A Close Shave

Keith Wood is hard to pin down. In fact, hotpress have been trying to hook up with the shaven-pated hooker since before last year s Rugby World Cup. It s not that the fiery Irish captain has been deliberately elusive. It s just that he s been slightly preoccupied with events like the aforementioned World Cup, the inaugural Six Nations Championship and the small matter of Munster s magical progress to the final of the Heineken European Cup, which takes place this Saturday.

Wood finally agrees to a chat in the Burlington Hotel prior to an IRFU anniversary dinner. For such a dynamic character on the pitch, Wood is surprisingly soft-spoken, affable and polite.
Physically, however, Keith Wood in the flesh is far more imposing than on television. For one thing, he looks much bigger than his six foot frame suggests, probably because he is almost as broad as he is tall. Then there s the matter of the shaved head, adding further degrees of intimidation, and to cap it all there s the neck.
I ve seen bulls with less muscle in the neck department than Keith Wood, and I was scared shitless of them. This is the kind of man you d think twice about playing chicken with if you were seated behind the wheel of a JCB. This physique, allied to handling and ball skills that your average back would give their eye teeth for, has seen Wood become one of the most respected and feared hookers in the modern game, and has helped the cause of Ireland and Munster immeasurably, particularly this year.
So how does the Munster experience compare to playing for Ireland?
They re hard to compare because Munster is like a club, Wood muses. You spend so much time together, you know everything about the guys on the team. I ve been very impressed by the set-up. Declan Kidney has done a really good job. It is not too rigid. A team is made up of a load of individuals and if you try to bring that down to where everybody does the same things, you lose a lot.
You are obviously looking forward to next week s final against Northampton. What do you think will happen?
I m very nervous about it, he confesses. Everybody is playing down Northampton, that they have had loads of injuries, lots of silly things like that. I don t think that makes them a bad team. They have been the best team in England for eight of the nine months of the season: it s just the last while it hasn t worked well for them.
The European final is the culmination of a fantastic year for Woodie, or Fester, as he is affectionately known due to his likeness to the Addams Family character. He returned to Ireland last year from English Premiership team, Harlequins, to concentrate on the World Cup and to play a season with Garryowen and Munster. He didn t expect the season to be this eventful, however.
I was a bit wary coming back because rugby was still an amateur game here when I left, he declares. I didn t know how much it would have changed by the time I came back. I was pretty uncertain as to exactly what was going on. I had heard a lot of things had changed and improved an awful lot. Thankfully, the set-up in Munster was fine it gave me an awful lot of leeway, which at this stage of my career I need.
The season didn t exactly start the way he had hoped, with defeat to Argentina in the World Cup the lowest point in his career to date (a horrible, horrible loss ). In an international context, the disappointment in Lens was followed by a mauling at the hands of England in the first Six Nations game of the season. As captain, Wood describes his mood as bloody awful after that game.
My first 10 times as captain of Ireland, we lost, which is pretty shitty really.
As we all know, the season then took a dramatic turn for the better, with victories over Scotland and Italy, and a historic win in Paris against a French side that had reached the World Cup Finals. The captain descibes the win over Scotland as a relief more than anything else, and the springboard on which they launched a good Six Nations campaign.
I put it to Wood that there is something strange about the relationship between the Irish rugby team and the media, with one defeat supposedly sounding the death-knell for Irish rugby, and one victory heralded as a renaissance and rebirth?
I think it s not just the media, it is everybody, he smiles. We crave success so much and we really want Ireland to win in any way, shape or form, no matter what game it is. We put ourselves under far too much pressure. We have to learn to cope with that, which is hard because we haven t had too many victories to learn to cope with being favourites. It was annoying when we lost against Wales. It wasn t just that we were favourites, I don t think we really played that day.
Getting back to the media, some of the rugby columnists can be decidedly harsh on the team and on individuals. Surely that cannot be good for a player psychologically?
I think you get used to it I m used to it anyway, nods Wood. I d say the majority of players, good players especially, can look at a game they ve played in and say, Yes, I played well , No, I played badly , or I did a couple of bad things here and there . When somebody writes about it in the paper the following week, you ve already gone over it in your mind, and players tend to be more scathing on themselves than the press can ever be. Sometimes, though, it gets a bit personal, and that s wrong and that s when we get a bit cranky.
An inspirational figure on the pitch, Wood leads by example, but what about motivating those around him. Another famous Irish captain and hooker, Ciaran Fitzgerald s favourite rallying cry to the troops was Where s your fucking pride? What does Keith Wood say to gee up his players when the chips are down?
I just use that line all the time, he laughs uproariously, before becoming serious again. Sometimes you need to do that, you need similar sentiments. But if you say that too often it loses its meaning, so you don t. You try in every given situation to use something else. Sometimes you end up getting to a stage of cliches which I try my best to avoid.
It has also been said of that team from the mid-80s that if one of the Irish players took a punch from the opposition, they had five or 10 minutes to exact retribution and then it was forgotten about. Such action has no place in the modern game, though, according to the Irish captain.
That doesn t happen any more it can t happen, stresses Wood. The nature of the game has changed so much, not just in terms of the laws, but with television. It s a much more global game, it s a more commercial game. Nobody wants fights on the pitch.
He is sentimental about the wearing of the green jersey, confessing that himself and fellow Munster hard-man Peter The Claw Clohessy often shed a tear during the National Anthem, a fact which he also referred to on national radio.
We really do, he admits. I drove up with The Claw today and he s been giving out to me that everyone is calling him a crybaby since I mentioned it on the Marian Finucane show. It isn t too far from the truth, though.
A proud player, Woodie s trademark running in the loose has been a familiar sight for a few years now, particularly since the Lions tour of South Africa in 1997. Their famous test victory over the Springboks, then World Champions, was probably the sporting highlight of that year. The accompanying video, Living With Lions, is a fantastic behind-the-scenes account of what went on: the cameraderie, the motivation, the training and the fun.
On one of the rare occasions when they were allowed out for the night, the players found themselves in a restaurant/bar where a waitress with two bottles of tequila was looking for volunteers. Sooner than you could say Anyone got a spare hipflask? young Wood was on his knees, as the waitress poured the Mexican firewater from both bottles straight down his throat. As soon as he had enough tequila, he got on more intimate terms with the waitress visible navel. He then shrugged it off with a comment that he always had a thing for bellybuttons and pregnant women. What was that all about, Keith?
I have a good giggle over it and it is the line that is most remembered from that video, he smiles. People are forever repeating it to me, which is funny.
If that is the material that made it onto the video, there must have been other stuff too wild for inclusion?
As far as I know, there was nothing cut out of the video apart from that scene where I curse a lot.
Afterwards, they asked me if they could put that tequila shot in and it was a good laugh, it was a great evening and good fun, so it should have gone in and it did.
Coming back to on the field issues, rugby commentators talk with a sense of awe about the front row of the scrum and what goes on in there. How bad does it get?
It used to get very bad. It s not so bad any more, Ward says with a cheeky grin, although it still is a dark and murky depth and it would be wrong of me to tell you all the stuff that goes on in there. There is a bit of banter, which is good, but it s not that secret.
There are all these horror stories about front rows having to shave their armpit hair or it will be forcibly removed in a scrum?
Things like that happen from time to time. Not to me or my armpits. I m not in that position, props would have to cope with that. But it s not anywhere near as nasty as people might think it is.
Hmmm. What about the dangers of rugby, particularly in the scrum?
There is very little danger to experienced players, Wood maintains. For one thing, every time you play, your neck strengthens. Every time you scrummage, or do scrummaging practice or do weights, it gets bigger and stronger. Also, the rules have changed so that there is only a certain level of force allowed at scrums.
Still, accidents happen and it s terrible. But it rarely ever happens to an international. The only ones I can remember are Max Brito in the World Cup and Gwyn Jones in Wales he got a bad bang, and had to have a few vertebrae removed. It can happen, but the more training you do, the less chance there is.
Wood certainly has a lot of training under his belt at this stage. A sports enthusiast from an early age, the Clare native s first love was hurling, and he played for his native county at underage level in a team which included one of the game s best-known stars, Jamesie O Connor. The young Wood also played soccer and, inevitably, rugby, a sport his father had excelled in also: Gordon Wood playing over 25 times for Ireland and also for the 1959 Lions. So is he proud to follow in his father s footsteps?
I don t know whether proud is the word, he sighs. I think it s great and it s nice to be doing it. It s not something I ever really thought about because my dad died when I was pretty young, but it s very nice for my mum.
On finishing school, the young Keith Wood studied engineering at the University of Limerick, but it wasn t really for him. He ended up working in the Irish Permanent in Limerick for a few years, while playing for Garryowen, and only left when rugby went professional. In fact, Wood loved working in the PR department so much that he is currently in the process of setting up his own PR firm, Touch Wood. (It s probably as well that his handling skills are exemplary, or it could be called Knock-on Wood.)
An Irish under-21 international, he won his first A cap in December 1993, and his first full cap on the Irish team s tour of Australia the following year. It was while on tour with the national team in Australia that Wood first shaved his head, on the advice of fellow baldie Gary Halpin.
Gary got me to shave it and it never really grew back, he recalls with a wry smile. It was as simple as that. Well, it grew back in patches, with very little on top. I do have hair on the top of my head but it s fine and downy, and doesn t actually have any colour.
Seeing as he played everything from soccer to tennis when he was a nipper, I wondered what other sports Wood watches these days.
Because I spend so much time at sport, I don t watch sport that much, he sighs. I m a Man United fan but I ll rarely watch them on the telly. I love looking at the goals afterwards. But I do like going to sporting events because I love the sense of occasion. I was at a few Gaelic football games a couple of years ago. I ve been to Wembley a few times, and I ve been to a few boxing fights.
I would never go and watch a rugby match, he continues. It s like people who are accountants: they re an accountant from Monday to Friday and they ll hardly want to take the books home with them every Saturday and Sunday. I m sure I ll get to the stage when I stop playing that I ll get back to loving watching rugby, but not while I m playing.
And while he is playing, what are the Irish captain s views on sex before a game?
Because my girlfriend lives in London and I live in Limerick, it s doesn t really happen, he grins cheekily. So it s not an issue for me.
What about the whole clichid image of the middle-class rugby elite in Ireland, the heartlands of Limerick and Cork excepted?
It [the image] is going, he stresses. The difference is going. It is getting much smaller and there are a lot more guys watching rugby than ever did before. The longer the Irish team is successful, the more that will be the case, and that is great.
What about the argument that Ireland could be a much stronger rugby power if the Bomber Listons, the Keith Barrs and the Mick Lyonses of this world had opted for the oval ball rather than the round one?
I m sure we will take players from GAA, we always have, and I think we will take more people if there is more success there in terms of Irish rugby. People can play all games and should. Kids should play everything, I m convinced of that. I played an awful lot of games and I loved them all.
These days, the 28-year-old Wood is contractually forbidden from playing any contact sport other than hurling so his hobbies have gone to music, reading and playing a bit of golf.
He describes his musical preferences as very Catholic tastes. I ve a lot of older stuff like Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, The Stones, The Doors, Bob Dylan. The bands I like nowadays are Eels (I think they re a cracking band), Radiohead and Beck Beck Hansen is just amazing. I actually like a lot of American music, people like Marcy Playground and Ben Folds Five. But I ve got classical music, jazz and blues in my collection. If something catches my fancy, I ll buy it.
What about going to gigs?
I haven t seen bands for ages and I used to go a lot, he confesses. I love going to gigs, but I haven t had a chance really. Being down in Limerick, there isn t an awful lot going on. In London there s a lot more.
He also admits to having his head buried in a book most of the time: I ll read anything. I like autobiographies. But my favourite book is Joseph Heller s Catch 22. I read it continuously. I ve read it maybe seven or eight times, I love it so much. It s just quirky and I like good humour.
On the silver screen, Wood professes a love of gangster movies, all the Scorcese movies, Pulp Fiction, most of the de Niro fims, The Deer Hunter. Again a lot of my favourite movies are old ones, like Apocalypse Now. There haven t been a whole lot of great movies lately. One I did enjoy was Fight Club. Again, it s quirky. A lot of people didn t like it, but I thought it was great. Blockbusters and pop music aren t really my cup of tea.
Keith Wood has transcended the image of a sportsperson and has become a bona fide celebrity in his own right, as instantly recognisable to rugby lovers and haters alike. He doesn t necessarily accept this view, though.
I don t know if I m a celebrity or not, he muses. I will do interviews but I m not a celebrity in terms of the celebrity circuit that s not me in any way at all. I like playing for Ireland and that means I m recognisable, so that s part of it. I used to find it very hard that people would come up to me and want to talk to me. I don t find it hard at all any more. There will come a time when that doesn t happen and I probably won t be sad. But in Ireland, it s not so bad.