RUGBY: GAVIN CUMMISKEYtalks to the scrum expert who can take some credit for the Leinster pack having a sizable role in ensuring an impressive start to the coaching tenure of Joe Schmidt

GREG FEEK is settling into Dublin life. The Kiwi has moved into a house and will work on the Irish scrum during the Six Nations.

“This week I’m with Leinster,” he explained yesterday as Mike Ross, Heinke van der Merwe and Clint Newland jogged past the media scrum. Cian Healy glanced over from beneath his hoodie and even Stan Wright ambled by as the Cook Islander continues rehabilitation from an Achilles’ tendon injury. These are the propping tools Feek was gifted on arrival in Dublin from Wellington a few months ago. He was initially recruited in a consultancy role but that has clearly expanded into a wider brief.

Capped 10 times by the All Blacks from 1999 to 2001, Feek moved into coaching with Super Rugby franchise the Hurricanes and can now take some credit for the Leinster scrum having a sizable role in ensuring an impressive start to the coaching tenure of Joe Schmidt.

Recruiting a scrum expert seemed essential if Leinster were to avoid a repeat of last year’s Heineken Cup semi-final defeat in Toulouse when Benoit Lecouls, William Servat and Daan Human exploited deficiencies that only become apparent at the business end of European competition.

“I wasn’t here then so I’ve come in with a clean slate. You might be right, there might be a little of that still there and that might be some motivation, but at the end of the day you just want to play rugby and win and do your job really well, and that’s motivation in itself.”

The recently-retired Leinster hooker Bernard Jackman bemoaned the lack of time afforded to scrummaging last season in his autobiography (“20 minutes on Tuesday and five minutes on Thursday”) so that also needed to be addressed.

“When you have players that are willing to soak up what you want them to do to improve and then go away and say ‘right, I’ll do it’, they need to be doing little extras and those little things to keep it going and get that consistency, so the attitude of the boys has been great.”

But what about Feek’s actual time with the Leinster scrum? The analogy he uses to explain this will be understood by any man lucky enough to have a woman playing a central role in his life.

“There’s a lot of negotiation, bit like the missus, you’re always negotiating for your time – with the players it’s the same thing. Not saying you’d compare that with rugby, but the players know that if they want to be not just good but really good they need to do extra work. It requires a bit of sacrifice at times and I think the first couple of months of the competition is the time to do it and then you get in the consistency and continuing to work on those little things can get you there.”

Sound relationship . . . I mean, scrummaging advice.

Any conversation around Irish scrummaging this weather invariably leads back to Mike Ross and the head scratching over the zero minutes he got during four November internationals despite showcasing his ability to put manners on most loosehead props in the early rounds of the Heineken Cup.

“Mike’s got a lot of experience,” said Feek of the Cork native. “I call him a bit of a scrum nerd as well, he loves it. He also possesses some physical attributes that I think you need to have, particularly in the frontrow and particularly if you want to go up against some of these big teams.”

Would you pick Mike Ross as the starting number three in the Six Nations?

“I think all the media have probably said that. Mike has scrummed well. He still has games when he has to get consistency. He has the odd week where he may not hit his own high standard. I think to be an international prop you’ve got to be consistent, not just in the scrums but all the other things you do around the field. Consistency is really important if you want to play at the highest level.”

With qualification already secured, it would be easy to ignore Friday’s trip to Paris where Racing Metro 92 may or may not be bothered but the value of a home quarter-final appears to have focused the collective mindset, as Leinster captain Leo Cullen confirmed.

“It’s very easy to say Racing don’t have anything to play for but neither, technically, did London Irish or Glasgow at the weekend,” said Cullen. “You look at teams like that, who play in front of their home supporters and when teams run out at home, sometimes that’s all the motivation they need. Racing have a squad where there’s competition for places for later on in the Top 14, so it’s going to be a tough challenge.”