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In the years before Damian McGrath took over as the Canadian men’s rugby sevens coach, he didn’t know what to make of Nathan Hirayama from afar.

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He seemed so laid back, he said.

“Things looked easy, but I never knew whether he was bothered or not, he gave the impression that nothing really affected him and he was happy to be there,” McGrath said Wednesday from his hotel room in Downtown Vancouver.

No longer Canada’s coach — he was dismissed in 2019 after a political battle at Rugby Canada — he’s in Vancouver coaching the German men’s team for the first leg of the 2021 HSBC Canada Sevens, which go Saturday and Sunday at B.C. Place Stadium.

And then he met the man and discovered that while his demeanour was calm, what was beneath the surface was filled with passion.

“But that impression you get of him is completely the opposite to how he is,” McGrath explained. “He’s very committed. The thing that allowed him to play so long, and at the top for so long, is he always wanted to get better. He challenges himself and he challenges others, which as a coach was a great thing. I stumbled upon him, Harry Jones and John Moonlight. They were like three legs on the stool, they were what kept Canadian sevens operating through the years.”

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Hirayama announced his retirement from rugby last week. He had played in the Olympics this summer, a lifelong goal. He had played in Rugby World Cups too.

He’s going into the Canadian history books as one of the best ever to play the game in this country.

“You think of John Moonlight and his drive, his intensity and Harry Jones, the same, the warhorse, you would think that Nate was probably completely the other end of the spectrum to those two, but he had all those traits. For all these silky skills — the game looked easy to him — he had that same intensity and he loved the game, loved the players, loved his friends, his family, and he loved Canada and playing for Canada.

“And it was always part of his makeup, that drive was what got him up every day and pushed him. Even in the disputes with Rugby Canada, he was very much in the forefront and putting everybody else’s thoughts and feelings ahead of his own. Real team man, as much as he was a great individual, as a player. It’s difficult to put into words because he was such a one-off.”

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“When I arrived in 2016, (the players) were on strike. I think as a senior group, they knew their worth, if that’s the right way of putting it. But they also knew the commitment and sacrifice they made and they weren’t prepared to compromise on their end. They could have quite easily taken a step back for less money or whatever it was they were being offered and dialed back their commitment to Rugby Canada, but they knew that they were giving 110 per cent and that at the very least, they expected that back in return from the governing body. And I think that was always at the heart of what they did.”

Both Jones, who got married last week and is set to announce his own retirement, and Moonlight, who retired in 2018, paid their own tributes to Hirayama.

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“He’s not one to show emotions and he’s not rah-rah and he leads by example. You can see it in how he plays, in his eyes,” Jones, who played with and against Hirayama for the last 15 years, said. “He’s always had a presence or aura in him that brings things out in others. That was great for the young players the last few years.”

“A lot of people talk about great players, that in times of stress they don’t lose their cool,” Moonlight said. “H e did his research on everything, on-and-off the field. He was very methodical. He’d research what other teams are doing and also how to make his game better.”

Hirayama retires as the third-highest scorer in the history of the World Rugby Sevens Series.

“You don’t score that many points, not just kicks, but the tries too, without having that ability to be in the right place at the right time, but also to beat a man one-on-one. And he set tries up for other people,” McGrath pointed out.

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“From when I arrived, within a year he’d accelerated his scoring numbers. And suddenly was pushing on the top guys of all time. And I think in the last five or six years, he’s just been a machine in terms of points. Right up until he’s retired, he’s never lost that ability to score tries.”

Hirayama was consistently in the top three in series scoring in the last few seasons. He won the overall scoring title in 2018.

“There were not a lot of guys in the world who could do what he did,” Moonlight said. “He stepped up at the toughest times and hit some massive kicks. He kept us in a lot of games. Everything about his game was perfect, he was that guy who wanted to be the best in the world.”

Think of all the points he would have scored in the periods where Hirayama was out injured, McGrath pointed out. In his early 20s, Hirayama dealt with serious shoulder and ankle injuries.

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Or even his team’s status in the series, Moonlight pointed out.

“Half of his career, Canada wasn’t a core team (meaning they weren’t at every tournament); look how many points he scored anyway,” he said.

Hirayama was a trendsetter for the sport itself, Moonlight said. Along with the U.S.’s Folau Niua, Hirayama taught himself to drop-kick with both feet, an incredible advantage on kickoffs.

“I’ve never met anybody who can kick a ball without moving their body on both feet and drop it on a dime he called it,” said McGrath, who first got into coaching in his native England but also coach Samoa in the Sevens World Series.

Opponents would have to set up on both sides of the field, making their planning for kick receptions a challenge; it’s no wonder that both Canada and the U.S. were so adept at retaining possession after their own restarts.

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“At one point the refs said to him you gotta let us know which way you’re kicking so you don’t hit us and Nate pointed out to them that if he did, they’d stand in a way that would give away our plan,” Moonlight said, with a laugh.

Speaking over the phone from the San Diego airport, minutes away from flying north to Vancouver, U.S. coach Mike Friday agreed. Both Hirayama and Niua changed the game.

“It’s an absolute weapon,” he said of their abilities to hide their intentions at the restart. “They’re the only ones who could not give it away. There were many who wanted to be (effective kicking with both feet) … but Nate and Folau were head and shoulders above the others.”

Friday said he got to have some very insightful conversations with Hirayama while they were both in Tokyo this summer for the Olympics.

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“A very intelligent player. A deep thinker of the game,” he said. “I can tell he cares a lot. When Canada played well it was because he’d put the ball where it needed to be on restarts. Plus his ability to move the ball around the pitch. His feet, his ability to put the ball where he wanted is an underrated skill. And wherever Canada scored their try, you did feel they had a better than 50 per cent chance to put the (conversion) through the posts because of him.”

The U.S.’s Madison Hughes and England’s Tom Mitchell, stars of the game in their own rights, both tried to be like Niua and Hirayama, Friday said, but they never were able to match.

“That ability to stay square and the variation, to kick high or long or up the middle, those two never gave away a read,” he said. “Nate probably didn’t get the respect that he deserved.”

DROP KICKS: Rugby Canada’s squad, which opens pool play against McGrath’s Germany at 11:15 a.m. on Saturday, features nine rookies in their squad of 13, which is led by four of Hirayama’s former teammates in Jake Thiel, Phil Berna, Andrew Coe and Josiah Morra … Tournament organizers say ticket sales have been brisk but there are still some available … Canada’s pool also features the U.S. and Chile.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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