each other is like now. I can tell on engage whether Cian has done well or not. You can feel it, and you’ve an idea how to help him if needed.”
Then there’s the Feek factor.
“Greg has brought focus, and technique and consistency, and he’s very, very good at problem solving. If maybe the timing is a bit off or the secondrow is not quite slotting in there, he’ll spot that and identify and correct it very quickly. That’s really an invaluable resource to have. I can just concentrate on my job. I can’t really see what’s going on behind me.”
Feek is also Leinster’s scrum coach, and the Heineken Cup final and half-time turnaround, when he informed Ross he was going after it too much and losing contact with his hooker Richardt Strauss, was a classic case in point.
Needless to say, Ross loves scrummaging. “It’s basic physics at the end of the day. That’s what it comes down to. There’s more to it than that. You have to have it in your head as well. You have to be able to work things out and problem-solve on the fly. And it often comes down to desire. If one pack wants it more than the other, sometimes desire will trump technique.”
The biggest buzz he gets out of it?
“Probably a penalty try, or working a penalty. Earning the team points.”
Not that, unlike other more showy members of the front-row fraternity such as the obnoxious Steve Thompson, he’d ever show it.
Ross accepts the point made by Italian scrum coach Carlo Orlandi that you have to have the desire to go through your opposite man, but “you can’t go off half-cocked. You can’t go off roaring and screaming. You have to ally that desire with technique”.
Ross was born for the coalface. He started playing at 11 when his father, Frank, a cattle-dealer, brought him up to his own local Fermoy club. “I was one of those kids at underage who was bigger than anyone else. I used to score quite a lot of tries,” he chuckles, and, marching his arms, adds: “just by walking up the pitch.”
The eldest of four children to Frank and Patty, as well as sister Kathryn his younger brothers Mathew (back playing with Cork Con after a long injury) and Alistair (who once played with the Munster under-21s but is now in Santa Monica) also play, though they are wingers-cum-centres who, he says, are as quick as Tommy Bowe. The old Paul Wallace line applies. “I was quickest to the dinner table.”
School was St Colman’s College in Fermoy, a hurling nursery, so after playing through the ranks with Fermoy as a tighthead (he played a little at number eight), he joined UCC while studying Biotechnology there.
“I think a science degree teaches you to think in a certain way. I don’t necessarily think it ties you down to it, but I think it’s going to come in very handy in most walks of life, that analytical, thinking part of you.”
By his first Christmas at UCC, Ross was on the senior team, and after four seasons there he made the inevitable move for any ambitious young Cork player, and went to Cork Constitution at 22. This was a gateway to the Munster set-up, but in the next four years he never once played for Munster, being confined to one Celtic League game on the bench in Ravenhill in 2006; the night Barry Murphy broke his ankle.
Aside from John Hayes, the likes of Tony Buckley, Freddie Pucciariello, Frankie Roche and Gordon McIlwham were blocking his pathway. Seriously. In 2006, he earned a trial with Harlequins and, with no contract forthcoming at Munster, took his chances in London.
Ross retained a single-minded determination to make it when others in his position would have given up the ghost.
“Well, you need to have belief in yourself,” he says matter-of-factly, but in a cold-eyed way which suggests his self-belief is stronger than most, as it had to be.
He played 76 games in three years at Quins, and was named on the Premiership team of the season. “It was actually the toughest decision of my career, uprooting from there and coming over to Leinster. I was playing week-in, week-out. I’d settled down and bought a house. I had good friends there, but the PRL were stopping me from going to training camps outside international windows, and it’s very difficult to push for a place if you’re not there.”
“So when Leinster came knocking in February I said: ‘Right, I better give this a shot’. Better to know one way or another than die wondering.”
The move has been vindicated. “Eventually, although this time last year I was wondering ‘how is this going to turn out for me?’ ” he says ruefully.
Of his 21 games for Leinster in 2009-10, only eight were from the start, and in one of the two Heineken Cup starts, the opening defeat at home to London Irish, Ross played the ball from an offside position to concede the losing three-pointer.
He doesn’t know if Michael Cheika ever forgave him for that, because he never said anything to him about it, though he adds: “I wasn’t too forgiving myself”.
The turning point was a “new coach, new chance”, ie the arrival of Joe Schmidt, and “unlucky for Stan (Wright) and lucky for me, he got injured. I was able to do what I did for Harlequins, play a run of games.”
Of his 27 games last season, Ross started in 22 of them, including all nine of Leinster’s successful nine-game run in Europe. His persistence, and his every move, have been utterly vindicated. “It’s satisfying when it comes to fruition,” he admits. “I would have liked to come to it earlier, but better late than never.” This has its plusses too, in that he is a low mileage 31-year-old.
He’s ploughed his own, independent path, and cannot be described as the product of any system. He likes to think his case history could be an example for “some young fella who’s not getting a look in. He can look at me and see it doesn’t have to be schools/academy/province. You can go your own way and it can work out for you. A lot of lads might get cuffed from the academy and that will be it. Let me put it like this, there’s only one employer over here, there’s 12 over in England at least, and that’s not including Division One clubs or France”.
Not that he did it all by himself. His first coach in Fermoy, Jerry O’Donoghue, “gave me the love for the game”, Brian Hyland in UCC, Christy Cantillon and Terry Kingston at Con, and most obviously Dean Richards and John Kingston all helped him along the way. Richards stood by him and, as has been well documented, Ross stands by him.
“He made his mistakes and he’s been punished for them. But I’ve a lot of time for him. He’s very much an old school product. We used to joke that it was impossible to know what the man was thinking. He’d stand sideways and mumble at you, and you’d be left none the wiser. But he’s quite down to earth and jovial, a man’s man, and he’s very good at spotting guys who mightn’t have been given a chance or have been cast away,” says Ross, citing a long list of supposed crocks whose careers Richards revived.
His international breakthrough still did not arrive until that day in Rome, after he watched the four-Test November window from outside, as Buckley, Hayes and Tom Court were all preferred to him. But come tomorrow he’ll have played in 12 of Ireland’s last 13 Tests. Once ignored, now he’s indispensable.
His wife Kimberlee gave birth to their first child, Kevin, seven months ago and overall Ross is in a very good place in his life. He’s worked 9-to-5 jobs, in a lab as a food safety technician, and appreciates what he has.
“Yeah. The worst thing about rugby is that you have to stop playing it.” The Wallabies was the most rewarding day thus far, though he knows this will be a bigger test up front and at scrum time. “They’ve made a lot of noise in the media about it,” he says. “It’s up to us to meet that challenge head-on. It will certainly be an interesting time on Sunday.”
He talks of the double-edged sword of the Italians publicly expressing so much faith in their scrum. “If it doesn’t work, what’s their plan B? I know it’s going to be a big challenge. They’ve certainly laid down a gauntlet for us. We won’t be stepping away from it either, but we need to look after our own house. The minute you start losing the head is the minute they have won.”
With an 8.30pm kick-off it will be a long day. “A lot of eating and sleeping,” he says wearily. Chicken and pasta coming out his ears. “You’re just mechanically shoving food down yourself for the sake of the match, though we have a good cook and the lads say this is the best food they’ve ever had on tour.”
Ross will have a couple of coffees, get his head phones on, get into his own zone, ‘game imagine’ and then loosen up. “I’m generally low-key. I wouldn’t be foaming at the mouth. I just try and get focused on it.” Amid the frenzy of the coalface, Ireland need Ross to stay calm, and above all, to stay strong.
