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IRISH BLOOD, ENGLISH HEART
 Exiles
young gun Shane Geraghty talks to RONAN EARLY about being Irish, English
and injured as he strives to return for the Heineken Cup quarter-final
against Perpignan
SHANE Geraghty is what all professional sportsmen dread to be: Injured.
Hobbling around in a hulking, uncomfortable knee-brace on the wrong side
of the touchline at Sunbury he cuts an unfulfilled figure. On the other
side of the line his London Irish teammates run free.
Undefeated since last year at the time, a Heineken Cup quarter-final on
the horizon, the ground beneath their feet beginning to firm up, this
is the time for an explosive runner and exquisite handler like Geraghty
to be out there doing what he’s best at — playing. When he’s
not playing things aren’t as they should be.
Rugby is Geraghty’s profession, it’s also his passion. He
never switches off. At home he’s forever plotting the next side-step
or skip pass.
“little things,” he says, “…how you can get one
up on the opposition but when you’re injured your mind is empty;
your mind is blank.”
To fill the gap he thinks about what he can do with himself away from
the game. Learn another instrument (he already plays the piano), learn
to cook; he’s done a bit of cooking recently actually “but
it’s not rugby is it?”
If anything, these times give the young professional time to consider
a life without the sport. He’s only 21 but the years have a habit
of zipping past faster than a Bryan Habana line-break.
Geraghty always wanted to work in the City as a schoolboy — an aptitude
for figures told him it would be the logical place to go. He took himself
down there last week for a meeting with an investment bank to see about
getting some work experience. They were welcoming, really nice people.
He’ll follow up on that. Broking, foreign exchange, trading —
it has its appeal but like cooking it’s not rugby is it? Rugby is
where Shane Geraghty was born to shine.
He’s part of the new breed of English three-quarters — young,
gifted and quick. Along with the likes of Danny Cipriani, Toby Flood and
Ryan Lamb he is at the vanguard of the movement that is going to change
the English national team from artisans to artists. The 10-man game that
has defined the Red Rose for too long will cede to a more expansive, spontaneous,
expressive model. England are to be pioneers instead of mere pragmatists.
If the young guns resembled a footballer, it would be Wayne Rooney. When
he exploded on to the Premier League a few seasons ago nobody knew how
to stop him. He wasn’t doing the same old thing, throwing the same
old shapes. He terrorised defences accustomed to the staid and familiar.
Rooney was a lightning bolt of ginger energy. Damn it, he was a lightning
bolt of ginger Irish energy.
“No way he’s not a Paddy,” we said, “he looks
like he’s just finished playing centre-back for Longford Slashers.”
Shane Geraghty doesn’t remotely look like he’s just come off
a GAA field in Longford or anywhere else. His milky-bar-kid-who-grew-up-and-did-lots-of-weights
looks allied to his easy-going, flat Coventry tones make the Saxons starlet
appear positively, well, Saxon. Yet when it comes to DNA as the name would
suggest Geraghty is 100 per cent Irish.
Dad comes from Castlebar in Mayo. He left for the English Midlands when
16. Mum was born in England but her people are also from the west coast.
Shane, the youngest of six — a medium-sized Connacht family —
is immensely proud of his Irish heritage. He went so far as to represent
Ireland at under-18 level.
“I loved every minute of that. I played with a top group of guys.
I got on really well with Stephen Ferris in particular — we’re
still in contact. I remember playing against England one day — it
was such a great thing to be part of.”
Now, of course, he dons the all-white at international level. You can
see how Irish rugby followers silently shake their heads when they hear
the name Shane Geraghty. But when you are Shane Geraghty it’s different,
more complicated. Sure the family link to Ireland is a massive part of
who he is. But what he is, is someone who was born, raised, schooled and
finished in England. Also, from a professional view, as a teenager, England
made more sense.
“I could work with Brian Ashton at the National Academy. I don’t
think they had a similar structure in Ireland for that age group then.
To be really involved at that level with such a good coach it was a big
opportunity. I had to take it up.”
Still, stories trickle over from Ireland of parties when Shane is playing
“even when I play for England,” but, he continues: “A
decision had to be made at the time. Eddie (O’Sullivan) asked me
if I wanted to play for Ireland; to declare for them. At the time I wasn’t
really playing so it was a big, big thing.”
Was there talk of transferring over to Leinster or Munster?
“No, they never said anything like that. He said if you declare
for England or Ireland it doesn’t make a difference where you play.
I spoke to Catty (Mike Catt) and mum. Mum pretty much backed-up what Catty
said: Be patient.”
It is interesting who the two people the sometimes-out-half and sometimes-first-centre
looked to for advice and still does. Mum spent hours ferrying him and
his two brothers to rugby pitches all over the place as kids. She’s
a good listener, good at giving advice too. Inside the game though, Mike
Catt is very much his go-to man and has been for some time.
On London Irish’s player coach he says: “Yeah there’s
only a few people like that in rugby. Jonny Wilkinson is the same. When
he speaks everyone listens because most of the time he’s right.”
Geraghty first got to know Catt when they both arrived at the Exiles four
years ago. The latter a World Cup-winner, the former a kid eager to learn
as much as he could from a man who has achieved everything.
“I was just out of school,” says Geraghty, “we were
just getting to know each other at first but for the past two years in
particular he’s been a massive influence. Now he’s a coach
coming to me and asking me to do stuff. In the past I’ve been going
up to him annoying him, doing extra sessions, keeping him out late, annoying
his wife.”
The fact Catt had just signed was central to Geraghty’s decision
to make Sunbury his base but it wasn’t the only factor. He has a
vivid memory of arriving home after a family holiday to find a message
on the phone. It was Conor O’Shea. Conor had seen him play and was
interested in signing him up.
“Come down to London Irish and have a look around,” concluded
O’Shea’s message. Previously there had been talk of Bath or
Leicester but already Geraghty was sold.
“At the time it was a big thing. It still is a big thing. He’s
a big hero, to have him leave a message on your phone, out of the blue...
And you could see the players coming through — Nick Kennedy, Tom
Dillon — a lot of youngsters. It was a club moving forward.”
Geraghty has moved forward with that club. His planned comeback game is
arguably the biggest game in the proud history of London Irish —
Perpignan, Saturday, April 5 at the Madejski Stadium. He desperately wants
to make it. With a full house guaranteed and the new trumpeter to go with
the drummers the Exiles’ superb home support will make it an exceptional
occasion.
Still, even with modern physiotherapy treatments and with his leg strapped
to look like a cyborg’s these things take time. It’s particularly
frustrating for someone who this time last year was tearing the French
cover asunder at Twickenham.
A groin injury hampered much of his latter 2006/07 season and derailed
his World Cup push. And now just when he was on the brink of another England
call-up against France and Ireland, the land of his forefathers, he twists
his knee playing for London Irish against Leicester. Storming displays
for the Saxons — in which he dismantled Ireland A — count
for little as he is left to do the one thing he dislikes most: Watch.
And even taking a step back from the season’s picture, does he ever
fear a career could pass him by, that he might even hasten injuries that
will follow him around when the playing days are over? After all, the
ferocity with which rugby is played in the professional era causes even
hardened veterans of the game to wince.
“Rugby is my job,” he says. “You can just as easily
get injured in any other job.”
This is the first time he talks what appears to be nonsense. There are
two of us sitting in the stand at Sunbury but only one climbed the steps
like granddad. The chances of a journalist getting flattened by a frothing
sub-editor are (usually) remote.
When challenged Geraghty says: “Yeah it’s a high-contact sport.
There’s different risks but the rewards from playing and winning
with your teammates, the chance to win cups, makes up for it. You’ve
got to go into every tackle trying to get one up on the opposition.”
It was easier to do that at school when everyone was of a similar size
but now Geraghty, 5ft 11ins and under 14 stone — a little guy by
big-time rugby standards — has to be even more aggressive to hold
his own. Not that he minds.
Aged 11 he took a year out of rugby to try his feet at football. He enjoyed
it but it didn’t give him the same buzz.
“If anything it made me love rugby even more.” That camaraderie
was missing, more than that however, you couldn’t hit hard enough
for the young boy’s liking. As he points out, referring back to
his first-choice sport: “If you hit them hard enough people won’t
come down your channel again.”
Of the problems he’s had so far, he doesn’t put them down
to big hits. Hamstring trouble, groin trouble, a broken hand, a twisted
knee — “nothing from going into a tackle trying to smash someone,”
he says calmly.
The day you don’t try and smash someone is the day things will really
unravel he reckons.
“Go in less than 100 per cent you’ll get injured. If you just
give it all, fly in, if something goes wrong you can deal with it.”
He’s dealing with idleness now but wants it to end as soon as it
can. Cookery, musicianship, city trading — all worthy pursuits but
nothing to having the ball in hand, the crowd in your ear, a beaten man
in your wake and the try line approaching.
That’s where he wants to be and that’s where all rugby followers
— English, Irish, those with a heart divided between both causes
— want to see him. Never mind national allegiances, the game needs
talents like his whatever the colour of the shirt. Who knows perhaps we
can poach Danny Cipriani instead. A name like that, he’s got to
be something to the Cascarinos.
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