'Keep grounded and stay curious' - Interview with performance coach Gary Keegan

Gary Keegan works behind the scenes.

In fact, the IRFU's performance coach is not even on their 'management' profile page on the website.

He previously worked with Ireland's elite boxers, and with Jim Gavin and Liam Sheedy.

Chosen by Andy Farrell, Keegan is seen as a central tenet of the team's success.

The Dubliner sat down with the assembled media in Tours yesterday for a lengthy chat about his work.

Tell us about your role?

My role is as performance coach, with my primary responsibility around the playing group and then the players as individuals. But I also support any member of staff or management that needs support along the way.

So anything around maximising their performance from a mental perspective, planning their daily diaries, their schedules, building strategies around their mental game etcetera, all those aspects.

We meet players one-to-one on a daily basis and we prepare for them as a group so that we have that collective connection to what we're doing and then we go back to the individual support work.

Tell us about the origin of your involvement in this team, when you first crossed paths with Andy Farrell?

"Well, I'd been on the Professional Games Board within the IRFU so there was an awareness that I was around the space.

"I had done two years with Leinster Rugby in '17 and '18, so when Andy came into the role I hadn't met him prior to him coming into the role and he was probably eight or nine months, maybe a year into the role before we had a conversation.

"And we just met and just had a chat and talked about all things performance and environment and high performance and that stuff, and he asked about my career and what I was doing, and we just shared stories and that was it, I didn't hear any more back.

"Tha