Moloney feels players will be refreshed and ready

RUGBY Navan prepared for the new season

This is where it really starts. The autumnal darkness was quickly descending on Balreask Old on Tuesday evening of last week as Navan's senior rugby players continued their preparations for their forthcoming campaign in the AIL Div 1B.

They were put through various exercise routines (along with J1 players) by coaches Eoin Hanratty, Jason Harris-Wright and Johnny Harris-Wright .

Sharp, sharp jogs were the order of the evening. Stamina sapping, testing runs.

This was about putting in the hard yards for what promises to be a campaign in which many hard questions will be asked. Also there, overlooking it all, was Navan head coach Ray Moloney.

The session was all part of the teams preparations for a season that will be different from any that went before.

Because of the pandemic many of the players had not, until recently, kicked a ball in anger for well over a year and getting accustomed to the physicality, the big hits, the stop-start nature of rugby, takes time.

It all presents a unique challenge for Moloney and his coaches and right up there was finding a way to gradually get the players back into the kind of condition needed to play competitive rugby.

"At first the training was pretty timid, we were just out there throwing the ball around, but we got a strength and conditioning coach in this year, Johnny Harris Wright, who is just out of the pro game," Moloney told the Meath Chronicle.

"He has been very good to us. He was with the Glasgow Warriors up to last year. He did a lot of work with us in planning, progressions, when to go back to contact, how much contact."

Since those tentative, early training sessions the intensity has increased - and as part of their preparation for the new campaign Navan have also played a number of competitive games in pre-season provincial competitions.

It was about getting vital game time rather than claiming trophies.

"We had to have four weeks of contact prep before we could have a game.

"It was about easing the lads into it, making sure they were ready for contact. The lads who came in late, they had to work on their own for a while to bring them up to speed. It has been a bit of a challenge, but I'm sure it's like that in every club.

"Getting people back is one thing, but you have to progress lads slowly into contact.

"If they come back late they can't go straight into contact, the risk of getting injured is just too high.

"We just have to accept we are going to get injuries this season because there were so many fellows out for so long. Guys have been a year and a half without contact, it's a long, long time."

The return to action after such a long lay-off is just another challenge for Moloney, who is still at the foothills of his coaching career.

A carpenter, the Roscrea-native played rugby for Young Munster before he moved to Australia where he played with Palmyra in Perth.

He returned to Ireland and joined Navan in 2016 as a player. He also became assistant to Alan Kingsley, who was then the head coach.

Moloney played his part - as a player and defensive coach - in helping Navan achieve successive promotions in the AIL.

They made it out of Div 2C before working their way through Div 2B and Div 2A and into the relatively lofty heights of Div 1B.

It was a rapid, an impressive rate of progress noted by many in the Irish rugby world.

Navan RFC held the top defensive record of all 50 AIL clubs during the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons; conceding less than any other team.

The jump from 2A to 1B was achieved with Moloney as the full-time head coach after he had succeeded Kingsley.

He now spends some of the week coaching youngsters in the Cistercian College, Roscrea. The rest of the week he is busily involved in preparing the Navan players for the rigours of AIL rugby.

He lives in Roscrea with his wife Rebecca and their three-year-old child, regularly commuting to Meath.

As a qualified carpenter Moloney knows he could find plenty of lucrative work in the construction industry, but that's not what he wants to do.

"This is the job I want to do. I could make loads of money in carpentry, I would say anyone would tell you that, but this is what I love doing. Coaching.

"I love being out on the field and there are two different sides to what I do now.

"With the school kids it's their development as players that interests me, but with Navan it's more performance-based.

"Everything is different. In the AIL you are coaching plays and strategies.

"You have to do more talking and telling players what you want. With the youngsters you are trying to develop them as players rather than say you need to do this, or you need to do that.

"At under-age for me it's trying to get them to make decisions and let them express themselves."

Moloney prefers the first-team squad at Balreask Old to be made up of locals.

Players who have emerged together through the ranks and in so doing have formed a strong bond, an espirit de corps that is difficult if not impossible to generate among a group of young men who are thrown together.

"About 90 per cent of the squad are local guys which is a good thing about the club.

"Since I became coach we have tried to keep it as local as possible by bringing lads up through the ranks or by bringing players back to Navan who were once part of the club.

"The first port of call is to try and get the local lads who grew up here, who played here."

While the whole process of getting the players back into the kind of condition needed to resume play at such a high level as Div 1B is now uniquely challenging, Moloney feels the long lay-off may work out for Navan in other ways.

"We have basically the same bunch of players as we had pre-Covid.

"We have lost one or two and gained one or two, but basically it's the same group of fellows who were pushing for promotion for three seasons in-a-row and achieved those promotions.

"It was a great achievement to do that, but it's mentally draining as well for the lads.

"I think the break over the last year or so will have done them the world of good.

"They have come back that bit fresher, it's very mentally draining to be pushing for promotion, it takes a lot out of players."

With the batteries re-charged, allied to the work done on the training ground, the Navan players are poised for another campaign. Another throw of the dice.