In his enjoyable autobiography Rory Best had appeared to explicitly rule out staying in the game as a coach when writing: “But I am not a coach, and wouldn’t want to be a coach.” All of which rather made this week’s announcement that he is to become part of the coaching ticket at the Seattle Seawolves even more unlikely.
However, the way he describes it, this is more a case of him gently dipping his toes than embarking upon a new career.
“This is more consultancy, so it’s not straight-up coaching. I’m not there every single day. The press release almost made it sound like I was taking over as director of rugby, which is not the case,” said Best, who was speaking at an event for Specsavers’ healthy hearing campaign.
“There’s a lot going on in my head in terms of what I’d like to see rugby like. What I’m doing with Seattle is mainly Zoom talks with their coaches. I’ll review their game and do it mainly like how we reviewed games at Ulster and Ireland.”
The Seawolves are owned by Adrian Balfour, who is from Enniskillen, and until such time as Covid and quarantine restrictions ease, Best will remain on the family farm near Poyntzpass, where he is busy working on the family’s “five-year project”.
“Whenever I was playing, I certainly didn’t want to be a coach. Even now, I enjoy having my weekends back. At the same time, it’s also okay to change your mind a little bit and change your outlook on where you see yourself being in the future,” he said on a Zoom call from his clean and tidy home office, overlooked by a framed mélange of five photographs from Ireland’s win over the All Blacks in November 2018.
Best ought to have plenty to offer the game still, given he is Ireland’s third most capped player of all time behind Brian O’Driscoll and Ronan O’Gara. Only O’Driscoll has captained Ireland more often and in Best’s 38 games as skipper there was a Grand Slam and wins over all three southern hemisphere sides, including the groundbreaking two wins over the All Blacks.
He misses the daily interaction with team-mates, the stimulus of working with coaches and most of all the crowds, the absence of which has made his transition easier, and recalled attending Ireland’s 24-14 win over Wales in the second round of last year’s Six Nations.
Noting the brilliant atmosphere in the ground he knew, with a weekend break to follow, the same would apply in the dressingroom. “Those are the moments that you really go: ‘Yeah, that is what you miss about it’.”
The flip side, as he put it, was the thought of training in the horrific weather of that week or suffering defeats with Ulster or Ireland as a player. “That’s the weekend ruined, and there’s part of me that doesn’t miss that.”
Nowadays he would “be annoyed a bit for the guys that I played with and as a supporter, but I’ll wake up the next morning and I’ll largely not think about it, whereas that consumed your entire weekend.”
Looking ahead to this weekend’s two European semi-finals, Best believes Ulster and Leinster will win away to Leicester and La Rochelle respectively.
“Leinster will be able to match the tempo at times of La Rochelle but when it suits them they’ll also be able to turn it into a bit of a squeeze and a tighter affair.
“I think there’s potentially too many of La Rochelle’s players that if Leinster can get on top of them they’ll go from strengths to weaknesses. Having said that, if Leinster don’t get on top of them it will be a really, really difficult day because they have some quality players throughout their team.”
Best acknowledges that Leicester have turned a corner under Steve Borthwick and will look at Connacht’s win over Ulster last Friday.
“They’ll think that if they can keep it to a bit of an arm wrestle at set piece and really physically go after Ulster and put Ulster on the back foot, that they’ll have a really good chance.
“But I just think Ulster will get enough front-foot ball and they’ve too many attacking weapons for Leicester.”
