Ex-Munster out half Johnny Holland believes Ian Keatley’s rise at Thomond Park is thanks to him becoming accustomed to the pressure of replacing Ronan O’Gara.
The Off The Ball team were down in New Ross, co. Wexford for our Heineken Rugby Club roadshow as former Ireland head coach Eddie O’Sullivan joined Ger, Leinster and Lions player Nick Popplewell and Holland on stage to preview the Champions Cup semi-finals.
Keatley heads to Bordeaux with his Munster teammates on Sunday looking to book their place in the final of the Champions Cup. And Holland feels Keatley has come a long way since the pair played together.
“I think it was tough on Keats [Keatley] because he wasn’t going to be Roggie [O’Gara] or no one was going to be him,” Holland said.
“You might take a lot of his traits if you were lucky and try and evolve that into your own game, but he had a lot of pressure put on him. He was the one who took the jersey from him. And you could kind of see he wasn’t going to do too badly.
“It’s a lot of pressure. Things happened with Keats’ game and he came under a small bit of pressure, but he’s going very well now again, and it’s great to see.
“I think he’s finally allowed to play his own game – and that’s coming out – and he’s starting to enjoy it. I know he has responsibilities away from rugby which he said has helped him with his game. But it’s great to see him enjoy it, rather than feel the pressure from someone else’s name.”
Holland, who was forced to retire from the game in September 2016, also spoke of his battle with Tyler Bleyendaal and Keatley for the out half position.
Bleyendaal’s drawn out transfer to Thomond Park was seen as the moment Munster had found their heir for O’Gara. But Holland, despite admitting his admiration for his teammate, saw Bleyendaal’s injury struggles as an opportunity to stake a claim.
“He [Bleyendaal] had arrived but he was injured and I was actually injured [too] so we overlapped with our rehab,” Holland said.
“He played a few games but I think the injury was in the back of his mind – or he came from a neck injury and [then] he had a quad injury. I came in and played a few games and by the time I was retiring he was coming back.
“Tyler was coaching the team when I was there. He was the general and he was bringing his notebook into the meeting and we’d all listen to Tyler. He had barely played with the club but he was running everything.
“For someone like me to see an U-20 Kiwi outhalf captain come in and dictate it like that, I was under a lot of pressure – I wanted to learn from the guy – but I wanted to take his jersey, even though it wasn’t his at the time.
“You could see he was making a right stab of getting it and it was nice for me that he wasn’t always available and I had a chance to taking the number 10 jersey for a while.”
Listen to the full OTB Roadshow|Champions Cup preview podcast in full below:
Written by James Hopper
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