Before the All Blacks game in Chicago in 2016 I was riven with doubts. For all sorts of reasons I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else.
I knew that Joe was eyeing me. We were putting on the match jerseys and getting ready to go out for the anthems.
There was just time for Joe to give me the ‘big players in big games’ line.
Instead, he quietly says to me, “We need a big game from you today, Rob. You need a big game for you.”
Kick-off is maybe four minutes away, tops, and I’m thinking, f*** you Joe. Why would you just say that to me now.
You know the way my head is. What the hell?
We’re going out here where we may well get bloody well pumped, Joe, and you’re basically telling me that you’ve put your ass on the line for me.
You’ve just reaffirmed what doubts I’ve been feeling. You’ve just told me that I’m in by the skin of my teeth.
I had to turn it around quickly in my own head. In the tunnel I was thinking, screw him. If this is my last game for Ireland,
I’m just going for it. I don’t f***ing care anymore.
I knew I wasn’t fully match fit and that the whole thing wasn’t looking too promising and now Joe was pressuring me like this.
I’d had a knee injury for weeks but this was a new day. I hadn’t strapped the knee that I had strapped during the previous four weeks of playing or training. It felt a little better.
I’d decided that, literally and metaphorically, I was going without the strapping.
A big factor had been the public bandwagoning, the lobbying for a change at full back. I hadn’t been playing my best rugby but that general acceptance that you are finished can really get to you.
Anything good you’ve ever done ceases to matter. I needed Joe’s imprimatur that I was still a big player who was going to
step up.
I played well, out of anger and out of not caring anymore. There was a point when I felt that this was going to be a good day and when the game was over, I remember retreating into that selfish corner.
That’s me back. Point proved. I’ve bought myself another eighteen months in the jersey.
On the field afterwards, I did an interview with American TV. When it finished and I turned away, Joe was there beside me with that boyish little grin.
“I’ll have to say that to you more often, Rob.”
Buttons pushed again.
Rob Kearney: No Hiding – My Autobiography, published by Reach Sport is on sale from October 22 in all good bookshops.
