George Mallory was an English mountaineer who died some hundreds of metres from the summit of Mount Everest in 1924. His remains weren’t identified and removed from the mountain top until 1999. He is often described as the most famous corpse on Everest.

He scaled Everest with an Andrew Irvine and carried with him a picture of his wife, Ruth. Mallory knew how challenging the ascent would be. When he felt like giving up, he would need inspiration. But when his remains were found, the picture wasn’t on him. Did he get to the summit, know his pending fate, and leave the picture of his wife there?

We asked who would be the person the players wanted to walk the most painful yards with. I brought a picture of my mum, given what had happened to her last year with a bleed to the brain. It’s you, alone against 50,000 people in Dublin. When the going gets tough, it's good to have someone you can turn to. Who is that person to get you over the line amid the carnage of a one-point Champions Cup final?

- Ronan O’Gara, Irish Examiner, May 2023 

So, as he’s been an English teacher for over 15 years now, we’ll start with the spelling. David Sharkey’s work with the likes of ROG is called and spelt ‘themeing’.

He knows, he knows: that ‘e’ in the middle can grate. “It leaps out at me as well,” he confesses.

But consider the alternative, as he obviously has.

“‘Them-ing is the complete opposite of what theme-ing does! It’s about the power of us, tapping into the power of story. That’s why when autocorrect will initially take out that ‘e’, I deliberately put it back in.

“And I actually think it works perfectly with what I’m trying to do. Because themeing is about coining language and shaping what words can mean and what stories can mean to us.” 

Ronan O’Gara and his two-time European champions La Rochelle know just know powerful that can be, at least when it’s facilitated by someone like Sharkey. His native Westmeath too, after they delivered the inaugural Tailteann Cup. As he puts it himself, “The right messages from the right people at the right time can have such an impact.” 

Sharkey’s own story will help explain why he’s been so good at helping teams write their story by tapping into the power and example of others.

Growing up in Mullingar he played some underage football with St Loman’s but once he went as a boarder to Clongowes rugby became his game. Although he grew to 6’3 and was built like a second row, he actually played centre, part of the same backline as Rob Kearney, and then with Leinster schools, one Johnny Sexton.

His other great passions at Clongowes were English and History, so much so he chose to major in them at UCD. A year’s sabbatical in Australia, when he took in the 2003 World Cup, involved working in St Joseph’s College, the renowned rugby nursery on the outskirts of Sydney that produced Matt Burke and a string of other Wallabies. So while still in his teens he had the wisdom to connect the dots: what if he combined his love of English and history and rugby by becoming a teacher?

And so he did, while also becoming a pretty high-level rugby coach as well (he has a Level 3 RFU coaching qualification; there are just four levels). Over time another career pathway opened up from those passions. In 2018 while he was the head of English at Shiplake College, a boarding school just outside Henley-on-Thames, he closely followed the Belfast rape trial.

“A lot of people were questioning the attitude of rugby players and the culture in rugby schools and environments and what the sport represented in Irish society. At first I found myself being very defensive about it but as more evidence emerged I found myself thinking, ‘God, rugby could be doing a lot better.’ And that there had been times where I had been in environments where how people spoke about women or treated alcohol was [undesirable].

“So it raised this idea, Can we coach character? We hear a lot about sport developing character but rather than wait until the end of the experience and see what was learned on the way, could we try to equip players with certain skills and characteristics?” 

He drew up a programme for his school team, themed redefining masculinity. For 15 minutes before training they would discuss mental health, emotional wellbeing, gender dynamics in sport.

“We wanted to see if we could have conversations with young people and keep the story relatively consistent rather than have something tokenistic like bringing in an outsider every few months to come in and tell their story. And it definitely seemed to have an impact.

“We showed them a documentary [Going Pro] on the dominant Saracens women’s team and afterwards one of the guys came up to me and said he didn’t realise that women even played rugby. The same player suggested we should use a drill that they used in the documentary.” 

Soon after that he came across an interview with Ronan O’Gara and Scott Robertson, the head coach of the Crusaders during the Corkman’s time there, in which they spoke about this thing called themeing. “It’s the heartbeat of the whole organisation,” O’Gara said. “It gives you a focal point every day, for every game of the season, and you can always refer to it and live it by your actions. That’s very powerful if you have 70-odd people doing it.” 

Around the same time he was reading Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code and a chapter on how Greg Popovich was able to lead the San Antonio Spurs to five NBA championships and a record 22 consecutive playoff appearances.

Coyle had shadowed the Spurs for a few days in the season following their heartbreaking 2013 finals defeat to LeBron James and the Miami Heat. A couple of weeks before the 2014 playoffs they were beaten comprehensively by the Oklahoma City Thunder. The players had convened to the video room, expecting a breakdown of all the defensive rotations they had got wrong the previous night. Instead Popovich showed them a CNN documentary on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act featuring MLK, LBJ and the Selma marches. Then he asked questions, facilitated a discussion: What would you have done in that situation? As the Spurs general manager RC Buford observed, “It’s so easy to be insulated when you’re a professional athlete. But Pop uses those moments to make sure that everybody is connected and engaged to something bigger.” The Spurs won that 2014 NBA championship.

The story of Pop and this themeing idea of ROG’s intrigued Sharkey with his love of language and story and history, so he duly tried out the idea of themeing with a couple of rugby teams he was involved with.

One was facing a relegation battle so he chose the story of Shackleton’s escape from the Antarctic. “Others in that situation had used The Great Escape,” he smiles, “but as much as people would have liked the music I didn’t think there was as much depth in it as there was in the story of the Endurance. I didn’t just want a story that would temporarily motivate them; I was coming from the view of character coaching.” 

The other team, in contrast, were all-conquering, but were they really stretching themselves? And so for them he came up with the theme of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Showed them the clip of JFK’s famous Why Go To The Moon speech at Rice University on the day of its 57th year anniversary: What was an outrageous, daring, big, bold goal of theirs? Instead of flying a kite, could they fly to their moon?

They delved into the story of Michael Collins, the selfless invisible astronaut who never set foot on the moon. Who was their Collins? To almost a man they identified their unsung hero. On one occasion when they had forgotten to bring their water to the pitch by the river 10 minutes away from their dressing room, he was the one who had dashed back.

“It was just a way to reinforce these behaviours like selflessness. What you’re trying to really do is tell old messages in new, engaging ways.” 

Covid gave him time to ponder on those case studies. Write them up. Devise a defined framework. Share online with other coaches looking to upskill or kill time during lockdown. Over 100 coaches connected with him, including the one who prompted his interest in the whole field: O’Gara. At first Sharkey presumed it was just to learn more about the framework he used so O’Gara could adapt some elements of it for himself. Instead O’Gara asked him to come on board with La Rochelle and design a theme for them.

They brainstormed. What were they trying to achieve for the upcoming 2020-21 season? They eventually landed on it: Being the first. The first La Rochelle team to win the Top 14. Even conquer Europe. So they studied The Firsts, especially those who climbed Everest.

You of course know of Dr Edmund Hillary. You may not have known of Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans. At least not until O’Gara told you who they were.

***

Anyone remember Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans? Bourdillon was president of the Oxford Mountaineering Club. Evans was a brain surgeon but an expert climber too. They were to be the first to scale the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. On May 26 they reached the south summit at 28,700, a mere 330 feet from the top. However, Evans was spent, and both men knew they’d run out of oxygen if they tried to make it. They agreed to turn back, so close. Bourdillon always regretted it. We couldn’t.

The team meeting Friday was about our final 330 ft. It was non-emotional. Pure fact. Everyone remembers Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing but who today remembers Bourdillon and Evans and that near thing? It was our theme of the week and our final message now. We didn’t want to wake up Sunday 330 ft short.

Ronan O’Gara, Irish Examiner, May 2022 

After being so close yet so far in 2021 when losing the European final to Toulouse, they had to go there to get to where they really wanted.

“We needed a mantra,” says Sharkey. “A meaningful one that resonated with the group. People use themes for a psych-up video or pep talk beforehand but it resonates much deeper if it’s reinforcing a theme or message you’ve been delivering throughout the season or even over several seasons. And so that was the message for that game. Imagine waking up on Sunday morning being 330ft short again.

“The day before the game Ronan would have shown the players a clip where one of the [climbers] talks about when Tom Bourdillon came down he said ‘We should have gone on.’ So that was a really powerful message to convey, just in a fresh, engaging way. Have no regrets.” 

Now they are accustomed to that thinnest air. After their second consecutive final win over Leinster, after all showing each other a picture of their Ruth, O’Gara wrote in these pages about their capacity and experience of walking over corpses to reach the summit. “We employed the word ‘brutal’,” wrote O’Gara. No guesses at this stage who helped them zone in on it.

With the Westmeath team that won the first Tailteann Cup the word was Courage. Like with O’Gara, Sharkey had connected with Jack Cooney during lockdown and between them settled on one for the championship of 2022. And so following in a tradition of themeing in the GAA as much as the phrase wouldn’t be commonly used, the legend and courage of Katie Taylor joined the likes of Liam Griffin’s Wexford or the Spartans who inspired Kieran McGeeney and the Armagh backline.

“I often use the phrase, ‘A good theme with the wrong group is a bad theme.’ And the example of Katie Taylor could have seemed a bad one for the Westmeath footballers. But the more Jack and I spoke about it, it was actually the perfect theme for that group. Because the courage we were talking about wasn’t about stepping up to break a tackle and kick the winning point. It was the idea of having a dream as a Westmeath footballer and inspire others. Because to most people they’d look at the Westmeath footballers and say, ‘What are they going to do? Who cares about them or what they do?’ 

“We chose the story of Katie Taylor because when she was a kid she had this dream of winning an Olympic gold medal, even though at the time a girl couldn’t even box in her country, let alone box in the Olympics!” 

At the time Westmeath started out that season, no one knew how big the Tailteann Cup could become, or what it could mean. But with their Taylor-like courage Westmeath had a dream, protected it, and showed Taylor-like grit to withstand the challenge of favourites Cavan to duly fulfil their dream, galvanise a county and legitimise a fledgling competition.

Last week Sharkey was in La Rochelle. He only goes over a couple of times a season, entrusting someone as skilled as O’Gara who he speaks with constantly to roll the theme out day to day. “I help him with it but then he makes it his own. Because he knows those people in front of him better than I ever will.” 

Last week O’Gara just needed Sharkey to help properly launch and reinforce the theme for this season.

Sharkey’s so in demand for his services, he’s actually quitting the old day job, as much as he loved it. Instead he’s giving his consultancy practice, Team Architecture, his full focus, along with studying a Masters in Sports Performance in DCU part-time over the next two years, now that he and his partner and child are relocating back to Ireland.

But he will remain a voracious reader of history. For its own sake and also as possible material for future themes and clients. He knows there are some athletes who just want to be told where to go, where to stand, or be like Mark Aguirre in the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons documentary, “Just roll out the ball, man!” But for every Aguirre there are more Tim Duncans or Antoine Hastoys or John Heslins. And just as importantly a team of physios who if they latch onto the power of themeing can help support them even more effectively, get them inspired and back that bit earlier and better.

“So much of professional or high performance sport can be monotonous. And themeing is a way to make their story and journey unique, different, and help them along that way.” 

La Rochelle have the flags and photos on the summit of their Everest to prove it.