Stephen Moore knows gold only comes from digging deep

An Irishman may well go where Keith Wood, Brian O'Driscoll and Paul O'Connell could not by lifting the William Webb Ellis trophy on Saturday evening.

No, we are not claiming Richie McCaw, but Stephen Moore we most certainly can. Or at least his parents, Tom and Maureen.

With several Australian news cameras trained on his Wood-like ceann yesterday, the Wallaby captain was never going to reminisce about the crossroad he arrived at in the summer of 2005.

Uproot and return to his Galway roots with Connacht and inevitably Ireland, and an eventual shift to a bigger province, or wait for the call from his adopted country.

Moore was already tagged and in the ARU system so it didn’t take long.

Irish pursuit

They liked his grit, perhaps honed in a goldless mining town, enough to give him Test cap number one off the bench against Samoa that June. A hundred more have followed.

The Irish pursuit of Moore wasn’t some granny-rule effort or a Tony Cascarino pot-shot. He was actually born in Saudi Arabia to parents hailing from Galway and Mayo, who weren’t long relocating back to Tuam.

Then, in 1988, the 2,447 population of Mount Morgan swelled by five when Tom, an Irish GP, took an assisted-passage job in this Queensland outpost.

Initially known as Ironstone Mountain, this dust bowl encampment became formal dwellings in 1882 after an English man called William Knox D’Arcy reaped enough wealth out of the mines to drill for oil in Iran and eventually form the Anglo-Persian Oil company. Now known as BP.

These gold mines were shut seven years before the Moore’s arrived, the railway route a year before.

They didn’t stay long. By secondary school, Moore had travelled 420 miles south to attend Brisbane Grammar School and on to the University of Queensland, where a science degree hinted that he might follow his father into medicine.

That and any other idea was parked when the Queensland Reds blooded him in Super Rugby the time he was 20. This put him on the IRFU's scouting radar. Wood had just retired following the 2003 World Cup so enquires were made about the nuggety young hooker with natural leadership qualities.

“I loved watching and following Keith Wood’s career,” Moore once said. “Everyone knows how much I admired him as a player and I remember watching him play on the 2001 Lions tour to Australia. For me he’s one of the true icons in the game.”

Still a teenager, alongside his Lions-supporting father, he was at The Gabba for the famous first Test when Wood and the Lions pack facilitated a special night for Brian O’Driscoll.

Role models

“The energy he [Wood] played with was incredible. He was strong in the set-piece but he would also turn up anywhere on the ground, and he had such a wide range of skills.

"For a young hooker he was a good guy to watch. I modelled my game on him early in my career. He and Jeremy Paul have been my role models."

Without reaching Jack Grealish proportions, and despite climbing through Australia's underage ranks, decamping to Ireland remained a live issue until he replaced Paul in the 74-7 thrashing of Samoa in 2005.

Matt Giteau was wearing 12 that day, while Drew Mitchell sat alongside him on the bench.

“That option has definitely gone now,” he said in 2005. “My ambition now, my dream and my goal, is to play as many games as I can for Australia.”

Still, on every journey to Dublin for November matches and during the 2013 Lions tour an Irish reporter inevitably prods him about his Irish lineage.

“At this stage, the family have jumped the fence. My cousins support Ireland and I understand that . . . but I’ve been in Australia since I was five years old and I consider myself a proud Australian. In saying that, I’m still very proud of my heritage. We’ve got plenty of guys in the team like that.”

That came up again last week when Mario Ledesma was facing his native Argentina. "We're from all over the place," said Moore. "What's important is we are tied into the same values."

Some of those cousins are from Meath footballing stock. Current goalkeeper Paddy O’Rourke, who is a nephew of Colm O’Rourke, is related to Moore.

The same Paddy O'Rourke who would have been cited and banned at this World Cup for the red card he received at Croke Park in June after driving, elbow-high into Westmeath's Kieran Martin.

In fairness, the Royals were having a ground-breaking bad day by losing to their neighbours for the first time.

When Moore's Wallaby contract ends this year it's not out of the question that one of the Irish provinces might, finally, employ the 32 year old. He's mentioned it himself before and there is an obvious link with his current ACT Brumbies coach Laurie Fisher having worked with Munster.

Not that he was entertaining any sort of Irish line of questioning in World Cup final week.

Long time ago

“Long time ago, mate,” he said of the IRFU offer. “Have not thought about that for a while. I have always been a proud Australian.”

He certainly sounds like one but he did captain the Wallabies to an Irish version of the triple crown this month.

When asked if he remembered the 2003 World Cup final defeat by England in Sydney, he responded: “Yeah, I do. Very clearly. I was Brisbane, playing rugby at Uni, I remember watching it and being very proud of the Aussie team. Unfortunately, got done there at the end.”