Bellydancers, Ospreys and new contracts

Date Published: 12-Feb-2008

WE are back in action this Saturday night after a four week break from playing. We’ve been up and down to Dublin with Gavin Duffy each week rejoining the Irish squad after the weekend’s action, which has been keeping us busy. We share the driving and I’d say the poor lad has had enough of me at this stage.

It has kept me ticking over but it will be nice to get back to on-field action this weekend and, having rejoined the Connacht squad at the end of last week, training was going very well and the lads are clearly refreshed and ready to go.

The Ospreys may well be missing a lot of their front liners but they’ll still have close to ten internationals out and of course their two New Zealand stars, Marty Holah and Justin Marshall. We’ll be taking nothing for granted in this one but we are well aware that an away win could keep us well on track in the race for a Heineken Cup place.

My former Wasps team mate Mark Van Gisbergen is good friends with Marty and I remember a couple of years ago he was over with the All Blacks for a match with Engand. He took the time, the night before the game, to hop on a tube and head across London to meet his old mate. It was some gesture in the circumstances and Mark always speaks really highly of him.

I wouldn’t know too much about Justin Marshall although we did play on a World XV side together against South Africa a couple of years back. That whole weekwas some experience.

I’ve done that kind of trip a couple of times with the Barbarians as well. The build up to the games isn’t your typical week of preparation for a big match. Lots of tip rugby and a real throwback to the days of social amateur sport. I can’t really go into the ins and outs of the evening’s entertainment though.

It’s contract time in the lives of professional rugby players. Every year from around December to February, those players whose contracts are up at clubs begin to go through the process of trying to secure their futures at the team they are currently with or securing a move elsewhere.

Just imagine if your own job……….