CJ Stander on the poignancy of being in Paris last Friday, the day that would have been the late Anthony Foley's 47th birthday
CJ Stander has spoken about how his recent Six Nations trip to Paris with Ireland left him vividly remembering the late Anthony Foley, the Munster coach who tragically passed away in the French capital city four years ago.
Last Friday, the night before Ireland took on France in the 2020 Six Nations finale, would have been Foley's 47th birthday and it wasn't lost on Stander how he was staying with the Irish squad in a hotel close to the Arc de Triomphe just a 5km walk from the hotel at Pont de Suresnes where Foley and the Munster squad were staying on that tragic October 2016 weekend.
Casting his mind back to that awful Sunday morning when Munster learned that Foley had died in his sleep overnight prior to a European match at Racing 92, Stander told the Irish Daily Star: “My biggest thing was the family, to see if someone was really struggling and have a conversation with them because there was that uncertainty.
"No-one knew what was going on. There were people around, people were running, people were crying, it was almost like a war zone. That’s probably not the right words to use but there was confusion everywhere so I just wanted to make sure everyone was understanding what was going on and that there was no uncertainty.
“When you get to a situation like that there are so many people with different personalities so I tried to figure how every person ticked and what I could do for them to make them feel comfortable.
“That was the main thing, especially with Axel’s dad, Brendan, and he had a few friends that came to the hotel. I just wanted to make sure that they at least had a cup of coffee. It’s probably just a thing I would like to happen for me if something like that happens in my family.”
Stander added: “That void was a difficult thing to fill and to move on from because you see pictures of him and you talk to people about him, and especially working closely with him the last few years. Still to this day, talking to Olive (Foley's widow) and seeing his sisters and his mum and dad, it’s a tough thing to talk about because you see them and you want to talk about him, and you want to celebrate him.
“For me anyway there’s still that void, as if almost he’s going to walk around the corner today, he’s going to walk into the room. He was a massive big, big loss for me personally and for the province in general. He was a class act and a class man.
“It’s not even the day we think about him, for me especially, we talk about him, he pops up in a few conversations during the year as well, and it just shows the calibre of the man.”
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Honestly, I am a bit lost here …. Ireland - RSA was (at least in my opinion) perhaps (from a purely technical / rugby-skills-show point of view) the pinnacle of the RWC2023 - almost flawless playing (putting aside the kicking of RSA which was the difference between the two teams), rugby at it’s very best …. if I were a Bok and after the game some Irish lads came around saying “see you in 5 weeks same place”, I definitely wouldn’t have thought of it as being in any way “arrogant”, rather a sort of jolly “if we both continue to play like this, no one could stop us” - besides, few of us fans would have, at that time, been surprised to see the same teams playing on 23 september and 28 october 2023 ….. well, we all know Ireland chose to hit a slump to keep the QF curse alive …..
Go to commentsThere’s value gleaned from having an All Black star running and training with your team. How many games he starts (or even where he plays in the backline) will be decided on a week by week basis based on the needs for that week. But the overall learning and growth for all concerned, I’d think, is massively beneficial. Especially for Irish players.
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