When I played rugby, the end of the season came with one guarantee. Champions or runners-up, we got four weeks off.
The younger I was, the harder I took them.
In 2003 myself, Shane Jennings, Des Dillon and Brian O’Riordan got on a flight to Thailand. The plan was the one every athlete tells themselves. Sit on a beach, get a few early nights, and let the body recharge.
Three and a half weeks, and there wasn’t one night we stayed in.
Thailand, 2003. Four lads taking it handy.
One afternoon, all of us hangin from the night before, a fella came past selling CDs. Des haggled him down to three for the price of one, and we stuck one on. Out came a song none of us had heard in years - Beds Are Burning, by Midnight Oil. It lit the four of us up like it had been written for the trip, and we played it everywhere we went after that.
In Koh Samui we rented scooters. I’d never sat on a bike in my life, so I drove mine like I was chauffeuring Miss Daisy, trying to keep the lads in sight up ahead, and I put it into a ditch inside the first hour by hopping off it in fear. That evening, bringing them back to rent them again, I panicked a second time, jumped off, and sent it straight into the owner’s entire row of parked scooters while he stood and watched. I retired from motorcycling on the spot and spent the rest of the trip clinging onto the back of Shane, passing the whistling and heckling ladyboys who’d decided we were on our honeymoon.
On Koh Phi Phi we found a Muay Thai bar, where you’d watch the fights over a few beers and buckets of vodka mixed with some form of Thai Red Bull. Once the bouts were done they’d let anyone from the crowd who fancied it climb into the ring and have a go.
A lad beside us sat reading a book through the whole thing. I leaned over. “What are you reading?” “A book.” That was the end of that.
And then there was the girl. The four of us were certain she was a Swedish goddess. She was from north Dublin. She came over looking for a favour, so Shane handed over his Quiksilver board shorts and took her sarong, because she wanted to get in the ring herself. So there she was, this beautiful blonde Dublin girl, standing across from a Maori girl from New Zealand about four times her size. And she gave it everything she had. One round that felt like half an hour, the four of us shouting in her corner like she was Katie Taylor in Croke Park.
We met her the next day, walking with her mates. Her voice was gone, black eye, cuts on her face. We stopped for a quick chat, and as she was walking off she turned and shouted back at us in her husky voice.
“Lads. Have the time of your lives.”
And off she went into the sunset.
We flew home, and forty-eight hours later a doctor was cutting six cysts out of my armpit. Shane had some class of a spider bite on his head. Brian had the flu. Des was the only one of the four fit to train on the first morning of pre-season. Willie Anderson, the assistant coach, took one look at the state of us and said nothing at all, which was worse. I’m fairly sure Thailand went quietly onto a list of places a professional rugby player wasn’t to be seen in June.
Then the stitches came out, and it was time to knuckle down.
Pre-season was my favourite time of the year. I’d go as far as to say I loved it more than the rugby.
Six weeks where nobody was picking a team. Just show up hungry and get stuck in. We ran Killiney Hill and endless laps of the old UCD track, and the only thing that mattered was whether today was better than yesterday. You could feel it happening to you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as physically primed in my life as I felt at the back end of a pre-season.
A few weeks later we had a match in Donnybrook. All four of us were playing. During the warm-up, as the supporters were walking in, the music came up over the loudspeaker around the ground, and out of nowhere, there it was - Beds Are Burning.
I looked across at Des. He had a small grin on his face, and that grin said everything.
I’m forty-six now.
There are stretches where I look at what’s on and I let it all go. Forget the food, forget the hard training. I keep the daily walking and a bit of lifting, because those two are for my head more than my body. The rest can wait.
And then I feel the surge building. Not for a contract this time, and not to make the team for the opening game, and not with every hour of the day free to train and eat and sleep and hang around with my mates. It’s a completely different thing now. But there’s still something in there I want to test, and when it starts up I know to get out of its way.
Twenty-three years on and Beds Are Burning is on the coaching groups’ gym playlist. Some days it puts me back in that bar on Koh Phi Phi with the lads. Some days it’s Killiney Hill with the lungs in flames.
Lads. Have the time of your lives.
Gary.
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