WHEN CORMAC DALY moved to Australia in January last year, he thought that the dream of being a professional rugby player was gone.
The 25-year-old Kildare man had been close to making it in Ireland. There were two stints with Connacht, while he had also been in the Leinster set-up, playing for the province in a friendly against Chile in November 2022.
The 6ft 6ins and 121kg lock, who can also play in the back row, had been a key man for All-Ireland League club Clontarf, playing a big role in their 2022 AIL title but Daly never got the full-time pro contract he was after.
So when some of his friends were making the move to Sydney, he said he’d join them for a bit of life experience. Daly got a job as a project coordinator for a telecommunications company. Alongside the office job, he joined the famous Randwick club.
The craic in Sydney was mighty and Daly was happy to move on with his life.
But just over a year later, he was making his Super Rugby debut for the Queensland Reds. Daly came off their bench in their season-opening win against the Waratahs two weekends ago to become a member of the exclusive club of Irishmen who have played Super Rugby.
“It wasn’t something I expected to happen,” says Daly on the phone from Australia.
“If you told me last year that I’d be doing this, I’d have laughed in your face.
“Leaving Ireland, I was thinking I had probably missed my chance. I was just trying to move on, get on with my life, and enjoy my rugby. This has been such a huge surprise, but a good surprise.”
Daly hails from Kilcock. He reckons he’s the first person in his family to play rugby. It was all football and hurling in his house. They’ve all been converted into rugby fans now and Daly’s parents – who first met in Sydney a few decades ago – are hoping to get to Australia this year to watch a game in the flesh.
Daly played for Kilcock all the way up to senior level in both hurling and football. Some of the friends he moved to Sydney with are fellow Kilcock men. But rugby was Daly’s real passion.
He started playing with North Kildare RFC and moved on to Navan RFC when he was 17 due to the latter having greater playing numbers. He won an U20 All-Ireland title with Navan, a cherished memory given they beat a few bigger-name clubs along the way.
Daly later moved on to Clontarf to play senior rugby and he feels nothing but gratitude for their role in his journey.
“I love Clontarf,” says Daly. “The club is a huge factor in where I am. The coach Andy Wood has been absolutely brilliant for me. The club always showed faith in me and I’ve had some of the best days of my life with Clontarf, those days after winning the final spring to mind. I have a lot of love for the people in the club.”
Daly impressed for the Ireland U20s in 2018 alongside the likes of Caelan Doris, Dan Sheehan, and Rónan Kelleher before he was picked up by Connacht on an academy deal, having come through Leinster’s age-grade teams.
He was coached by Paul O’Connell in the forwards that season with the Ireland U20s, a valuable experience in building Daly’s self-belief.
“There was a lot of lineout stuff but also the mental side of preparing games,” says Daly. “He was interested in the way I carried the ball and how I was able to switch hands to fend, which was natural to me. He gave me a lot of confidence to kick on.”
Daly never got a shot at senior level with Connacht, even when he returned on a short-term ideal in late 2020 after a planned move to play for Rugby United New York in the US had fallen through.
His excellence for Clontarf saw Daly brought into the Leinster set-up for pre-season in 2022 but it wasn’t to be there either.
“With Connacht, it was probably frustrating because it was over a longer period,” he says. “I probably felt I didn’t get that opportunity to show myself as much as I wanted. I thought I was training well, playing well in A games, but I didn’t get that opportunity.
“I got called into that pre-season with Leinster and I loved the few months seeing how one of the best teams in the world train. Leo Cullen actually got on to congratulate me when I made my Reds debut. The way Leinster train and compete with each other, having been there meant it wasn’t as much of a shock coming in here in Queensland.”
With nothing on offer in Ireland, off went Daly to Sydney and signed up with Randwick, a club that has helped to produce a raft of Wallabies players, as well as coaches like Eddie Jones, Michael Cheika, and Alan Gaffney.
Randwick were on a 20-year trophy drought in the Shute Shield, a big semi-pro competition involving Sydney clubs, but Daly played a major role as they claimed the title last year.
It was hard to miss Daly, who was man of the match in the final against Northern Suburbs, and the Reds pounced. Former Ireland defence coach and Ulster director of rugby Les Kiss had taken over in Brisbane and he welcomed Daly into the fold.
“I talked to a few people who had been coached by Les and they all said he’s a great lad,” says Daly, who signed a two-year deal with the Reds.
“He’s a really nice person, wants the best for you and from you. You can see he cares about you a lot. He obviously wants you to perform but he genuinely cares. He has given me great confidence and I feel like I’ve come on leaps and bounds since arriving. I just want to keep going now.”
Daly is the second Irishman to have played for the Reds after Peter Clohessy’s stint in Queensland back in 1997, the year before Daly was born.
This is an ambitious Reds squad who feel this season can be their “coming of age” in Super Rugby. Daly is delighted to have made his debut and he’s excited about what lies ahead. There are Super Rugby trips to Fiji and New Zealand to come this year that he wants to be involved in, while the Reds will play the British and Irish Lions in 2025.
Pre-season in heat that rose above 35°C at over 80% humidity was tough but he is enjoying life in Brisbane.
Having earned his second chance in pro rugby, Daly is in a happy place.
