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'People have this stereotype that Bristol is a big club with bottomless amounts of cash... but we're camping in Cornwall for a weekend'

By Liam Heagney
John Muldoon poses in his Bristol Bears gear after he joined the English club from Connacht in summer 2018 (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

John Muldoon popped up on BBC TV last month looking a bundle of joy. His part-owned horse, the Noel Meade-trained Dadoozart, had just won the Ulster Derby at Down Royal two days after being unable to run at Royal Ascot as second reserve.

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The holiday high jinx had the former Ireland back row quipping his heart was pounding more than during many a rugby match. “I’m from a farming background and my father has been involved in racing for a long time,” he told RugbyPass about his equestrian diversion.

“Like everyone who owns horses there is always a tale of woe, a couple of horses that were unlucky. That’s horse racing… I’ve tried to make time to go with my dad when we have had holidays or down time the last few years and winning always helps.”

A year ago, Muldoon had little or no time for the racetrack. Life was being turned upside down. A one-club man for 17 years, it was suddenly all change for the Irishman. He was leaving Connacht for a switch to Bristol, leaving playing for coaching. Add in the birth of his first son Scott and you can imagine how frantic it all was.

“It was four weeks from finishing up to starting. Moving country, having a baby, everything, it was pretty hectic and just getting to know everyone over here, relationships, how they pick up information, how you deliver your stuff to them to ensure you’re doing it in a clear, concise way was important.

“It’s much easier coming back to the environment this summer in terms of knowing everybody and having those relationships in place. It’s also a good opportunity to build on what we have done last year. That is the key thing.”

Muldoon won’t shy away from his unsettling teething period as Bristol’s new defence coach. They wanted water-tight rearguard on their Premiership return. Instead they got watery rearguard.

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Thirty-four leaked in their opening eight matches. Six try bonus points conceded. Just two wins. Relegation material? You bet.

John Muldoon
John Muldoon annually faced English opposition, such as this May 2015 fixture at Gloucester, but the ex-Connacht skipper is now in the thick of it as a defence coach (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

“A good friend sent me a message close to the end of the season when our Premiership survival was confirmed. He just said: ‘I’m sure you had a few sleepless and restless nights.” I texted back saying, ‘I don’t do sleepless nights’ but maybe that was a bit of naivety on my part not having sleepless nights.

“Maybe there was a bit of inexperience on my behalf but I wasn’t getting too worried. Once we got it going up to where we wanted and started improving, we saw some very good defence. It’s just getting that consistency over time.

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“After that initial six games we made a few tweaks and the proof was in the pudding, we got better as the season went on. But definitely those first six games were a bit of an eye-opener for some players. The fact some of them had never played at Premiership level before was a big step up.”

The dust settled with Bristol in ninth, 20 points clear of relegated Newcastle but frustratingly only four shy of seventh-place Sale who qualified for Champions Cup. Further improvement is now demanded.

“We can’t sit still and hope and wish something will change. We have to go out and adapt, make little changes here and there and get better than what we did last year. We’re certainly much further down the line. It’s not as hectic (as 2018’s pre-season), but it’s a huge opportunity to grow on what we did last year, iron out some of those issues and improve.”

Pat Lam was the visionary who transformed Muldoon’s playing career at Connacht, transforming the struggling province en route to an unfathomable 2016 Guinness PRO12 title win.

Along the way, the Samoan planted the seed about his on-field talisman becoming a trusted sideline cohort. “We spoke about three or four years earlier about what was my plan for life after playing. I was in a unique situation where I was coaching some players at Galwegians that I was playing with on the Connacht team.

“Pat called me in and asked what I wanted to do and did it involve coaching. He told me a story about Ian McGeechan putting him in a similar position and asking a similar question when he was coming towards the end of his career.

“I spoke to Pat not long before I announced my retirement to see was there an opportunity at Bristol and when he said there was I jumped at it. The experience of coming over here, this competition, I felt was a huge opportunity.

“Thankfully, Pat looked after me with a job. I made a lot of mistakes last year, I’d be the first to admit that, but the way Pat coaches, the way he teaches, the way he appreciates the different type of learning, it’s all about the why.

“Any time we bring in something it’s why we bring it in. He tells the players, explains it to them. For me as an older player, someone who wanted to be a coach, I really appreciated that instead of some coaches just ramming stuff down your throat with ‘we’re doing this’.

“Pat always explains the why and I appreciate the opportunity he has given me to come over here to cut my teeth at coaching because it’s not the easiest thing to do, to give a player retiring with no experience his very first job in a different country at a club he has never played at.”

Incredibly, the 36-year-old had the chutzpah to initially turn Lam down in summer 2017 before making the move 12 months later on a two-year deal. “I wanted to play one more year. To finish off the career on my terms was a big thing… but I was glad when I did contact Pat there was that job offer there. I definitely wasn’t going to turn it down a second time.”

Muldoon suggests relegation is the biggest difference between the Premiership and the PRO14, that when Bristol had injury issues at flanker they recruited veteran George Smith whereas an Irish province would have called an academy player up in that situation.

“We were favourites to get relegated, straight up, straight down. Suddenly you have to look elsewhere and see we should bring in someone… that probably sums up what the difference is.”

Pat Lam
Bristol boss Pat Lam calls the shots during the April 2019 warm-up for a Welford Road match against Leicester Tigers (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Other than that, Bristol is proving such a home away from home that Muldoon sense Lam is potentially revolutionising rugby in the English city in the same way he succeeded in the west of Ireland.

“It’s very similar to Connacht… people have this stereotype that Bristol is a big club with bottomless amounts of cash, but it isn’t the case. There is no warm weather training camps – we’re going to Cornwall at the end of the summer and camping out.

“We’re on a budget like everyone else and we stick to that budget. If people think they are coming and staying in five-star hotels with Bristol Bears they have got it wrong when we will be camping in Cornwall for the weekend.

John Muldoon, Israel Dagg
Israel Dagg of the All Blacks offloads the ball in a 2010 Test match with Ireland’s John Muldoon closing in (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

“The transition has been very good,” he continued. “In a lot of ways, Bristol is not too dissimilar to Galway on a bigger scale. We’re living in the middle of the city, not too far from Clifton suspension bridge, and it’s a fabulous area. People are very friendly.

“Bristol is very, very similar to Connacht, uncanny in ways. There is bit of a relationship gap with the community, the difficult they have had with coming up and down and some previous coaches coming in and not looking after the community, just worrying about trying to survive and spending money.

“Pat has taken a different approach, like we saw in Connacht. Building that community base, building the fans, building a good working environment in the club who saw a lot of change in the last 10 years. They are all loving it and the community are starting to get behind us.

“My first game last year was Bath at home and to have that atmosphere and buzz around the place was phenomenal. It was probably a little bit fake for me as I hadn’t seen where they have come from, but as the year went on I saw and heard a lot of what has gone on in the last 10 years to appreciate the sell-out of the first game of the league.

“What has happened the last two years has an uncanny similar feel to the early Connacht days with Pat. Hopefully we can push on (and challenge). We have got the players. We have got a lot of young players that people don’t know, a lot of academy players that are going to be household names.

“There is no better man (than Pat) to get the most out of them. They have had a tough pre-season so far. How far ahead we are compared to last year is phenomenal and there is a little excitement in a couple of the players who have been here a while to see what is possible.

“It’s uncanny to what went on in Connacht in the past few years with Pat, so there is a team here building that is capable of achieving a lot.”

WATCH: RugbyPass goes behind the scenes at Bristol Bears’ pre-season in 2018

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Jon 6 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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j
john 9 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

36 Go to comments
A
Adrian 11 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

36 Go to comments
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