Sacrificing the ordinary to have the extraordinary

FRENCH NOTES: Playing professional sport is like having a major relationship. You have to make space for it in your life

SACRIFICE, A DEFINITION: The surrender of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher value. As you read this I will be sitting at 40,000 feet somewhere between Paris and Sydney. I am heading back to Sydney for Christmas. Pro D2 (France’s second division) has a two-week break. Happy days.

I cannot give you the exact number of times I have done the flight between Europe and Australia. I honestly can’t remember. I estimate between 30 and 40 times. That means I have spent about five weeks of my allotted time on this planet jammed into a seat surrounded by total strangers, doing absolutely nothing (reminds me of my time at university). The one fact I can confirm is that the basis for every single one of those flights was rugby. Sitting for 24 hours at a time in a plane is a small price to pay to be involved in top-level sport.

Travel is as much a part of professional sport as skill practice. Different leagues around the world have different travel demands. When I was coaching the Waratahs in Super rugby we would play in Sydney on a Friday night. The next Saturday we would play in Cape Town. A week later we would play at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria. Then the next week back at the Sydney Football Stadium. It was a very tough three weeks, but jet lag was a small price to pay for the fantastic experience.

In 2001, in the early days of the Celtic league with Leinster, we were flying into Cardiff for the fourth time that season. As the plane was approaching Cardiff airport, the mist parted and we could make out the drab grey coastline and the depressing architecture of outer Cardiff. Malcolm O’Kelly looked at me, as only Mal can: “Mattie, you know some of the officials. Talk to them about starting the Riviera League instead of the Celtic League. Then we could fly into Monaco every other week instead of this hole.” As always, big Mal made me laugh and I liked the way he thought.

I’m in France now (as coaching director for RC Narbonne) and it’s definitely not the Riviera League. It is the Pro D2 and there are no flights, but lots of bus journeys. The away-game travel is an endurance event in itself. The trip to Bourgoin last Friday took seven and a half hours.

On Saturday evening after the match it’s a recovery bath, a meal then straight back on the bus for the return journey. We got back to Narbonne at 4am. Now that is not glamorous. The players are still tired on Wednesday from the Saturday night bus trip.

Travel is mind numbingly boring. It takes patience, planning and an understanding that travel in sport is one of the many sacrifices you make to play the game you love.

Playing professional sport is like having a major relationship in your life. You have to make space for it in your life. You have to sacrifice the ordinary to have the extraordinary in your life.

There is a quote from William Wordsworth I often give to players: “Sixty minutes of glorious life is worth a lifetime without a name.” Our game is 80 minutes of glorious life and in playing you have a name.

When you play every atom of your being is heightened. Your senses are at their pinnacle. The smell of the damp earth, the metallic click of studs on the changing-room floor, the thud of bodies colliding, the panoply of the stadium, the adrenalin coursing through your veins. When you play you are fully alive and aware like at no other time in your life. You are in ‘the 60 minutes of glorious life’. There is no tomorrow, there is just this moment. Rarely in life do we live in that exact moment. That is special. Extraordinary.

When I first took over Leinster those wonderful young men were just learning about professionalism. In 2000 I had distributed the training plan for the following week. There was a knock on my door. It was a delegation of players wanting to know why we were training on the Monday. It was a bank holiday! “Everyone else in Ireland had a day off. You can’t expect us to practice?”

They were such a great group of young men, I still have a deep affection for them all, but at times they needed some tough love. My answer was simple, “You want a bank holiday, go work in a bank. Professional rugby players practice every Monday. That is the price you have to pay to do what we do.”

I kept my grumpy face on and stared sternly at them daring one of them to take me on, while holding back the laughter that was belting around my chest. They shuffled about a bit before walking out, with their tails between there legs. I then had a great belly laugh. They trained that Monday and began the journey that saw them grow into a team of great professionals. The sacrifice was made. Give up the holiday for a greater cause.

This week was the 10-year anniversary of that Leinster team, with 14 men defeating Munster in the inaugural final of the Celtic League. It was an historic win. Their sacrifice was deemed just.

I will get off the plane in my home city of Sydney. I was born and bred there. Sydney is like a big boobed bimbo, physically beautiful, but not a brain in its head, but I still love her. From the giant “coat hanger” of a bridge, to the Opera House on our harbour, to our northern beaches, in my opinion, Sydney is the most beautiful city in the world.

I turned professional in late 1995 for the first Super rugby match in 1996. It was between Transvaal and the Waratahs. I was a young assistant coach. Since then, I seem to be always leaving this wonderful city. In the taxi from the airport to my home, the drive is across both the harbour and the spectacular inner bays.

Every time I sit in the back seat and ask the same question, “Is it worth the sacrifice?”

When the answer is no, the plane trips will stop.