Player/Head Coach Corcoran laces up the boots one more

By Thomas Conway

For the past two years, the trajectory of this Nenagh Ormond senior rugby team has been almost exclusively upwards.

On occasion it has dipped - the odd loss here and there, such as last week’s defeat to Cork Constitution in the Munster Senior Challenge Cup - but overall, the team has been riding on the crest of a wave.

The next few weeks and months will determine whether they continue to surf that wave or whether the reality of life in Division 1A of the All-Ireland League starts to take its toll.

But the intention of the players and management in Lisatunny is to keep on surfing, relentlessly, even if the wave starts to break.

They are confident it won’t. They are confident they have the skill, strength, and squad-depth to compete with the crème de la crème of Irish club rugby. Cork Con, Old Belvedere, Lansdowne - they are all giants of the game in this country.

Player/Head Coach Derek Corcoran, whose impact off the bench will undoubtedly prove crucial throughout the course of this season (he already helped them to the win over UL Bohs), speaks about taking it “one game at a time.”

He is not being disingenuous. Nenagh will go out to win every game. But you can be sure that Corcoran and his management team have already targeted certain games in which winning is crucial, certain teams that may be ripe for exploitation.

Corcoran is a coach and a player, but he is also a strategist. He considers every factor, from the weather to the level of support. In the top tier of the AIL, every factor matters.

“We’ll have to assess it each week,” he explains.

“Conditions will play a big part in it so obviously that will be a factor. There was a big wind when we played Cork Con the last day, and that made it very difficult to play multi-phases and play the way we wanted to.

“But we are going to have to adapt each week, depending on our opposition, depending on the conditions.

“Obviously, we will be playing a higher quality of opposition, and we might have to make tweaks based on our own analysis, but the lads are up for it.

“We have a good squad there, plenty of experience, some new faces. And we are all looking forward to getting into the season.”

Physicality

The defeat to Cork Con wasn’t quite chastening, but it was a reminder of the level Nenagh are now going to be playing at week in week out.

Some of the Con supporters, longtime rugby men, warned that the level of physicality in 1A is a significant step up from 1B. It may be the defining factor which separates the top-tier from all the others. The skill level and pace are also higher, but the level of physicality, one of them said, is now “phenomenal.”

That is what Nenagh have been preparing for though. They have recruited new players, jetted off to La Rochelle for an intense pre-season training camp, and bulked up a little bit more. Corcoran says they are in good shape. They want to start with a win. And they are targeting Old Belvedere.

“The squad isn’t too bad, for this time of the year, going into the start of the league,” Corcoran says.

“We have had a really, really hard pre-season. We have had a few injuries but that’s part and parcel of it. We do have some guys who are getting ready to come back in and we are in healthy enough shape.

“We are all just focused on prepping for the start of the AIL - that is the focus. We can’t dwell on the Senior Cup; we can’t afford to do that. It is just all guns blazing to the start of the AIL and the Old Belvedere game.”