At this time of good intentions, of new gym subscriptions and nutritional self-help books, spare a thought for the poor soul who must keep over-eating; who never gets a rest from gluttony; who already weighs around 111kgs but lives in fear of dipping below 110 and whose daily existence is measured by hourly calorific intake.
“It’s horrible,” says Ryan Baird. “Trying to get 4-5,000 calories in [every day] is a huge struggle. I run a lot on the pitch but I also burn a lot of calories; just naturally, that’s the way I am.
“The best way I can describe it is that if I’m thinking about making my dinner I’ve got to think about what I’m going to be eating while I’m making my dinner. The other night I was making a pasta dish so, OK, what am I going to eat when I’m making this? And I was getting porridge oats, peanut butter, banana, vanilla protein, putting it with milk…”
It helps, a little, that he is passionate about food — not just about its consumption but its making; its presentation; its commercial potential. While in Transition Year at St Michael’s, he ran a stall during break times, when demand for his home-made caramel slices often outran supply. His favourite Netflix shows are all about food and food-makers.
But food is also a chore. The fast-twitch muscle fibres that allow this 6ft 6ins 23-year-old to dance past three Racing 92 players in the space of five metres are also highly efficient at burning fat and calories. At the same time, maintaining weight is essential for the parts of his job that require heavy lifting and shoving.
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This means leading as sedentary a life as possible after work is over. When Baird plays golf — he is a single-figure handicapper who drives the ball 300 metres plus — he takes a buggy.
“The thing about golf is your heart rate is so high all the time and that require more energy,” he says. “I used to wear a Whoop fitness tracker and the amount of calories I was burning playing golf was ridiculous. Thousands of them. I’d need sandwiches and some nuts all over the course and it kinda took away the enjoyment part of it. I found if I could get into a buggy and play nine holes it was just the perfect thing.”
Sea fishing is even better, though — low energy but also low stress. Just as Baird metabolises quickly, you imagine that his mental processor is constantly whirring, too. Ask him about goal setting, for example. He launches into a breathless solo on the nature of consistency, drawing heavily on the jargon of sports psychology and delivered with impressive conviction. You just wonder if he has an “off” button.
The closest he gets to a Zen-like state is in Kilmore Quay, or at Dillon’s Park in Dalkey, or on the lakes in Cavan. “It’s effectively like gambling; one more cast, one more cast, hoping you get that bite,” he says. “But the main reason I do it is because it is just so relaxing.”
“I haven’t gone out in a while now, because of the weather but also because we’ve had a lot of Saturday games. But at the start of the season we had a lot of Friday games so I was nearly heading every weekend. I was going down to Wicklow, to the pier, trying to catch a dogfish or a seabass. I went out there for six hours and caught nothing but it teaches you great patience.”
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Baird probably has grounds for impatience. Imagine the excitement of scoring a hat-trick as a 20-year-old in your seventh game for Leinster, only for the rugby season to be shut down a week later because of the pandemic.
By most metrics, he is ahead of his peers — capped at 21, producing a game-changing play off the bench in his second appearance, at Murrayfield. Frustrating obstacles have slowed his progress, though — the injury that reduced his chances of selection for the latter stages of the Champions Cup last season, a Covid infection that disrupted Ireland’s summer tour to New Zealand, the concussion that kept him out of the November internationals.
Where he has been fortunate is in being given regular opportunity to play at No 6 — today is his sixth start at blindside this season but only his tenth in the course of 46 appearances for Leinster. Andy Farrell surely likes the way that Baird can slip comfortably into jerseys numbered 5, 6, 19 and 20, yet it’s in the back row where he is more likely to produce those outrageously athletic game-turning moments.
Understandably, his technical role models are players who are comfortable at five or six, like Maro Itoje or Courtney Lawes. This pair also embody the aggression that he wants to make a constant in his game, but without losing the evasion skills that make his carrying so dangerous.
“Yeah, I would have acknowledged what the six was on a rugby pitch — it’s that dog, that person you know is going to turn up physically, which is always at the forefront of my mind,” he says. “At the highest level it comes down to who can with the gainline first, before you do anything else.
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“But what I also feel is a strength of mine is my athleticism. I’m blessed in terms of what I was born with but working on that has been a huge area of my game this season. I used to neglect it — ‘Oh, I’ll just make a line break here and run around someone.’ But a lot of coaches say, ‘Work on what you’re world-class at and make it even better; you can’t make everything a strength’.
“So this season I’ve been really focusing on working on my footwork; my acceleration; my carry. I’d see myself being able to do that along with the physicality bit because if you don’t have that you might as well not be playing.”
That last part seems especially apt today. Almost exactly two years ago, Baird started at six in a weakened Leinster team that lost 24-35 to Connacht at the RDS — their first home defeat against those opponents in 19 years. You imagine that Johnny Sexton — who also started that game — has mentioned it in recent days.
Dominating opposing packs is a constant theme, however. Call it the Will Skelton effect. Leinster are sick of hearing about their physical shortcomings against La Rochelle, and, before that, against Saracens. Disproving this thesis seems almost their primary motivation.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a weight issue,” says Baird. “I wouldn’t say it’s a power issue. I’d say it’s the mentality we approach those games with. You see this season, we have this want to just physically dominate packs. And that’s the greatest strength that we have this season; our ability to be ruthless in the 22 or when we’re driving.
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“It was a great point for reflection at the end of the season because, when you look at the quality of the forwards we have, there is no reason why we shouldn’t have won anything last year but we won nothing.
“Coming into this season, as forwards, we’re taking a lot of ownership of getting the backs into the best position to do what they do because we have world-class backs. We also have world-class forwards and we need to deliver on that every game and it’s always a focus — can we be the most dominant team? If we’re in a corner, do we come out fighting?”
Baird is speaking for the collective but you can sense that there’s an individual new year’s resolution for him in there, too. As an athlete and as a footballer, he is outrageously talented. If he can release his inner dog, he becomes the full package.
