‘April Mindset’ Has Holt And MU Barnhall In A Good Place

For captain Rob Holt, that question means more than most people realise. He has lived every chapter of MU Barnhall’s modern story – the ascent, the brilliance, the what if story of the 2019/20 season, the three straight years of frustration in the promotion play-offs.

A native of Edenderry, where his dad John had a long association with the local club, both Rob and his brother Sam, who now referees in the Energia All-Ireland League, cut their teeth playing there.

He has seen Barnhall gather momentum, lose it, rebuild it, and then lose it again, each time by margins small enough to linger long after the season has ended.

Having experienced every version of the Blue Bulls over the years, he told IrishRugby.ie: “I’ve been at Barnhall since 2010. I moved there as an 18-year-old.

“I was playing rugby in Edenderry, we were a junior side and I just wanted a crack at senior. I would have had three or four years playing with Leinster youths, 19s, 20s, and wanted a crack playing senior rugby.

“So I went to Barnhall, probably the most logical club to move to for senior rugby, and never really looked back. Probably expected to maybe stay there for a couple of years and then see where life took me.

“But it is just a club that, I think you walk into and you fall in love with it. Community-based, family-based, they wrap the arms around you and look after you.

“You kind of hit that age, probably in your early 20s where you think, ‘I wonder, should I have a crack maybe playing Division 1?’, but for me, it was always just playing with your mates, enjoying your rugby.

“That was probably the biggest priority for me. So I’ve loved it and just never really had much of an interest in moving away. I owe a lot to Edenderry.”

Now 33, Holt has seen young squads become mature ones, talented players become hardened ones, and teams brimming with flair learn the importance of grit, that precious ingredient Barnhall have spent the last three seasons earning the hard way.

This year, that grit has turned into steel, and the results are beginning to show it. A perfect record at the top of Division 2A after the opening third of the regular season does not happen by chance.

It is forged over years, in the small scars that teams carry. Holt knows that better than anyone. He was there during the most agonising chapter of all.

It was the spring of 2020 when Barnhall were five points clear at the top of Division 2A, closing in on another promotion having lifted the Division 2B title in impressive fashion the previous year, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck and everything stopped.

“Massively, we felt like it was taken away from us, the opportunity was taken away from us,” the scrum half recalls. “We were coming off the back of maybe 27 straight wins. We’d lost back-to-back to Rainey and to Queen’s, so we probably felt like we had some of the tougher games behind us.

“We had a really good chance with the run-in, we had a bit of momentum, and you look at teams like Navan and Terenure over the years who’ve done triple back-to-back promotions, we felt like we were kind of on the crest of a wave and didn’t know how to lose.

“Then it was taken away to an extent. I was only chatting to someone the other day, we’ve been in a promotion play-off or being promoted every single year since 2018, bar one if I’m right.

“So, it is a team that’s gotten used to winning and having that taste of rugby and competition at the end of the year. It probably made the last three years a little bit trickier as well, a little bit harder, because you felt like you were so close, so close.

“Every year you feel like this has to be our year, and then it didn’t work out on each occasion on very small margins. You always look back and think, ‘Well, what if we got promoted that year, where would we be now?’, but you just have to stick with it.”

It is a story that has become folklore at Parsonstown, the great ‘what if’ that shaped everything that followed. The years since have only deepened that sense. Small margins can test a club’s soul.

At the end of the 2022/23 season, they lost by eight points to Blackrock College in the play-off final. A year later they were beaten by two points by Queen’s University, and last season was another that stung in the tail.

Barnhall lost their semi-final clash with Cashel where their dreams of another shot in a play-off decider were dashed. It was a performance that certainly left a mark on Adrian Flavin’s side.

“The semi-final last year, we were absolutely and utterly outplayed by Cashel. There’s no question whatsoever,” explained Holt, who works as Head of IT Enterprise Architecture at Uisce Éireann.

“We came off the pitch, and it was kind of like if we were there for another bloody 100 days, we would have lost that game every day of the week. But the previous ones, Queen’s, we left behind. Blackrock, we had a try disallowed late on, which we felt was a try.

“If that had gone over, we thought we had a really good chance. They probably were slightly the better team that year. We’d lost to them twice in the league as well.

“It is just an opportunity that’s presented to you three years in a row, you just think that at least one of those you might have a chance to take. But when you get into the play-offs, it’s another lottery. So, the best way to do it is to try and avoid it.”

Every season brought a moment that could have turned everything, and every season it went the other way. It gave Barnhall a reputation they never asked for, the team that would always be there, always threatening, always talented, but always falling just shy of the finish line.

This year they want to end that story. Flat out. No more play-off roulette. No more allowing one afternoon to undermine an entire year of work. That, Holt says, has been the internal drive from the first week of pre-season.

It is the same mindset they embraced before their promotion from Division 2B in the 2018/19 season where they recorded 18 wins in succession.

“That exact conversation happened in 2018 ahead of that 2018/19 season when we got promoted. It was, ‘We’re not messing around in the play-offs this year, we want to be number one’.”

This time, the phrase that keeps returning is the April mindset, the idea that if you wait until April to play like everything matters, then you have already left your fate to chance.

With that in mind, Barnhall showed up with April urgency in September, off the back of winning the Leinster Senior League final against Greystones.

The thing that we talk about a lot is kind of this April mindset. So, you get to the end of the year, if we win this game, we’ll be good, and if we win this game, we’re good.

“But if you actually had that mindset in September and October, and you’d won the games that you lost, then you wouldn’t be in the position where you have to win those games.

“We were very hell-bent this year on bringing the April mindset into September, October, treating every game like it’s a final. I know the cliché of every game at a time, but going in with that, and I suppose carrying the wounds from the previous years.”

What has changed this season is the balance of the team. For years, Barnhall had youth, speed, and attacking spark, but maybe not always the maturity to close out matches or defend for long stretches, allowing for points to be dropped.

However, with experience comes wisdom, and with a cohort of talented players who, like Holt, have experienced the highs and lows for the club in recent seasons, it has changed the mindset.

“I think when we look back and our really honest assessment of ourselves, I think our average age over the last couple of years is around 22, 23, 24, in that kind of age bracket.

“Unfortunately, when I play it probably goes up by a year or two! But one of the things I would look back on is there’d be heaps of talent, and we’d score 40 points on a team, then we might concede 35. The word that I kept coming back to was grit.

“Sometimes I’d rather go and beat a team 15-0 or 12-0 or whatever, as opposed to going and scoring 45 and then conceding 30-odd.

“So, I think a lot of the core of the team has stuck around. We’ve retained our players really well, regardless of the heartache. As a result of that now, (we’re) just kind of a gritty, mature, hardened team, as against potentially a bunch of younger students and guys who are just looking to throw the ball around.

“We’re a bit cuter. I think we’ve put a lot of time and focus into applying pressure, the mental side of the game, playing the percentages, and not always just thinking attack, attack, attack.”

That has resulted in the Kildare men sitting eight points clear at the summit heading towards December. As starts go, it has gone as well as they could have been hoped for when the group gathered for pre-season.

Holt credits Barnhall’s Under-20s, whose success last season gave the senior squad depth and quality and above all else a boost.

“Our Under-20s had a massive year last year, which was a lift for us, not only last year but coming into this year,” he admitted.

“With a couple of new additions to the team, we probably felt like we were just a couple of players short, both from a depth and a quality point of view.

“Getting those lads in, it’s actually really surprised me how fast they’ve hit the ground running. To have that kind of bolstering what we had last year, building on what we’ve done over the last three or four years, puts us in a great spot.

“Kind of just keep the heads down and keep going now over the next couple of weeks, get to Christmas, try and remain unbeaten. Then we turn the corner and plan for next year.”

Holt’s first season as captain – ‘a massive honour’ – has been a revelation. Having been a big leader in the team for years, he has now followed in the footsteps of Tom McKeown, Gareth Murray, and Cathal Duff (pictured above) in taking on the captaincy role.

“I’ve thankfully been able to achieve probably nearly everything I can achieve with Barnhall, bar getting to Division 1. Captaining the side, it’s probably been like a new lease of life, to be honest with you.

“It just gives you a little bit of a lift and motivation, and there’s this degree of responsibility in the background that you can’t really put a finger on.

“I would have been a leader in the team for a long time, but just, I’ve been surrounded by exceptional captains like Tom McKeown, 200-plus AIL caps. Gareth Murray, who has 200-plus AIL caps.

“‘Duffer’ (Cathal Duff), who has been our captain for the last couple of years as well, has been a stalwart in the team. I’ve been surrounded by good captains. It was just when opportunity struck, it was an absolute no-brainer for me.

“It kind of felt like there’s two things I wanted to try and box off here before I retire, and it’s get this club to Division 1 and have the opportunity to captain the club as well.

“So, personal goals, when I look at it internally and selfishly, I want to do both of those this year. Highly motivated to do both of those this year.”

If this season has already been momentous on the pitch, it has been transformative off it. Holt and his wife Amy welcomed their son Tadhg into the world, so certainly this rest week is a welcome one for the Barnhall skipper.

The Blue Bulls’ latest win was arguably their best one so far, a 28-7 win away to Dungannon, defeating the team who were neck-and-neck with them at the top of the table.

Reflecting on the outcome at Stevenson Park and how competitive a division it is, he commented: “It was a tough scoreline on Dungannon because they deserved probably a couple more points.

“The one thing I would say is we probably have learned to defend and control games, play in the right areas. So even if you’re not playing well, and even if you do make errors, you’re making them in either their half or around the halfway line.

“This division, particularly this year, I think anyone can beat anyone. Other years you’ve had standout teams, Instonians were a standout. (Galway) Corinthians last year were a standout team. Queen’s in other years.

“This year, you look at Banbridge. Banbridge stretched us massively in the first half-and-hour of the game when we played them. Ballymena then as well, picking up a couple of wins now.

“We’ve always had horrendously tough games up there as well. So, I think the way you look at it at the minute is there’s nine other teams in the division, any day any one of them can beat you.

“Old Crescent there when we were leading 10-7. On another day, we would have lost that. There’s a lot of battle-hardened teams and they’re hard to beat. We’ve a target on our backs now as well.

“The same way last year Instonians came to Barnhall and we had a target on their backs and we just wanted to beat them. That’s a motivation that you can’t really create. We know that we have that on our backs now for the rest of the year.”

With three rounds over the next few weeks to see out the opening half of the season, the tests keep coming for Barnhall. Ballymena are their visitors next up, it is Greystones away after that, and then Corinthians at home before the festive break.

Add in the changing elements associated with this time of year, winter rugby where grit becomes currency, where set-piece and discipline and the invisible work matters more than ever.

Leading the charge for promotion, there are clubs that dream of moments like this, and clubs that spend years trying to recapture them. Barnhall have lived both stories.

This season they look ready to write a different one, but for now it really is just keeping that April mindset intact and taking each game as it comes, as Division 2A has proven a harsh battleground for them in recent years.

“I’d always say that the rugby fundamentally changes as you head into the Christmas period, the winter period. And the rugby you play in pre-season, September, October, is fundamentally different to the way you play now.

“You see high-scoring games when it’s dry, you head into the wet and wintry months and there’s a lot of time you have to grind it out, set-piece becomes massive, error counts, discipline, all those things, so it’s a bit of a leveller.

“When we’re in a division where there’s so many teams in it that can beat everyone, you literally have to keep it game by game. We prepare week-to-week based on what’s in front of us – the opposition, the threats, the opportunities.

“We would never look at a block of games and say, ‘Right, we should win three, or we should win two or whatever we should do’. It’s always just at the next game.”

Holt added: “So, Ballymena traditionally have been like an absolute nightmare to play against, to be honest with you. They’re physical, good set-piece. They play for 80 minutes.

“I think we won in the last minute up there, maybe three or four years ago, last minute try in the corner. I think they were down to 13 men.

“So, we’re absolutely aware of the challenge that is in front of us, but it’s really exciting heading into the last three games and into Christmas with six behind us that we’ve won. I think we’re in a good spot.”

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