Best Intentions - Simon Best interview

[Dave Cahill]

His playing days were cut short but Simon Best's involvement in rugby is far from over, writes John O'Brien

Sunday September 14 2008
WHEN he thinks back, it is the small details that stand out, the black humour they extracted in alarming circumstances. It started with a funny tingling in his calf that worked its way up his right side until it reached his fingers. Simon Best thought nothing of it. A trapped nerve, maybe. Or the stiffness from a hard training session working its way out of his body. Either way, he reckoned, it would soon pass.

Then he noticed his speech start to go and, as the gibberish flowed, easy answers seemed more elusive. Still they wrought comedy from the moment. Paddy Wallace, his sole companion, called the hotel and as the voice of team doctor Gary O'Driscoll came on the line, Wallace instinctively handed the phone to Best. "Eh Paddy . . ." They both laughed. The scene felt light and faintly ludicrous.

He thinks it was those little, trite moments that got him through, the automatic human impulse that kicks in, telling you there isn't much to worry about. They'd been strolling absent-mindedly through the streets of Bordeaux when he felt his strange sensation. What could it be? Their critical encounter with Argentina was still four days away. How could the nerves have set in already?

Wallace ferried him back to the hotel in a taxi and even when they whisked him straight to hospital, the gravity of his condition was hard to grasp. "I'm thinking, 'Right, I'll be getting out of here and I'll get the train up to Paris tomorrow to join the lads'. It didn't seem that serious. Then I remember Gary saying, 'Look I've spoken to Eddie and he's pulling you out of the weekend'. I remember feeling gutted about that."

He awoke at six the following morning to see his wife Katie sitting by his bedside. She'd rushed out on the first available flight as soon as she'd heard. Then his father arrived bearing the dubious gift of that day's newspapers. His face adorned both the front and the back. "That was weird. To see yourself on the front page. By that stage, there had been three or four different press releases. I'd always played and kept myself in the background. I never wanted to be in the limelight. That's when it really hit home to me. This is serious."

Almost a year on he resists the temptation to elevate it into something it wasn't. 'Simon Best cheats death' was a headline that seemed in keeping with the surreal nature of Ireland's World Cup, their on-field difficulties and the swathe of rumours about in-fighting and personal problems that followed. It wasn't accurate, though. It was, ultimately, a career-ending illness, not a life-threatening one.

Still, he felt blessed. Bordeaux, as well as its red wine, is known as a world centre of excellence in cardiac treatment so he knew he was in the best of care. Afterwards, he thought about John McCall, the 18-year-old flanker, who had collapsed and died of cardiac failure when playing for Ireland U19s in New Zealand in 2004. McCall came from Armagh, a few miles from Best's family home in Poyntzpass.

In Best's case, he suffered a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), caused by a small blood clot that blocked arteries which carry blood to the brain and led to the stroke-like symptoms he experienced for a number of hours. He doesn't think that playing sport had anything to do with his condition and would hate to think that rugby would suffer because of the proliferation of cardiac cases. "There are a lot more problems from not playing sport," he says. "What happened to me could have happened anywhere, in any walk of life."

In France, the abruptness of the doctors delivered the first jolt. They put him on Warfarin, a drug that thins the blood and prevents clotting. They told him with a Gallic shrug that he would be on it for the rest of his life and he knew immediately what that meant. For a drug that carries the risk of bleeding to death in the event of a severe cut, physical activity has to be cut to a minimum. Playing rugby at any level would be unthinkable.

Back in Dublin, he met with Dr David Keane, one of the country's foremost cardiology experts, and the prognosis for his career brightened. He sustained the illusion that he might return to competitive rugby for four months until, in February, he reached the only logical conclusion open to him.

"Had I been younger I might have pushed it a bit more. But where I was in terms of age and achievements, there wasn't an awful lot left to do. I'd never envisaged myself playing until I couldn't play anymore. I'd 23 caps for Ireland. I'd played for Ulster 124 times. I was proud of that. I wanted to go away and do different things. I'd never wanted to be known for just been a rugby player."

Having another outlet in his life, he thinks, cushioned the blow. Rugby had been in his family for generations, but so too had farming and that was his other abiding passion. His father farmed 800 acres on the Down-Armagh border, just as his grandfather had done, and before he was ever seduced by the riches of professional rugby, a life on the land stretched out happily in front of him.

In a way, he imagines he is among the first and the last of a particular breed. The first to have had the opportunity to make a living from the game, the last for whom there remained a pressing need to develop other interests. Nowadays, the young, aspiring professional can emerge straight from school into the bosom of an academy or, if he is prodigious, a provincial contract. When Best was wooed by Newcastle and Ulster in 1999, he'd already completed his agriculture degree. And still, he felt, rugby offered no guarantees.

They were curious years. Generally, Ulster dominated the landscape until the new year when he went back to his club, Belfast Harlequins, and on cold mid-week evenings just became one of the boys again, just another name vying to be on the team-sheet for Saturday afternoon. How could you not be nostalgic for those days? They kept you honest.

"The top professionals don't experience that now," he says wistfully. "Guys coming through academies now are a bit sheltered. I'm not saying it's bad. It's just the way it's gone. Players' salaries have gone up 20 per cent in the last six months. That's fine but I think it will accentuate the problems when guys retire and they've been used to a certain lifestyle. Or if they don't end up making it."

These kind of questions engage him now. Allen Clarke, the Irish academy director, has had him in to talk to his players. He has been helping out with the young props at his family club, Banbridge. When his father stepped down recently as the club's representative on the Ulster committee, they elected Simon in his place. In an increasingly fragmented and changing game, he likes the permanence and sense of continuity that implies.

The rate of change in the game startles him. Sometimes for the better, he thinks. When Paul Wallace broke his ankle while playing for Saracens some years ago, the injury ended his career prematurely. Five years later, Best suffered the same injury and was back playing within a matter of months. The medical advances have been rapid. But not everything is so positive, though.

"I see it now with Ireland. It's a new set-up, a new guard. It's even more so in Ulster and in that way it probably wasn't a bad way to end. I think that's the game now, the way rugby's going. Guys coming on the scene younger and finishing earlier. Topping a nine- or 10-year career in professional rugby will probably be an exception rather than the norm. Looking back, I don't think I done too bad."

The transition from player to spectator again has caused him little angst. It has brought memories flooding back of days he would line out for his school on a Saturday morning and then clamber into his grandfather's jeep for the drive south to Lansdowne Road. And there has been consolation, too, in watching his brother Rory. It was Rory who stepped into his shoes as Ulster captain last year and, though they struggled all season, watching his brother visibly grow with the responsibility has been a heart-warming sight.

Through his involvement with Banbridge, he has been co-opted onto the Ulster professional management committee, a role that brings him into direct contact with Matt Williams and those who run the team. He never imagined his post-playing career pulling him in this direction but he is glad it is happening now at a time when profound changes are sweeping through the game and when he has a decade of playing experience to offer.

As a player, he came to Ulster just after they'd won the 1999 European Cup and, as great as the achievement was, he saw the problems that came with it. "We had a difficult year the following year. I don't think the province was ready to win it. We'd brought back some big names -- David Humphreys, Mark McCall, Paddy Johns. We were on a building process and then we went on a roll and won it. The structure wasn't there to take advantage and unfortunately it's been a bit of a struggle since. We always had that expectation because we'd been champions. There was always pressure there. No one took us for granted anymore. To be fair, our home record probably evolved out of that but we always struggled on the road."

He thinks of Munster and sees no mystery in why they have pushed so far ahead. He sees no reason to doubt Ulster could have achieved the same. He was there at Lansdowne Road on that bleary day in 1999 when the whole country was behind Ulster and the raw potential was palpable. A few years ago Munster were struggling to fill Thomond Park for games and Ulster was, arguably, the best supported province. Now Leinster have streaked ahead too and he thinks the rot has to be stopped.

"I suppose the first thing is Munster consistently qualify for the European Cup quarter-finals. That brings a cash injection which means they can sign big players and that helps them do it year on year. Ulster aren't doing it. They can't sign the players. It's a vicious circle really.

"With Ulster, there needs to be a change of tactics. We've got to look at getting investment from outside, a capital injection to get players in." He sees hope for the future. He likes the fact that David Humphreys has been drafted in as operations director and believes that, while remaining respectful to the old guard, the game can only flourish with a fresh injection of young blood that has first-hand experience of the professional game.

"The game has been run by committees for a long time, amateur guys who were giving their own free time and that can't be taken away from them. But it's a professional game now. It's moved away from that committee structure.

"It needs freshening up and our experience is directly with professional rugby. I feel my credibility is giving that information now, passing it on in any way I can, and not in 10 years' time when the game will have moved on again."

He finds himself where any retiring professional sportsman would want to be: busy beyond reason. He is off the medication now, only subject to the odd check-up, and keen to keep himself fit, help his father run the farm and develop other business ideas that flit through his head. If there were regrets about not playing anymore, he wouldn't have time to entertain them anyway.

In June, he and Katie celebrated their first wedding anniversary. They thought back a year and reflected on how utterly surreal it had all been. June had brought marriage and a summer tour to Argentina where he'd captained Ireland in both tests. The World Cup was three months away. Everything seemed so perfect. Almost too perfect.

And though it is his way to play things down, it is easy to see how the year has changed him. It is not just the head full of ideas he carries, but the sense of studied impatience to get things done, a perspective not every 30-year-old can share