‘Scrum, Jack. Scrum!’
Jack McGrath has com out of his shell in the past year. Backed by Joe Schmidt as his starting loosehead, the 25-year-old is now a considered, insightful and witty interviewee.
It helps that we [the media] are not peppering him with questions about Cian Healy all the time.
McGrath has been one of Ireland’s best performers over the past 12 months and has emerged from Ireland’s poor Six Nations start with reputation intact. The Irish scrum and lineout may have struggled but McGrath is doing just about everything asked of him.
The wins are not coming, however, and we have been left with images of Ireland gathering, forlornly, under the posts for an opposition conversion or trudging, forlornly, off the pitch.
McGrath told us what is going through his head during those tough moments.
“Obviously it’s pretty tough, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that.
“But what we try to do is just get onto our next job. Shit happens.
“It’s one of those things that you really just have to get on with it. If you let it get into your head that’s when it’s an issue.
“Rugby isn’t a perfect game, everything you do isn’t going to be perfect. It’s just, when you are in a bad situation to maybe try to get out.”
Shit happens. The philosophy that stood for Forrest Gump and, in real life, sold a lot of t-shirts.
One thing that won’t be selling this year, or in your Christmas stocking, is a DVD of Ireland’s 2016 Six Nations.
McGrath admits it is hard to go from champions to also-rans but, once again, he is not letting it haunt him.
“Since I’ve come into the squad we’ve been winning, so it is hard to take.
“But I’ve gone through it with Leinster last season. It happens, it happens to a lot of teams and it’s hard to stop it when it does happen.
“We just have to go on, try to finish third and finish on a positive. We’ve got to take the positives from the last two games and bring them into the next two games.”
We’ll have whatever Zen Jack is having.
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