{"id":295074,"date":"2025-07-27T05:07:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T05:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/295074\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T05:07:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T05:07:16","slug":"the-best-thing-i-ever-did-was-sign-will-skelton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/295074\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The best thing I ever did was sign Will Skelton&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Former British and Irish Lions fly-half Ronan O\u2019Gara has hailed Wallabies lock Will Skelton, whom he coaches at French Top 14 club La Rochelle.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Gara lured the second rower to the French club from Saracens in 2020, with the pair enjoying immense success since winning two Investec Champions Cup titles.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetrugby.com\/tag\/will-skelton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Skleton<\/a> made a timely return for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetrugby.com\/team\/australia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Australia<\/a> to take a place in the Wallabies starting XV for the second Test of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetrugby.com\/team\/british-and-irish-lions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lions<\/a> series, and commenting before the match, the legendary Ireland fly-half revealed how the lock shifted his view on the game away from an all-out winning approach.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Gara hails Will Skelton<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpeaking to a lot of players as a young coach, you really want them to be focused on winning, and I thought that what it is all about,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetrugby.com\/tag\/Ronan-O&#039;Gara\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">O\u2019Gara<\/a> said on Sky Sports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWill pulled me aside one day and he said, \u2018Coach, I\u2019m not actually that much into winning. I\u2019m into creating memories. I\u2019m into making my teammates play better, feel better.\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"px-3 xs:px-4 mt-3 mb-2 font-semibold leading-snug text-base text-title\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetrugby.com\/news\/matt-williams-slams-british-and-irish-lions-classless-imperialist-act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Matt Williams slams British and Irish Lions\u2019 \u2018classless imperialist act\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s huge on family, his wife, Kate, is obviously has a massive influence on what he does and how he operates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery Friday at the club set up, he\u2019ll have either have pear of crumble, brownies, or muffins \u2013 he has all the top baking done for all the boys.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe will bring it in and that just epitomises what he is. He has that Polynesian background as well with New Zealand and Australia, but he\u2019s got a heart the size of the room, and he means so much to anyone who\u2019s crossed his path.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd sometimes you think that you\u2019re doing a good job as a coach, but the best thing I ever did was sign Will Skelton.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, I\u2019m excited to see him play tonight, even though obviously he\u2019s in the wrong colour, but it\u2019s so fantastic to have someone like Will in your life and have crossed paths in rugby with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>READ MORE:\u00a0<\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetrugby.com\/news\/australia-v-british-and-irish-lions-how-to-watch-live-stream-and-kick-off-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Australia v British and Irish Lions: How to watch, live stream and kick-off time<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former British and Irish Lions fly-half Ronan O\u2019Gara has hailed Wallabies lock Will Skelton, whom he coaches at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[186,5313,225,90462,12,70214,4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-295074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-british-and-irish-lions","10":"tag-home-page","11":"tag-internationals","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-ronan-o","14":"tag-rugby","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114923467146953807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}