MALLEYMAN

VICHY, 1944

Following the Allied invasion of France in June and the liberation of Paris in August, the Vichy government were evacuated by German forces to prevent their capture. Some, including General Pétain, the Grand Marshall of France, and his prime minister Pierre Laval, were taken against their will. They were taken to Sigmaringen in south-west Germany and puppet government in exile was established. Hitler had requisitioned Sigmaringen castle from the Hohenzollern family, the old kings of Prusssia, the last of whom was German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated at the end of World War I. The castle received official designation from Germany as extra-territorialized and became a French enclave.

The enclave had its own radio station and official press, and the embassies of Germany and Japan, as well as an Italian consulate.

You might be thinking, as many of the six-thousand residents wandering around this huge castle in Germany were, what the hell is going on?

In addition to the government, the inhabitants included known collaborationist journalists and writers and their families, as well as soldiers, French SS and prisoners of war. Over a thousand French collaborators, and also ‘waiting-game opportunists’ also went into exile there.

General Pétain and Laval refused to cooperate with this pseudo-government in exile and the Germans, wanting to present a facade of legality, enlisted other Vichy officials to run the government. Pétain and his ministers, ‘on strike’, remained in the castle.

They all nervously followed reports of the advancing Allied troops drawing closer and discussed rumours of how the war was going, and the and the ‘imminent’ German victory.

There was internal dysfunction and harsh living conditions. They were under threat from Allied bombing runs, and suffered from poor nutrition and housing. The winter was bitterly cold with temperatures plunging to −30 °C. A lot of the residents, having left France in a panic had only summer clothes. Inadequate housing, insufficient food, promiscuity, and lack of hygiene were all issues.

The question needs to be asked here, did anyone, German or French, know what the hell they were doing at this stage?

The Allied forces took Sigmaringen in April 1945. Pétain was taken into the hands of French authorities in Switzerland while Laval fled to Spain. Other leaders were captured, tried, and executed as colaborist traitors.

VICHY 2026

Now, I’m not comparing the players’ tents at the 2026 Euros to Sigmaringen castle… We all had plenty to eat, the weather issue was intense heat rather than the cold, hygiene standards were adequate, and I have no information or opinion whatsoever on the sexual proclivities that applied in our micro-society… However, my point is that it’s interesting what happens to people when you put them together in cramped spaces under a highly-pressurised environment. How people react. I saw tears by mature men in the Irish tent, hugs and people being supportive, stress and tension, some Sigmaringen castle-level oddness and a bit of singing.

So, how did I deal with the pressure cooker? You might think I handled it well. I’ve been doing this for so long at this stage. I’d say, in terms of how I interacted with people, well. In terms of what I actually produced on the field, not always so well. As always, the video doesn’t lie. And you need a coach.

TOUCH EUROS, DAY 2

Game 1 vs France

I didn’t sleep well the night before. My ankle joint swelled up after the Italy game. I’d done something weird to it about a week-and-a-half before the tournament playing the social game up in Stepaside. I didn’t hurt it, just turned it slightly, didn’t notice anything and a couple of minutes later I was hobbling off the pitch, hardly able to walk. It went down itself after a couple of days, I wasn’t too worried. Then a few days before the tournament, I was doing some diving practice in the garden. No problem. About ten minutes afterwards, it swelled up again. I did a lot of massage, mobilisation and talking to it during those few days.

It felt perfect for the first match against Scotland but reacted again during the second match against Italy. I was stressing over it for half the night. I’ve never had to pull out of games during a tournament. Walking down to the pitches, trying to disguise a slight limp, I thought – I might be able to get through these games, but I might be very limited in my movement.

We played well in this game, a big step up from Italy on Day 1. In between working on my ankle, I’d studied video of France in detail the night before, how they subbed to the box by bringing their far link around behind the play and having him step into the line for second touch to create an overlap on their box side and make yardage. We came up with a couple of decent adjustments to counteract that.

In their line attack, they set up a lot of 33 platforms, which is a good attack. Being aware it’s coming can help you defend that fraction of a second quicker. They scooped a lot from dummy on a quickie set up with a couple of their better players. I enjoyed defending in this game. It felt good level, I felt tested and felt I mostly responded well. They beat us solidly and that was about the level of the two teams. No complaints.

I was minding my ankle the whole way through. It did bother me but at least it didn’t feel any worse afterwards.

France 8 – Ireland 4

Game 2 vs Spain

So, we drew this game. I felt we should have won it. They attacked well in the middle, created issues between our mid, setting up quickie plays. We should have defended them better but they did it well. On the flipside, we attacked too much in the middle where they defended best. You’ll often find that teams defend well against plays they regularly run themselves. We should have been better and smarter but fair play to them.

One thing I clearly saw in this tournament is that the level of play and knowledge has risen in all nations. There is a lot more information out there, online, on YouTube. If you have players and coaches who are diligent and curious, you can spread good knowledge through your teams much more easily.

I was still aware of my ankle during this game. Watching back the video of this game, I was mostly horrified. By myself. Is that how badly I’m moving? So slow and ponderous, my footwork looks awful. The video doesn’t lie. This was, incidentally, the first match I’d ever heard myself commented on. The commentators were very good. They were quite taken by the idea of how many ‘O’Malley pubs’ they been in around the world. I just wish I played better and I kind of knew the Portugal match would be even worse to watch.

From a team point of view, this was the worst and most dramatic moment of the game. Two of our main middles injurying themselves in the same moment. One out for a couple of games, the other out for the rest of the tournament.

This at least was a good score. Good solid 32 set ups and dive in at the line.

Ireland 8- Spain 8

Game 3 vs Portugal

This was the game I most struggled in mentally. Why am I here? I can’t do this anymore. I don’t care enough to do this anymore. I don’t want to be involved in a game like this. It was an ugly game. They were very physical, and flying up out of the line to make touches. Fair play to them. I thought the referees could have handled it much better, by emphasising bigger offside lines, making sure both sides were getting a full seven metres. That helps take the physicality out of it and lets the game flow much better. I think at times we were only getting a four metre offside line.

That being said, we handled it extremely badly. We let in some poor tries, and our driving up the field was abysmal.

The video shows so much. It confirms some things you already know, exactly as you felt them from within the game. And other things that you think you are doing, it shows up what is actually happening.

This is an example of me reacting badly to the pressure.

This is completely in my own control and one example of many. I’d been stressing in the buildup to this tournament in my coaching role, that we have to get momentum on the first touch. We weren’t doing it all tournament. But I wasn’t doing it either, as seen above. And I know my thought process here, I wanted other players to do it, so I could get my head up on the second or third touch and look for spaces where we could make real progress up the field. But in this case, stop thinking about the overarching structure, stop; being a coach and just be a player and do the job that is needed. Win the battle right in front of your face. Drive in hard without hesitation and get momentum.

On this drive as on many in this game, we got to the half-way line in five touches. Which is a game killer and I was as culpable as everybody else. And I should know better. An off-field coach, if we had one, would have immediately pulled me aside and told me in no uncertain terms to rectify.

On the flip side, in the video of this game, I can see that I was clearly moving significantly better. I can see how I was protecting my ankle in the Spain game and how, by this stage it had freed up again. I’d like to see footage of Day 3 when I was moving fully freely.

This was a good example of how things are rarely one person’s fault in the defence. I’m clearly at fault here, I step back in too quickly to follow the scooper. Partly I do that because the gap between me and my other middle is too big. And then once that mistake is made, the link and wing on the short side should stay on their men and let me chase down the scooper. All that goes wrong and from a reasonably solid defensive starting point, you’re conceding a really poor try.

This was a good set up, patient, moving the defence around. When you start to get your timing right, the spaces open up. This was the start of some good attacking that continued on Day 3.

Ireland 6 – Spain 5

TOUCH EUROS, DAY 3

Game 1 vs England

They hammered us. I didn’t realise by how much until I looked at the scores much later. Apart from the score line, I enjoyed this game a lot more than Portugal yesterday. England played very good Touch. They deserved to beat us by however much they did. There was nothing shocking or scary about what they were doing. They just had a lot of well-drilled players, used to playing at a high level and executing to a much higher standard than we were.

I took satisfaction in how I played. Personally, I was happy that our pod conceded the least amount of tries and that I was involved in both of our tries. The first I floated a pass into space for Ed, who ran a great line to hit a hole and score. The second happened right at the end of the game during the only two minutes that myself and Devin were on the pitch together during the tournament. We’d played together for years at club level and at MXO and SMX level. We werehammering away at line attack, set up a quickie, I split left drew some defenders, he scooped the other way and hit the link in space to score. Being on the pitch with Devin for that short time, the urgency and the volume of communication coming my way, it took me right back to successful teams we were on together where there were six or seven players at least performing like that. And, in the context of this game, if we were playing last score wins, we won.

With a weaker M40s team than this that I played on, we lost in the World Cup in 2019 to England 8-4. Nations are continuously getting better. With score lines like this, can we still say that Ireland is punching above its weight? That it’s travelling in the right direction? You’d be amazed what people can convince themselves of. See Sigmaringen castle.

England 18 – Ireland 2

Game 2 vs Wales

This was a good game. Not too much to say. We played well, put it up to them. By this stage, I was coming into my own attacking wise. I was beginning to see spaces in attack that weren’t clear before and set up some good scores. Again, similar to France, they won because they were better than us. We performed well up to our level. Loads of effort throughout the team. Some good scores.

Wales 13 – Ireland 7

These results meant we finished in the bottom half of the draw and could finish fifth at best. We were down to play Italy again in the last game of the day. Us 6th vs them 7th in the pool stages. A chance to put our terrible performance from Day 1 to rights.

Game 3 vs Italy

Muscle has a memory and our team memory was of imploding against Italy. We had no other built-in memories of going through tricky patches in matches, hanging in there and getting through it. Because simply, we’d never played as a team before tournament, and many of us had never played together before in any team.

So, we went back to our most recent memory in this game. I started well, scored our first try with a low dive in the middles. Then we drove on from the box, finally finally beginning to get our driving patterns working, I scooped and passed long, left-handed for Eric to score on the wing. Near the end of the half we were two-up. But you could still feel the low-level anxiety in the team. Then we let two in. Even at half-time. Then we let three in at the start of the second half. Errors, mental tiredness, less bad than the first game but another implosion. We got it back to one down. Italy deserved their win. We went through what new teams go through.

Italy 10 – Ireland 9

DAY 4

Game 1 vs Spain

It was a surprise that we were playing Spain and not Portugal.

7th beat 6th. and 8th beat 5th.

I was glad we were playing Spain. This game was early in the morning and I struggled so badly at the start. I couldn’t get my feet moving quickly and I felt sluggish and vulnerable in defence. It wasn’t just on me but we let in, I think, three poor scores in the first fifteen minutes. I was almost coming out of the game, beating myself up in real time.

The last five minutes of the first half, I managed to get it back a bit. I was just saying to myself, give it everything, push yourself, push through the sluggishness and tiredness, work harder, just do one good thing, then another. That’s all you can do.

At the start of the second half, Fedi said to me ‘Do it for the little ones.’ (He’s godfather to my daughter.) Immediately, I thought, ‘You b*****!’ But it was good. He knows me. It worked, because the next thing I thought was, ‘Yeah, relax. Get over yourself. My son and daughter don’t care how I play, they’ll just be happy to see me tomorrow. Enjoy this.’ And it immediately freed me up.

Interestingly, the second half of this game, where I was just concerned about not having a terrible game and not thinking about anything anybody else on my team was doing, was when I drove the best up the field. First touch, straight in at speed, win the ruck. Get off. And it made a difference to the team. Why wasn’t I doing that all tournament?

Our pod didn’t concede any tries. We defended like demons and the longer the game went on the more comfortable I felt. Spain helped us a bit too by increasing their error count. I finally, in the last few minutes of the last game, got a proper scoop on fifth touch (which was the goal of our drives all tournament). I scooped at the defending mid, took him short side for two steps, then stepped back openside, looped a pass over the mid and link for Ed to hit and dive in. That put us two up and comfortable.

I was relieved when that final whistle went. Swapped my Ireland shorts for Spanish ones and headed off back to the tent. Fatigue really hit in the couple of hours after.

Ireland 7 – Spain 5