Schmidt Happens

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  I’m trying to make up my mind what kind of line I should take with the players when I meet them for the first time this morning. I’m torn between being a no-nonsense Eddie Jones character – I do love his quips – or a calm, steady, very little ego, Leo Cullen type.

  I look at myself in the mirror and I try out different voices. I’m there, ‘You will find me a tough coach but a fair coach! But if I see you giving me anything less than one hundred percent out there, I will drag you off the focking field myself!’

  Yeah, no, it looks like it’s going to be Eddie Jones, although I’ll make sure to throw in some funny lines that’ll hopefully come to me as I’m going along.

  All of a sudden, Sorcha walks into the room. She sits on the edge of the bed. It’s like she’s got something on her mind.

  She’s there, ‘You were up early this morning.’

  I’m like, ‘That’s rugby, Sorcha. Makes me behave in all sorts of crazy ways.’

  ‘I heard you doing your sit-ups.’

  ‘Fifty of the things. I’m like a man possessed.’

  In the mirror, I can see her smiling at me. She goes, ‘I love seeing you like this.’

  I’m there, ‘It’s just a Canterbury VapoDri drill top, Sorcha. The best thing about being totally deluded about your chances of being involved in the Ireland set-up one day is that you tend to have all the gear ready.’

  That’s actually true. I used to keep a Go Bag under the bed back in the day. I remember one day when Sorcha was pregnant with Honor, she had one of her many false alorms – she sat on a wet patio chair outside The Queens and thought her waters had broken – and I swung back to the house and grabbed what I thought was her hospital bag? When I opened it up in the ward, I couldn’t focking believe it. Water bottle. Gumshield. Electrical tape. Kicking tees. I was like, ‘Er, wrong emergency!’

  Sorcha walks up behind me and puts her two hands on my shoulders. She goes, ‘I’m not talking about your top, Ross. When I say I love seeing you like this, I mean excited about something.’

  I’m there, ‘It’s rugby, Sorcha. It’s what I was put on this Earth to do.’

  Still standing behind me, she lays one hand flat on my abs and with the other she traces the outline of my pecs. She’s kidding herself if she thinks it’s not about the drill top.

  ‘Listen,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘Can you hear that?’

  I can’t hear anything. I say that to her as well. I’m like, ‘I can hear fock-all, Sorcha.’

  She’s like, ‘Exactly. We have the house to ourselves.’

  I can feel her hot breath in my ear. She smells of Jo Malone shower gel, the lime, basil and mandarin one she always uses when she has a shower pre-sex. I’m thinking, Oh my God, is this about to finally happen?

  I’m like, ‘Where is everyone?’

  She’s there, ‘Mom and Dad have taken the boys out for a drive.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I go. ‘I don’t envy anyone in that cor.’

  ‘And Fionn has taken Hillary to the, em … the Irish Emigration Museum.’

  I realize that I’m hord. And it has nothing to do with the Irish Emigration Museum. I couldn’t give a fock about the Irish Emigration Museum.

  I turn around and Sorcha is looking at me with what can only be described as a hungry look on her face – storving, in fact? She throws herself at me, her lips on mine and suddenly she’s all over me like a cat at a scratching post.

  I’m not exactly a shrinking virgin in this situation and I’m giving every bit as good as I get. I put my two hands on her orse and I lift her up off the ground and at the same time she wraps her two legs around my waist. I carry her over to the bed, the two of us still wearing the face off each other, then we fall onto the bed with me on top of her.

  ‘Oh, Ross,’ she goes, ‘I’ve wanted this for so long.’

  And I’m thinking, You could have fooled me. And here I am walking around with balls like two focking motorcycle helmets.

  She goes, ‘Let’s try to make it last for ages.’

  And I’m thinking, I am going to disappoint you like I’ve never disappointed a girl before.

  I whip off my shorts while she kicks off her slippers and pulls her jeans down over her legs. I go to take off my drill top but she goes, ‘No, leave it on. I really like it,’ which is what I suspected all along.

  Imagine Fionn in a drill top! Actually, don’t bother! I saw him wearing one loads of times back in the day and it did very, very little for the goy. Okay, I’ve got to stop thinking about Fionn.

  We get down to it then in a serious way. She takes off her t-shirt and bra, grabs my head in her two hands and directs me to the drink station. And there – unfortunately – I’m going to bring the story to a close – out of respect for the sacred code of privacy that exists between a husband and wife.

  All I will say is that I do last for ages – although not so long that I end up being late for training – and that the whole sweaty business comes to an end with Sorcha kneeling on the chair from her dressing table, shouting, ‘I’m very nearly there! I’m very nearly there! Don’t you focking dare stop!’ and me looking at my face in her vanity mirror, one eye shut and one eye popping out of my head, my mouth forming a perfect O and my entire body shaking like a shitting dog as I gallop her to glory.

  I’ve possibly said too much so I’m going to leave it there.

  We both fix ourselves up. I go looking for my clothes. I’m like, ‘I’d better head off – I don’t want to be late for rugby training,’ and I get this sudden flashback to us being teenagers again.

  It’s nice.

  As she’s putting on her bra, she goes, ‘Ross, I love you.’

  And I’m like, ‘Er, yeah, no, I love you too, Sorcha. Definitely.’

  She goes, ‘I just want you to know that, okay? Whatever else happens, I really, really do love you.’

  We’re going to be training, apparently, in Herbert Pork, so that’s where I head. I come up with a plan while I’m in the cor. I decide to put the forwards through a few drills, then teach the front row goys one or two of the, let’s just say, dork orts of the scrum that I learned playing as a hooker for Seapoint – like, for instance, eating something like a lasagne or a prawn curry just before kick-off, then, just as you’re coming in for the bind, sticking your fingers down your throat and throwing up on the jersey of your opposite number.

  Then – my real calling – I’ll do some serious work with the backs, including one or two moves from the still-missing Tactics Book that I was considering holding back just in case Leinster were ever looking for a new backs coach and I wanted to blow them away at the interview. I just think, Fock it, I can use these goys to prove to myself that the moves do actually work.

  I pork up and I grab my kitbag out of the boot. It’s a beautiful, sunny May morning and I feel genuinely good about life. Okay, on one the hand, I miss my daughter and my old pair are planning to give me half a dozen brothers or sisters that I don’t actually want. But, on the other hand, me and Sorcha are back at it, the triplets are in an apparently great Montessori school, which means they’re someone else’s problem for five and a half hours every day, and I’m doing what I was born to do, which is coach rugby and get paid for doing it.

  I sling the kitbag over my shoulder and I head for the pitch next to the adventure playground, which is where Magnus said they usually meet. I hear him call my name. He’s like, ‘Hey, Rosh! Rosh! Over here!’

  I spot him. He’s dressed – I shit you not – in what can only be described as tennis whites. As I move closer to the group, I notice that there’s, like, twelve players, we’re talking six men and six – it’s impossible not to say this in a sexist way – but women?

  I’m like, ‘What the fock is this?’

  And Magnus goes, ‘Thish ish our team, Rosh. Everybody – this ish Rosh! He ish going to be our coach!’

  I’m there, ‘But there’s, like, women here.’

  One of the women – she must be, like, forty – goes, ‘Oh, gre
at – another sexist asshole.’

  And that ends up hurting me a lot, because I was a supporter of women’s rugby long before everyone else in this country jumped on the bandwagon. Yeah, no, I’ve been friends with Fiona Coghlan since we were, like, fifteen years old. I used to let her use me as a tackle bag, until one night, on the back pitch in Clontorf, when she hit me so hord I felt my liver move and she had to drive me to Beaumont for an MRI. She didn’t even wait there with me. She dropped me off outside A&E and as I limped through the electric doors, doubled over at the waist, told me to ‘focking grow a pair’.

  I’ve always been a little bit in love with Fiona since that day.

  The point I’m making – and Fiona would be the first to hopefully back me up on this – is that I am about as far from a sexist as it’s possible to be. I just thought I was going to be training an actual rugby team, instead of …

  And that’s when I notice Magnus pulling on a belt that’s got, like, two fluorescent yellow tags Velcroed onto the sides.

  I’m like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa – I thought you said you were playing rugby?’

  He goes, ‘Thish ish rugby!’

  He actually has the balls to say that.

  I’m there, ‘This is focking tag rugby!’

  And he’s like, ‘Yeah, shame thing!’

  Which it’s not. Which it most focking definitely is not.

  I’m there, ‘Jesus Christ, if this was actual rugby, you wouldn’t be dressed up as Andy Murray and you wouldn’t have six birds on your team wearing a full face of make-up.’

  He has the cheek to look actually hurt. I can’t believe I left my wife at home for this. Some dude steps up to me – some random accountant-type dude with side-ported hair and a white Slazenger polo shirt with the collar popped.

  ‘I’m Chris,’ he goes. ‘I’m the Manager of SMB Accounts.’

  And I’m there, ‘I literally don’t care.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry if there was some misunderstanding. But we could still use your expertise. A lot of these guys have never actually played rugby before.’

  ‘Dude, it’s tag rugby. It’s focking speed-dating for people who work in offices.’

  And to think I was going to share some of my most valuable secrets with them – moves I invented with the likes of Joey Corbery and Jordan Larmour in mind.

  Talk about feeding strawberries to a donkey.

  The dude goes, ‘We need help because we’re about to play Google. Do have you any idea what that means?’

  ‘It means fock-all. It’s tag rugby. It matters to no one.’

  ‘For global tech companies using Ireland as their tax and revenue base, Ross, Facebook versus Google is tag rugby’s equivalent of El Clásico – or, as we call it, El Taxico!’

  Yeah, no, I’d say that gets a few laughs in the breakout rooms and think-spaces of Barrow Street and Grand Canal Square. I give him fock-all back, though. I’m too pissed off.

  He’s there, ‘We had a really good tag rugby team last summer. We beat everyone – eBay, Apple, Microsoft. Even Google. And do you know what they did? They poached everyone on the team.’

  One of the men laughs. ‘Yeah,’ he goes, ‘and they all went off to join a company where, according to Payscale, only sixty-seven percent of employees feel like their work has real meaning, compared to eighty-one percent in Facebook!’

  They all laugh then.

  ‘They don’t even have a nail bar!’ one of the women goes. ‘Or a massage programme!’

  Jesus Christ, it’s like they live in their own little bubble – it’s like meeting boarders from Clongowes.

  Magnus goes, ‘Rosh, you can shee how much it meansh to the guysh to win thish match.’

  I’m there, ‘How can you even call it a match? Dude, it’s tag rugby! It’s kiss-chase with a ball.’

  This Chris dude goes, ‘Ross, please. I’ve asked a few people about you. And I’ve been told you know the game inside-out.’

  I’m there, ‘Who said that?’

  ‘A few people.’

  ‘It’d be interesting to know whether any of those people are involved in the current Leinster and Ireland set-ups.’

  ‘All I’ll say is the phrase that kept coming up was “a rugby brain”.’

  ‘Yeah, that can be taken two ways. But, in this case, I’m going to take it as a compliment.’

  Seriously. I’m suddenly thinking, What have you got to lose? Why not just take the focking moo? It’s ten Ks per session. You can throw on a baseball cap while you’re coaching them so that nobody recognizes you. And if anyone ever takes the piss out of you for doing it – I can see the likes of Shane Byrne having a focking field day if he ever found out – you can just deny everything point-blank.

  I swear to God, I’m right on the point of saying okay when I hear one of the women – again, not sexist – go, ‘Does the ball have to be thrown backwards or can it go forwards as well?’ and that ends up being the last straw for me.

  I once heard Sorcha’s old man ask the exact same question at an Ireland versus South Africa match while sitting in a complimentary seat just two rows in front of Fergus Slattery. I nearly focked him over the edge of the Upper West Stand for disrespecting the great man, and I wasn’t the only one who was sorely tempted.

  No, I decide, I’m not wasting my knowledge on these people. Focking tag rugby.

  I’m just there, ‘I’m sorry, goys. I’m out of here.’

  ‘The fock is wrong with you two?’ Leo goes.

  Yeah, no, it was probably hoping for too much to expect a major improvement in their behaviour after, like, a week in Little Cambridge. But I would like to see some change in the boys.

  Brian’s like, ‘The fock are they smiling at?’

  I gave Sorcha another good cordio workout this morning while Fionn was giving Hillary his morning feed downstairs. Twice in a week. That’s what the fock we’re smiling at.

  Our happiness seems to piss Brian off most of all. He puts his hand down the back of his trousers, farts into his hand and blows it at me.

  Little focker.

  Johnny, by the way, is playing the violin. Or rather there’s a violin sitting on the kitchen table in front of him and he’s scraping the bow back and forth across its strings like he’s trying to saw the thing in half. It’s very focking annoying.

  Sasha told Sorcha yesterday that she thought music might be Johnny’s thing on the basis that he pointed at a violin and went, ‘What the fock is that?’

  Direct quote.

  Of course, Sorcha rushed straight into Waltons to buy him one for three hundred snots. And while it’s still early days, my guess is that music isn’t going to be Johnny’s thing.

  Sorcha puts my breakfast in front of me. It’s, like, smashed avocado toast with a poached egg on top – and this on a Monday morning, bear in mind. I tell her thanks and I grab her hand and we give each other a long, lingering look. She looks – honestly? – as beautiful as I’ve ever seen her and I’m thinking, Am I falling in love with my wife all over again?

  ‘Get a focking room,’ Leo goes. And me and Sorcha both laugh. No avoiding it. And that’s when my phone suddenly storts ringing.

  I’m there, ‘That’ll be Honor!’

  Sorcha’s like, ‘Honor?’

  ‘Yeah, no,’ I go, ‘she texted me last night and said she’d FaceTime me this morning.’

  Sorcha goes, ‘Em,’ suddenly deciding she doesn’t want to be in the room, ‘I’d better go and put on my make-up. We don’t want the boys to be late for Montessori.’

  I answer the phone and up pops Honor’s face. I’m like, ‘Hey, Honor, how the hell are you?’

  She goes, ‘Hi, Dad! What the fock is that noise?’

  I’m like, ‘Yeah, no, Johnny’s learning the violin – if you could call it that.’

  I point my phone at them. I’m like, ‘Hey, goys, say hello to your sister!’

  They’re all like, ‘Hi, Honor!’ and she’s there, ‘Hi, boys!’ and it ends up being a genuinely love
ly moment.

  She goes, ‘Are you boys being good for your daddy?’

  And I’m like, ‘Not really. They’re still little pricks. But the big news since I last spoke to you is that they’ve storted in Montessori.’

  ‘You mean someone actually agreed to take them?’

  ‘I know, right? Focking mugs! So how have you been?’

  ‘Oh my God, Dad – ah-mazing! Have you been watching my channel?’

  ‘Yeah, no, I saw the last video you put up. My Favourite Everyday Ten-Minute Make-Up Looks.’

  ‘Dad, we’ve got, like, 300,000 subscribers!’

  We meaning her and Erika. I try not to come across as jealous, but I end up going, ‘It was basically the two of you just putting make-up on. There’s definitely less banter than when I was doing it with you.’

  She goes, ‘Oh! My God! You should see the stuff that arrives here for me every day!’

  ‘What kind of stuff are we talking?’

  ‘Oh my God, clothes! We’re talking, like, jeans, tops, shoes, jackets, dresses. All from labels who want to be associated with the Love Honor and Obey brand. And then, like, beauty products – boxes and boxes of them. Erika has turned me into a proper influencer, Dad!’

  ‘Yeah, no, that’s great news, Honor!’

  ‘I don’t even need to threaten companies with bad reviews any more. Helen says they might have to give me a second room.’

  ‘I’m genuinely delighted for you.’

  ‘Anyway, I have to go. We’re going out for dinner. I’ll talk to you again soon, Dad. Bye, boys!’

  They’re like, ‘Bye, Honor!’

  And that ends up being that.

  Johnny goes back to dragging the bow across the strings of his violin. It seems to somehow match my mood in a weird way because I feel suddenly sad.

  I stand up. I’m there, ‘Come on, goys, let’s get you to Montessori. See can poor Sasha discover some genius in you that me and your old dear are somehow missing.’