Rugby Heroes

by Gerard Siggins

  ‘It’s funny how you watch a game differently when you’re counting mistakes,’ said Alan. ‘Some guys I thought were good players are knocking on three or four times every game, and some guys just never look for the ball.’

  Eoin grinned. ‘I’d keep that sort of information to yourself. It’s a sure-fire way to make yourself unpopular for that to get out.’

  ‘It’s not all negative,’ said Alan. ‘I’ve been taking notes on tries and kicks for a couple of years now and I’ve worked out the most effective moves to lead to a score.’

  Eoin’s eyes widened. ‘Really?

  ‘Yeah,” replied Alan. “That switch kick you do when you shape at kick-off towards the packs and then snap it out to the wing? I don’t know why you don’t use that more often. You’ve tried that four times over the last two years, and scored three tries from it, including in the World Cup final. I’ll remind you next time you need a try.”

  Castlerock had clinched their place in the next round by half-time, when they led by more than twenty points. Dylan scored two more tries after the break to ensure a 44-0 win.

  ‘That’s eight tries in two games,’ he chuckled later in the dormitory as he stretched out on his bed. ‘Do you reckon that’s a Leinster record?’

  Eoin shrugged as he tossed his dirty socks into the laundry bag. ‘I wouldn’t know, maybe you should ask Alan when he gets back from study.’

  ‘What’s up with you?’ snapped Dylan. ‘Are you not happy I scored a hat-trick?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Eoin replied. ‘It’s just that you seem more interested in your own performance than the team’s.’

  Dylan glared back at him. ‘That’s rubbish.’

  ‘Well then, how come you never asked me was I happy that the team won? And last time it was all “five tries” this, and now it’s “hat-trick” that.’

  Dylan bowed his head and left the room.

  Eoin sighed, unsure if he had done the right thing. But one glance at the clock and the realisation that he had to have his maths homework complete in the twenty-five minutes before lights-out ensured he quickly forgot all about Dylan and rugby.

  Chapter 14

  Eoin swung by The Rock on his morning run, but there was no sign of any of his other-world friends. He paused for a swig from his water bottle and ran on, but as he passed the rugby pitch he was astonished to see Richie Duffy out practising his goal kicks. Mr Carey must have had a word with him, but as he was unlikely to play again it seemed like a waste of time. Still Eoin had to admire Duffy’s commitment – practice time was never wasted time.

  Because of the new Four Nations competition it was decided by the authorities to get schools fixtures over early, and Castlerock’s quarter-final against Sandycove School was only three days away. Eoin went along to the training session after school and Mr Carey asked him to take his place as first choice out-half.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Duffy and Hickey,’ the coach said, ‘we see you both playing an important role as this competition goes on, but right now we’re bringing back Madden and Bermingham for the Sandycove game.’

  Duffy glowered at the edge of the group, but he couldn’t really complain. With their star players, Castlerock were as good a JCT as any school in the province, maybe even the country. The rest of the team knew they had a good chance to collect winners’ medals in the Aviva in a few weeks, but that chance was an awful lot greater with Eoin and Charlie back in the team.

  Eoin slipped easily back into his usual position outside Rory, and the deep understanding between them was obvious after a few minutes. Dixie had once told Eoin that a strong ‘spine’ was vital for a good rugby team – from full back, through the half-backs up to the No. 8 and hooker. These were the pivotal roles in the team and the most talented players should play there. Eoin saw that Dixie spoke a lot of sense and it was obvious to everyone that having Charlie at Number 8, and Rory and Eoin as half-backs was a massive advantage for Castlerock, and the trio dictated almost every move and action.

  But that didn’t go down well with the captain-in-name perched out on the wing.

  The three discussed one move as a scrum formed, but as Eoin hurried back to his position he spotted Dylan jumping up and down on the touchline.

  ‘I’m supposed to be the captain,’ Dylan grumbled at the next break in play. ‘You and Charlie have taken over.’

  ‘Ah, Dylan, it’s only a training session and we’re just trying something different. With you out on the wing its awkward.’

  ‘OK, but call me over next time you want to make any changes,’ Dylan snapped before turning and trotting back out to his position.

  Eoin shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

  The game against Sandycove was played on the Leinster branch pitch in Donnybrook, and Eoin loved getting the chance to play in a ‘real’ stadium where the grandstand towered above, packed with supporters.

  These games also saw the arrival of the ‘old boys’, former pupils of Castlerock who came along to support the school’s rugby teams in big games. Many had been at school many years before, but the noisiest were those who had left in recent years and were now college students. They delighted in loud roars of support and singing rude songs about the teachers.

  Eoin grinned as he heard Mr McCaffrey’s name being chanted, but when he heard the referee call the teams into position he blocked out everything that was going on outside the whitewashed lines.

  Sandycove weren’t a bad side, and were able to compete with Castlerock in the scrums and line-outs. But they didn’t have the flair of the back unit marshalled by Eoin.

  With Charlie and Rory controlling the speed of the ball coming to him, Eoin was free to unleash the plays that he and Mr Carey had worked on in training, and which owed a lot to the ideas Eoin had picked up at the Leinster and Ireland camps.

  Eoin was much more aggressive in his running than Richie Duffy, and two of his breaks set up tries for Charlie who knew there would always be crumbs to be had by staying close to the shoulder of his out-half.

  Castlerock led 17-0 at half-time, which should have made everyone happy, but there was one grumpy face as Mr Carey handed out the slices of orange.

  ‘We need to bring the backs more into the game,’ growled Dylan. ‘We could catch frostbite out there on the wing.’

  Mr Carey, and the rest of the team, looked shocked.

  ‘I think we’ve been very effective in the way we have played so far,’ the coach replied, carefully. ‘There has been plenty of running and passing too, perhaps you have just been unlucky not to get much ball, Dylan.

  ‘And anyway, the important thing is that,’ he added, pointing at the electronic scoreboard that blinked out the crucial numbers in bright red.

  Chapter 15

  Eoin wasn’t impressed with Dylan’s display of selfishness, and his attempt to somehow blame Eoin for keeping the ball away from the backs. He certainly wasn’t going to change his plans just because his pal was feeling a little chilly.

  Once Mr Carey was finished Eoin headed for half-way and threw a few blades of grass in the air to check which way the wind was blowing. He glanced over at Alan who was wrapped up in what looked like two coats, two scarves and his woolly Leinster beanie. The team-stats man had his clipboard, but Eoin wondered what he could possibly be writing as he gripped the pen in his gloved fist as if he was carrying a dagger.

  ‘Time for that thing we were talking about,’ Alan called out, waving his clipboard.

  Eoin grinned, and took a step back to look around the whole pitch, checking mostly where his left winger was.

  As soon as the referee sounded the whistle, Eoin shaped to kick the ball between the converging groups of forwards on the right-hand side of the pitch, but at the last moment he pivoted on his standing foot and switched to face left. He had practised the move many times, and knew it was high-risk. The first time he had tried it he fell over and the ball went loose and cost his team a try.

  But this time he executed everything perfectly. He coul
d feel the hairs prickle on the back of his neck as he twirled around, and he got a surge of delight as his boot connected perfectly with the ball. Up it rose, aimed perfectly to hang above the Sandycove 22-metre line until his left winger could arrive to collect it.

  However, Eoin’s perfectly executed plan came to nothing. The Castlerock left-wing – Dylan – arrived far too late to make any attempt to catch the ball, and his opposite number gathered easily and moved the ball inside to build a platform to attack once more.

  Eoin glared across at Dylan, who had his hands on his hips.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?’ Dylan roared.

  Eoin turned away, keen to get back in the game and unwilling to get involved in any debate with Dylan. He could have given him some signal, but that might have given the game away to Sandycove. Dylan should have been ready for anything and quicker to react.

  Sandycove soon lost possession and Mikey O’Reilly nipped over for a third try, which killed off their resistance. Mr Carey made several changes and took Eoin off with twenty minutes left.

  Perhaps sensing the tension between Eoin and Dylan, Richie Duffy suddenly changed from Eoin’s more measured approach and began flinging the ball out to the backs at every opportunity. It meant Dylan got more chance to run with the ball, but the sloppy passing worried Mr Carey. A breakaway try for Sandycove proved his worries correct, but Dylan still came off the field with his arms in the air thanks to a last-minute run and touchdown under the posts.

  ‘Brilliant try, Dyl, is that nine tries in the competition now?’ asked Duffy with a sneaky grin on his face.

  ‘Yeah, it’s getting harder to score, but who knows who we’ll select for the next game.’

  Eoin snorted. He wasn’t being cocky about it, but he knew there was no chance he would be dropped, no matter what Dylan thought.

  Dylan’s head turned and he glared at Eoin, but bit his lip.

  ‘Nice try, Dyl,’ Eoin offered.

  ‘Thanks, it’s good to get the chance to run sometimes,’ he snapped back.

  Eoin shrugged and went to shake the hands of the Sandycove boys.

  Chapter 16

  Eoin didn’t have time for drama this term. There was a serious amount of homework to be done, and study when that was finished. He also had to fit in a couple of half-hour rugby sessions on his own every day, which comprised a morning jog and kicking practice after school or after training.

  Rory had received some good news from Neil – he was no longer a stand-by player, but a full member of the international squad – but that wasn’t good news for Castlerock.

  Mr Carey was careful not to over-stretch Eoin, Rory and Charlie, and only invited them to one of the three JCT training sessions. But even with that, Eoin was exhausted.

  ‘I just want to sleep all the time,’ he told Alan one evening.

  ‘But look, you’ve only two games – max – at the Four Nations, and two – max – with the school,’ reasoned his friend. ‘Four games of rugby and you can switch off all that and get into the books.’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that…’ mused Eoin, feeling instantly happier.

  As it happened, Eoin’s rugby schedule was even lighter than he thought. Next day came a letter from the IRFU, detailing the plan for the Four Nations, and when Eoin would need to report for duty.

  As he read through the letter, the dates started whirring through his head as he fitted them into his mental calendar.

  ‘Uh oh,’ he mumbled. ‘That’s going to be a problem.’

  Alan looked at him quizzically and peered over his elbow at the letter.

  ‘Oh, bummer,’ he squeaked, ‘You start camp the day before the Junior Cup semi-final.’

  ‘I know. And I’d be surprised if they allowed us out of camp to play in it.’

  Eoin went looking for Rory and Charlie and found them both outside the staff room where they had gone to see Mr Carey.

  ‘This is very disappointing,’ said the coach, waving the IRFU letter. ‘I’ll give Neil a ring to see if there’s any leeway – Dodder Woods have a player in the squad too, haven’t they?’

  But Neil wasn’t having anything of Mr Carey’s appeal. He told the coach politely that it was vital that the players joined the Ireland squad on that date, and that they focused fully on winning the Four Nations.

  ‘What if one of them got injured?’ Neil asked. ‘At that late stage it would be disastrous to lose my first-choice out-half, scrum-half or captain’.

  Mr Carey reluctantly agreed, and wished Neil well.

  ‘No dice boys,’ he told the three players. ‘The only upside is that he regards you as his first picks, which is great news for you. We’ll just have to beat Dodder without you.’

  Eoin wasn’t too disappointed at missing the semi-final. He knew the team would miss him, but still believed they had enough to win. After dinner, he slipped into his tracksuit and set off on a circuit of the grounds.

  It was starting to drizzle, and as he was close to the small cluster of trees that surrounded The Rock, he ducked under their cover to escape the raindrops.

  He parted the bushes to reach the stream and was startled to see he was not alone.

  ‘G’day Eoin,’ said Dave. ‘Not an evening for a run, is it?’

  Eoin grinned and looked behind the former All Blacks legend – following him through the bushes were Kevin Barry, Alex Obolensky and William Webb Ellis. All four heroes were united by their connection to rugby’s past, but also by Eoin himself who had linked up with each of them over the past three years to help solve the mysteries that kept cropping up in his life.

  ‘What has you all here?’ asked Eoin.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ replied Kevin, ‘but we all got a strong message to get here as soon as possible.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Eoin, ‘how does that work?’

  ‘It is not like one of those texting messages,’ replied Alex, ‘It is like something that goes straight into your mind. It’s how we communicate with other ghosts after we pass over into the after-life.’

  ‘And you were all told to come here…?’

  The quartet of spectres nodded.

  ‘But where’s Brian?’ asked Eoin. ‘Surely he….’

  ‘Yeah, we reckon it was he who sent for us,’ said Dave. ‘We’ve been searching for him everywhere but with no luck.’

  ‘I thought I saw him in Lansdowne Road a few days ago,’ said Eoin. ‘I even followed him into the underground car park, but I couldn’t find him. I hope he’s OK.’

  The four ghosts told him they would keep looking, and let him know how they got on.

  Chapter 17

  Mid-term break arrived, and Eoin spent the first few days studying as long as he could stay awake, broken up only by meals and his IRFU fitness programme.

  On the Wednesday evening before the tournament started, Charlie, Eoin and Rory stacked their bags just inside the main entrance door to the school and waited for the mini-bus to arrive. Mr Carey had offered to drop them over to the hotel where they would be staying, close to the ground.

  ‘Did anyone see the newspaper this morning?’ asked Rory. ‘There was a list of the squad and standby players. Dylan was down as being on standby – I don’t think he knows that. He was very grumpy before breakfast when I was packing.’

  Eoin shrugged. He was used to Dylan’s moods, but he still didn’t understand why his friend couldn’t be happy for his friends when they did well – it wasn’t as if it was his place they were taking.

  Mr Carey helped them lug their bags aboard the bus and waited as the headmaster came out to wish them well. A small crowd of junior boys had gathered too.

  ‘Very best of luck boys, although you don’t need any such thing. You have been such a credit to Castlerock this past year and brought such glory on the school. You don’t owe us anything more, so just go out and enjoy this marvellous competition.’

  The trio nodded and sheepishly took the congratulations. As they climbed into the bus
Eoin noticed that Dylan had just come back from a run; he watched as Dylan bounded up the steps into the school without even a glance across at his team-mates.

  Most of the Ireland squad – and their opponents – were already lounging around the lobby when Mr Carey finally found his way through rush hour traffic to the hotel.

  ‘Eoooooinnnn!’ came a call across the busy entrance area. Eoin struggled to work out who had hailed him, but when he heard it again coming from a huge grin wearing an Ulster shirt he knew instantly who it was.

  ‘Paddy O’Hare! Great to see you,’ he replied, delighted to meet his midfield team-mate from the Mini World Cup triumph.

  The pair hugged before exchanging news and comparing notes on the action that was in store for them over the coming week.

  ‘Neil was here earlier,’ Paddy explained. ‘He says we’re training all day tomorrow, then a light run on Friday before we play Scotland on Saturday lunchtime.’

  Eoin smiled. He remembered the World Cup and how Scotland had been pipped at the last moment – they would surely be gunning for revenge against Ireland.

  ‘We have three days before the next game, against Wales, and then the last game against England – in the Aviva!’

  ‘Really?’ asked Eoin.

  ‘Yeah, they’re organising a whole day of games there – Scotland play Wales; then our game; then a women’s international. It should be epic.’

  ‘Three hard games in a week will be tough – I’d say Neil will be using the bench players big time,’ suggested Rory.

  ‘I expect so,’ agreed Eoin. ‘And for sure someone will get injured. Those Scots lads over there look like they might do some damage just by looking at us…’

  Chapter 18