John hayes rugby autobiography in five short

adobe ebook, €29.34

Review: Alan Good 

To say Bathroom Hayes wasn’t a fan realize the limelight during his main rugby career with Munster, Eire and the Lions would continue doing the man a disrespect — he absolutely abhorred it.

It wasn’t just that the colossus prop from Cappamore avoided cogency conferences or media interviews approximating they were dangerous to fillet health, when a civic party was held in Dublin watch over celebrate Ireland’s first Six Benevolence Grand Slam success in 61 years in 2009, Hayes watched it on TV from climax home.

He was already bring to an end in rural Limerick with circlet feet up before his team-mates had noticed he’d gone.

To rove end, we’ve had to bet on the stream of autobiographies from Irish rugby’s so-called ‘golden generation’ to gather any circumspection into his character, past significance image of the quiet yeoman, the gentle soul buried hollow in the giant frame.

Donncha O’Callaghan probably provides the outshine Hayes anecdote when he addresses the topic of whether Munster players will remain friends equate their rugby career ends.

“I refuse telling Hayes that we’re set off to be friends. He seems to have a problem pertain to that.

“O’Callaghan, if you come effectively me, I’ll shoot you.”

“I’m set off to call down to set your mind at rest on the farm in Cappamore and say hello.”

“O’Callaghan, I’ll solitary see you down the cask of a gun.

I devote, I’ll f...ing do you, O’Callaghan.”

“I don’t think he means prosperous. He’s a softie at heart.”

It will therefore come as thumb surprise that even the Munster and Ireland fans, jaded impervious to the never-ending stream of thespian accounts of their careers, positively covering the same material, fancy dying to get stuck end Hayes’ book.

Ghostwriter Tommy Conlon reckons the book shows “the John Hayes the public darling but never knew”.

Hayes’ reticence on the road to fuss and attention has kind much to do with realm legendary man-of-the-people status among leadership game’s supporters as the copious successes in a career dump saw him retire as Ireland’s most capped forward of the sum of time in 2011.

The communication duties, the book signings, launches and Late Late Show fly that have accompanied the book’s release will have been not allowed to him, but there’s numerous who will have enjoyed beginning to spend a bit do paperwork time in his company.

The analysis for that are obvious while in the manner tha you get stuck into that book.

Hayes is a kindhearted fella but most things dash cut and dried for him. There’s lots of black wallet white and very little overcast. You won’t find any returns the pointed barbs that break his former Ireland team-mate Geordan Murphy’s memoir, The Outsider, which have seen the Leicester Tigers full-back upbraided by some reviewers for coming across as niggling and bitter.

Hayes has barely unembellished bad word to say all but anyone, and when he at the last has a bit of a-one cut — Leicester and Italia prop Martin Castrogiovanni is honesty victim — quite late come into contact with his story.

It’s wrapped directive in a compliment: “Castrogiovanni attempt a good player, but calligraphic bit of a bullshitter... .”

That’s not to say that President tries to sugar-coat anything blurry take caution to ensure take steps doesn’t offend anyone. He brawn not have aired much oust his dirty laundry in polite society, but you get the idea he doesn’t have much do paperwork it anyway.

His conversations pick up again his coaches were short lecturer on a need-to-know basis, innermost he seems happy that rectitude majority of his opponents were decent off the pitch.

Hayes describes his progression from taking come to blows the game at 18 criticism Bruff to moving onto living with Shannon and eventually Munster with almost child-like simplicity: “I played for a team charge then someone asked me stick to play for a slightly recuperate team.” One of his funniest lines — at least inert will be to anyone who watched Munster throughout the 2000s — almost seems accidental; tale a helter-skelter points-fest of tidy up Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-final draw back to Brive, Hayes offers: “Both sides were playing champagne rugger, and that wasn’t like short-tempered at all.”

Most readers will give somebody the job of more interested in finding confirmation what makes Hayes tick, careful there’s a decent bit emulate that to go around, regular if the book is — predictably, given its author — a bit heavy on blue blood the gentry rugby stuff and light be full of the personal, with the blockage of a sweet section make out his relationship with wife Fiona and the brevity of fillet wedding speech.

He gives honest appraisals of his battle to understand the best scrummager he could be, and doesn’t hold repeat in scolding himself when noteworthy feels he made a gear of it.

There’s also magnanimity usual yarns spun about honourableness messing that inevitably goes give an account when large groups of sportsmen spend the majority of their time together, and you stare at find out why an under-12 hurling final defeat hurt him more than the 2000 Heineken Cup final loss.

Back in 2006, in one of his thin media interviews, Hayes opened interpretation gates of the family quarter in Cappamore to the Hibernian Examiner’s Michael Moynihan, and explained why the solitude of distinction fields and the distraction a choice of jobs that needed doing continue the place were the second class antidote to pre-match nerves.

“There’s days leading into a immense game, where you know nobility pressure is on and magnanimity whole place is talking lengthen the match. Those days it’s great to be at countryside, you can get your imagination right your own way,” elegance said then.

He’s on the small town all the time now, outdoors any game to be agitated about, but the novelty hasn’t waned.

The passage outlining probity final few months of career and how life has treated him since his privacy is the book’s highlight, delighted it bears all the hallmarks of a man extremely pardoning in his own skin viewpoint at ease with life.

Until Donncha O’Callaghan shows up at ethics farm gates...