Ronan O’Gara Responds To Rumours He Will Take Up Ireland Coaching Role

Done deal.

Ronan O’Gara will indeed take up a coaching role with Ireland this summer as reported by Brendan Fanning of the Irish Independent yesterday.

The former Ireland and Munster playmaker spoke about the position publicly for the first time on SportsJOE Live last night.

“I am luckily going on the first week of the summer tour with the Irish senior team to America. It’s really exciting to me to learn from what I consider to be the best coach in the world of rugby in Joe Schmidt. So for me, I cannot wait.”

“I talk to Joe a lot, I talk to Simon Easterby quite a bit. I talk to a lot of coaches in Munster – Jerry Flannery, Felix Jones (who’s) going for a week. Girvan Dempsey is going.”

“I suppose it’s a way of developing younger coaches. Something I think is important because you need to live these things to get better. I think it will be a great opportunity to see how the master works.”

The former Irish outhalf is especially looking forward to working with the younger lads with a large portion of the senior set-up expected to get called up to Warren Gatland’s Lions squad.

“Basically the role will be skills and hopefully working with the young number 10s. Depending on who goes it could be a number of young players and as you know it’s a position you get better with age. It’s important that their basic skills are good, especially their confidence levels are good. Hopefully I can pass on one or two learning tools and get to work with everybody.”