Connacht may have enjoyed inflicting a famous Heineken Cup defeat on the Londoners. But the Premiership champions are back, writes GAVIN CUMMISKEY
VIEWERS OF the RTÉ rugby panel will have noticed how Conor O’Shea deals with the more harebrained and illogical suggestions that get flung his way on a regular basis.
The Harlequins director of rugby faces down most situations with a calm, yet always calculated demeanour.
The interview process is no different, nor, we imagine, does this ordinary, decent former Terenure College schoolboy, of Kerry Gaelic footballing extraction, change much behind the closed door of the team room.
Take the most obvious situation, which will always crop up when talking about his current employers. O’Shea was Dean Richards’s successor at the London club in the aftermath of what can be described as an infamous episode of sporting skulduggery.
The Bloodgate affair decimated Harlequins’ proud, if somewhat underwhelming reputation in the professional era.
In the three years since, under O’Shea’s guidance, they have made massive strides, scaling the highest peak in their history last May by capturing the Premiership title.
They walk into the Sportsground this evening with the ultimate prize in European club rugby the only piece of major silverware yet to be annexed.
Anyway, we asked the 41-year-old what he says when people ask him about the recent revival of the London club.
“That we have achieved nothing,” O’Shea instantly replied. “The minute you think you have achieved something, and I think we got that lesson down at Exeter recently, then you go backwards.
“This isn’t about us being the English champions or winning the Amlin the year before, it is about being the best we can be and I actually don’t think we are comfortably as good as we can be as a team. That’s what excites me.
“You need the odd reminder every once in a while of the hard work that’s involved in going places but it is not something you stop and reflect about because what are we judged on?
“I always go back to what Dick Best, the ex-British Lions and England coach, always used to say to me: ‘Back-slapping to back-stabbing can happen in a very short space of time’.”
Connacht are in serious trouble this evening and it is their own doing. The 9-8 mugging inflicted upon Quins in a Galway downpour last January denied the English club safe passage to the quarter-finals, while also providing the perfect finale to last week’s TG4 fly-on-the-wall documentary, The West’s Awake.
“Yeah, I saw it,” said O’Shea. “It showed what this all means to Connacht people. This particular match is going to bring back a lot of great memories. I’m sure everyone will be looking forward to welcoming over the English champions.
“We got a timely reminder against Exeter what can happen when our minds aren’t focused the way they should be. Every team is a huge challenge. In a lot of ways Connacht play a similar game to Exeter.”
The man found a new drum to beat this past fortnight and he has been banging away.
The best form of motivation is born from failure. On September 22nd, Quins beat the Leicester Tigers 22-9 at Welford Road. Those type of numbers simply do not occur on the Tigers’ home patch. It was hailed as confirmation of a shift in the balance of power in English rugby.
The dawn of a new, dominant force.
A week later Saracens beat Harlequins 18-16 at The Stoop. A blip, as rugby folk are wont to say, but then they went to Sandy Park and were gutted, Exeter smashing them to the tune of 42-28.
O’Shea’s on-field, post-match interview promised atonement. He finally showed that anger is an emotion in his arsenal.
“My frustration down in Exeter afterwards was not at losing the game; that’s irrelevant, it was what we did on the pitch.”
Turns out it was a blip after all.
Biarritz, without Dimitri Yachvili and Imanol Harinordoquy, got an awful second-half pounding last Saturday. A big number was registered in response to Sandy Park. It finished 40-13.
“Losing only becomes relevant to me when we don’t produce the work ethic that’s needed to be successful. That’s what we drive home to the players the whole time.
“People wonder, ‘What did we say at 13-all at half-time against Biarritz?’ Nothing, really. The players knew the softening up had happened. They knew they had to get their focus right, get the territory game right and they knew where the space was opening up.”
Exeter merely did O’Shea and his coaching staff, which includes former Galwegians coach John Kingston, a favour.
Another important point about this evening is the Harlequins players returning to Galway, on what can be termed a revenge mission, are not the same men who lost there last January.
Take their captain, Chris Robshaw. Since that beautifully miserable western evening, Robshaw has been in the trenches of the Somme, fought on the high veldt against Boers and lived to tell the tale.
Having captained England through an arduous Six Nations campaign, he lifted the Premiership trophy and then led his country on tour to South Africa, Robshaw, like most Quins players, is a different, more rugged type of animal now.
“That’s for other people to judge,” says O’Shea in that uncomplicated manner of his. “We have a lot of belief in what we are about, when we play the way we can.
“You can talk about processes, fitness, conditioning, coaching but when you strip it all down this game is about physicality. Pure and simple. You win the collisions in defence. In attack you get over the gain line.
“We’ve got guys I wouldn’t go out to battle without them. They are pretty intense blokes, they are competitive guys – but so are Connacht.
“We are excited about what the atmosphere will be like in the Sportsground. We’ve been to plenty of hostile environments in the last 12 to 18 months and won. Whether it be Toulouse or Munster or Kingsholm. But we haven’t done the job in the Sportground and it is something this team want to do.”
O’Shea will be on our television screens again during the November internationals but for today he is leading the old enemy into an Irish ambush.
Except this time they are forewarned and this time they are champions.
Harlequins and Connacht must be sick of each other by now, having met at European dances seemingly every year since Europe became relevant to both clubs. The friendship between O’Shea and Elwood has even seen them pair off in pre-season warm-ups.
“I was away on holiday over the summer when the European draw was going on, poolside with my wife and kids, when I got a text message from Eric. All he said was, ‘Sorry’. I texted back, ‘That means we’re together again?’
‘Yes we are’.”
Instantly O’Shea realised there would be little need to motivate his players for today.
“You don’t win anything in October but you can lose things by not doing your job. Not many teams come away with anything from Galway but we are planning to put our game out there and see how it goes.”
Harlequins FC: The revival
2008/09
All Black outhalf Nick Evans signs. They finish second in Premiership table but lose play-off semi-final to London Irish. Lose Heineken Cup quarter-final to Leinster 5-6 – the Bloodgate scandal occurs in this match, with director of rugby Dean Richards suspended for three years, winger Tom Williams suspended for 12 months (reduced to four on appeal), physio Steph Brennan banned for two years and Dr Wendy Chapman suspended by the General Medical Council. Chairman Charles Jillings resigns.
2009/10
In March 2010, O'Shea leaves his role as national director of the English institute of sport to become Quins' director of rugby. They finish eighth in Premiership and qualify for the Amlin Challenge Cup.
2010/11
Seventh in Premiership so miss out on automatic qualification to Heineken Cup. They do beat Munster at Thomond Park and then, in dramatic circumstances, overcome Michael Cheika's Stade Francais to win the Challenge Cup, thereby qualifying for main European Cup.
2011/12
Fail to qualify from Heineken Cup Pool after 8-9 defeat to Connacht at Sportsground in January and subsequently beaten by Toulon in Amlin. First in Premiership and beat Northampton Saints in play-off semi-final before falling to Leicester Tigers 30-23 in the final, thanks to tries from Williams and Chris Robshaw.
2012/13
Currently second in the Premiership and beat Biarrtiz 40-13 in round one of the Heineken Cup.
