THERE IS ALWAYS A trigger, always a moment, a conversation or even a throwaway remark, when something clicks, when everything changes, when your name stops being prefixed with the word inconsistent and is replaced by something kinder.
Every player in the world has stood at that emotional crossroads at some point in their lives. For the greats, it happens early in their lives. For others, it can be the summer, even autumn of their careers.
Jack O’Donoghue smiles at the thought because for him it was last summer. He was 27. He’d won his first Ireland cap in 2017 ….. and he’d won his second and last Ireland cap in 2017. The years since had been cruel and kind. He’d played, and won, big games with Munster but the trophy cabinet was bare. But that wasn’t the ache that nagged away at him in June and July of 2021.
No, it was something private, something few, if any, people knew about. He’d been a late call-up for a Rainbow Cup game, at home to Connacht. Aside from players and officials, there were about 30 people in Thomond Park that evening, a Covid-enforced lockdown keeping the fans away.
The roars of the players echoed around the empty stands, the hum of the Limerick traffic the only competing noise. Into this surreal world came Jack O’Donoghue. “I wasn’t meant to be playing at all.”
Yet here he was, getting his tackles in, making his carries, watching Munster build a lead they ultimately couldn’t keep. They should have won but blew it.
Hurting deep inside, embarrassed by his mistake that directly led to a disallowed try, O’Donoghue had a long, honest analysis of who he was as a player and where he was going.
“When I look back on it, I let myself down,” he candidly says. “Certainly my performance on the field (that evening) reflected that. After that game, I had an internal chat. The crux of the matter was simple, basically that even if you aren’t named on the bench, even if you aren’t starting; you have to click straight into it from the first whistle.
“That game stands out for me as a turning point. We had a try disallowed for me tackling someone off the ball. We ended up losing the game as a result of it. The knock on effect that one moment had on me, and the squad, hasn’t gone away.”
What’s interesting about this is that the Rainbow Cup will soon be forgotten by the wider rugby public. Quiz aficionados may store it in their memory bank but few others will. It was a nondescript competition and that’s as kind as we’re prepared to be about it.
Yet for Munster it represented an opportunity to end a trophy famine and get people talking about something else. Had O’Donoghue not made that illegal tackle they would have beaten Connacht, reached the final, and most probably would have won it.
“You can say the tournament will be forgotten about in five-years-time but I’ll remember what I did,” he says. “When I came back for pre-season, I said to myself: ‘I don’t want to let myself down again like that’.”
What followed was interesting. “I had a look at my game and realised I needed something to change; and something I hadn’t actually utilised (up until that point in my career) was a sports psychologist. It just so happened that Caroline (Currid, Munster’s sports psychologist) was coming on board with us. “When I sat down to speak with her, I thought I’d be changing a hundred, million things but it was just a simple adjustment (regulating his weekly routine) that we made.”
Yet that small step has made a big difference. If an early shortlist was being drawn up today for club player of the year, O’Donoghue’s name would be on it, his ascension to the captaincy role a reflection of his new standing in the dressing room.
For all the progress, there’s still been no sequel to his international story. “I’m going to be a right ball-buster here but look; I don’t want to talk about Ireland.” You quickly sense why. After 2017, there must have been evenings when he received the phone call and heard the words ‘sorry, Jack but …’
Worse again, were the evenings when there wasn’t even a call, when he realised he was so far down the list that phone didn’t ring. “It was something that consumed me too much in previous years and is something I have come to terms with and gotten away from (thinking about).”
Other things he can’t get out of his head. He’s at 160 appearances for Munster now, seven years and eight months on since his debut. Along the way there have been three European semi-finals, three Pro12/14 finals and another three semi-finals in that secondary competition.
The cliché is they’re a team trapped in the shadow of the past. Heroes from the golden years, 2000 to 2011, are frequent faces on the pundit’s box, addicted to mentioning how good life used to be but a little more reticent to mention another uncomfortable truth.
Namely that Munster’s history hasn’t always been brilliant. Yes, they were Ireland’s number one side for the first decade of this century but for the ten decades of the previous one, they were anything but, Leinster and Ulster winning more inter-provincial titles, the first five years of European rugby being way less successful than the last five.
You wonder if it’s a sore point. You point to what this team have done; their European wins across the last five years against Toulouse, Toulon, Exeter, Saracens, Racing 92 and Clermont – who, between them, have won seven and lost six of the last eight European Cup finals.
With Munster, however, the script has not veered from what they’ve failed to do, to win a trophy, to beat Leinster in a knock-out match, to make it to a fifth European Cup final, to end the conversation about an 11-year wait between trophies.
“You can be selective about how you look at what Munster as a group, and as a club, has achieved. But when you compare the game now to 2006 and 2004, look, it’s completely different. You know, the physical conditioning of players; the attack and defence systems; even the coaching, everything has gone through the roof; the standard is incredibly higher.
“Like, we are knocking on the door. We are there or thereabouts. There are teams who have won the Champions Cup in the past; we’ve beaten them in group stages or quarter-finals! We are on the cusp of something great. We are ironing out the last few things to get us where we need to be, to get over that final hurdle and for us to be a group that goes down in the history books and really achieve something incredible.
“We give everything. You could see it in the last round, against Exeter. Munster comes to life in the Champions Cup. There is a real special group we have in here at the moment. It is really going to come for us. We have learned from wins and losses.”
That last line is something we’ve heard so often, after the defeat to Racing in 2018, after Saracens in 2019, after Leinster in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
But against Exeter, you could believe the words. That away leg in Sandy Park should have been a hammering. Instead Munster stayed alive. In the end progress was inevitable. “At half-time away to Exeter, we had a chat. Look even at the difference in our performance between the first-half and second-half in that game.
“We could conceivably have conceded another two tries that day but our defence was incredible. We got our breakdown right. That’s what learning a lesson means in real terms. We identified the problem; then we sorted it.
“But that wasn’t enough. After the game, we looked at the chances we didn’t convert – even though everyone was saying we should have lost by more. We purposely looked at ways we could improve our attack. Then look what happened in the second leg. Those performances were chalk and cheese. That’s a sign we are getting there.”
The next steps, the hardest ones, are up ahead. Cardiff (kick-off, 7.35pm, TG4, Premier Sports) in Cork tonight is, in many ways, like that Connacht fixture in the Rainbow Cup, only season-defining if they lose. Munster won’t. Avoiding complacency for games like this is certainly one of the things they’ve got better at.
Munster: Mike Haley, Calvin Nash, Chris Farrell, Rory Scannell, Simon Zebo, Ben Healy, Conor Murray, Jeremy Loughman, Diarmuid Barron, John Ryan, Jean Kleyn, Thomas Ahern, Peter O’Mahony (CAPT), Alex Kendellen, Jack O’Donoghue
Replacements: Scott Buckley, Josh Wycherley, Keynan Knox, Jason Jenkins, Jack Daly, Craig Casey, Joey Carbery, Shane Daly
Cardiff Rugby: Hallam Amos, Owen Lane, Rey Lee-Lo, Max Llewellyn, Theo Cabango, Jarrod Evans, Lloyd Williams, Rhys Carré, Kristian Dacey, Dillon Lewis, Seb Davies, Rory Thornton, James Botham, Josh Navidi (CAPT), James Ratti
Replacements: Kirby Myhill, Brad Thyer, Keiron Assiratti, Matthew Screech, Ellis Jenkins, Jamie Hill, Rhys Priestland, Garyn Smith
Referee: Sam Grove-White (SRU)
- Jack O’Donoghue pictured ahead of the 2021/22 Heineken Champions Cup quarter final. This year’s tournament marks the 27th consecutive season Heineken has been a proud partner of European rugby and the fifth season of the Heineken and Rugby Players Ireland partnership.