As an Irish player, when questions arrived, Ronan O’Gara used to stare at his shoelaces and sometimes fall into long silences. But he always managed to dig out an astute or original answer.
Listening can be an off-track, educational experience. But on the outhalf position, the La Rochelle head coach is something of an expert.
It was O’Gara who wrested the shirt from Ulster’s David Humphreys before Johnny Sexton set a claim on it and ripped it from his Munster hands. That’s how the dynasties in the 10 position were formed over the course of this century. Largely three players.
But the world has turned. The certainty of succession has fallen away to a scramble of names and while Jack Crowley may take the driving seat on Friday night in Marseille, his claim is strong but not watertight. O’Gara knows how it goes. As a coach he curates his outhalves, and as a player he scrapped for his place and scrapped again to hold on to it.
In his case it was a settled issue once he had a grip on the position. But now with Crowley, the injured Ross Byrne, Harry Byrne, Ciarán Frawley and Sam Prendergast moving in on the territory, repositioning has begun.
“There’s nothing set in concrete, far from it,” says O’Gara. “Jack gets first crack at it. If he does well, he’ll keep the jersey. It’s wrong to say he’s under pressure if you’re setting him up to succeed. For this Six Nations, it will be Jack, and the alternatives are Harry Byrne or Ciarán Frawley.
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“Jack has more credit than those two because Ciarán doesn’t own a 10 jersey. The two Byrne brothers have. And then the guy putting on heat from a distance, maybe not for this campaign, is Sam Prendergast.”
Whether it is better to have rivalry between several players during a transition phase or one obvious standout star is a moot point. Billy Burns, Ian Madigan, Paddy Jackson, Jack Carty and Joey Carbery all had looks and for different reasons didn’t really stick. But there is no silver bullet answer.
“It just comes down to being managed well and that comes down to a good coach. For me, you have either scenario [one standout player or rivalry between several] and then you manage it,” says O’Gara.
“So, Johnny was way ahead of any other rival and that requires one set of management skills. And then you have the current situation where you’re setting up two guys to succeed but you’re not too sure if they both will.
“And if it is, what’s the pecking order going to be down the line, or do you need to change? Does number three become number one, and number four become number two? So, you address it and make sure it doesn’t become an elephant in the room. You explain to each one of them. This is how I see you. This is what I think you can bring to the team.”
Crowley, if coach Andy Farrell selects him, is also facing a relatively unknown French halfback combination. Antoine Dupont and Romain Ntamack will not be the pairing, Dupont following an Olympic Sevens dream and Ntamack rupturing his ACL weeks before last year’s World Cup.
They are two of 13 injured players who will miss the Six Nations, Mack Hansen, Jimmy O’Brien and Dave Kilcoyne the Irish casualties. There is a possibility that Crowley and Jamison Gibson-Park will face the Bordeaux Bègles pair of Maxime Lucu and Matthieu Jalibert.
“There’s been a lot of change. With the French team, it’s always been Dupont and Ntamack so that’s a big change at nine and 10, a huge change, the force of their team really, you know,” says O’Gara.
“They’ve the Bordeaux halfbacks together, which works well but can obviously be probably unsettled as well. There’s opportunity there in them. Conditions will be good, it’s a very fast pitch, a beautiful pitch.”
Brian O’Driscoll has spoken in the past about it taking around 10 games for a player to feel comfortable and find their feet at Test level. Crowley has nine caps and 239 minutes, or, three full games. Harry Byrne has two caps, his injured brother Ross 22 caps and Frawley one.
It was Crowley that Farrell preferred as back-up to Sexton in three of the four World Cup pool games in France, coming on to close out the games against Romania, South Africa and Scotland. Although named on the bench for the quarter-final against the All Blacks, he was the only replacement not to get on to the Stade de France pitch.
“What’s different is that he [Crowley] is probably a lot more emotionally advanced than when we played,” says O’Gara. “But there’s no doubt that’s one position you get better the more minutes you play and he hasn’t sufficient minutes played yet.
“It’ll always be a question that we can’t answer but could he have made an impact in the quarter-final? He could well have but these are the choices that coaches make. And [that’s] not to say that I would have done any different to Andy Farrell. These are fine margins we are talking about but Jack is an inexperienced Test player, an experienced club player, and from knowing him and speaking to him, I don’t think he will be fazed by the challenge of the mental game at Test level.”
O’Gara speaks. Crowley it seems to be. For now.
