FIRST THINGS FIRST, Mack Hansen says he’s “kind of over halfway” through his rehab from a dislocated shoulder suffered against Munster on New Year’s Day. He expects to return to the field for Connacht “around May” — and certainly before the end of the season.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel, as he puts it.
And Hansen says we should apply the same metaphor to Ireland following their defeat at Twickenham. On what remains a championship week for Andy Farrell’s side, he’s bewildered by the lingering sense of anticlimax that has permeated the build-up to Saturday’s clash with Scotland.
“It’s like we’re out of contention or something!” Hansen says. “Like, we’re top of the table and still have a chance to lift a trophy.
“It makes for an exciting week and it’s another opportunity for these guys to show last week was just an off-day. Every team has it. It’s what sport is all about. You can’t be perfect all the time.
“It’s another week to show how great this team can be and bring home some silverware.”
That said, the morose mood after Twickenham was hardly exclusive to the Irish public or its media.
Farrell and his players would have been glad to see their wise-cracking wing land into camp on Monday, Hansen lending a fresh face and a fresh voice this week as Ireland gear up for what will be a championship decider for them and a Triple Crown match for the Scots.
“Look, yeah, Monday was a bit ‘doom and gloom,’” Hansen says. “I kinda knew it was coming on Monday because we’ve had one or two of those meetings where maybe we’ve thought we let the occasion get ahead of us a bit. So, I knew it was going to be a tough morning, it was going to be a lot of reflecting on what could have been.
“But saying that, Faz was pretty good at just telling everyone, y’know, ‘This happened. Now it’s time to move on. We’ve still got stuff to play for — we’ve still got plenty to play for.’ So, the last two days have been great. There’s been a bubbly energy around the group, everyone’s laughing, smiling, and it’s just excitement for this week ahead, really.”
While it pains Hansen not to be involved this Saturday — and he says he has found that couch role no easier as the championship has progressed — his three months on the sidelines this year have at least afforded him the time to reflect on a positively mad three years since moving to Ireland to play for Connacht.
He is palpably uncomfortable when it’s put to him that he has quickly become one of the most recognisable — and indeed beloved — athletes in the country. It’s a reality only reiterated by the Red Bull snapback on his head as he promotes his sponsor’s Wings For Life World Run charity event, which will raise funds for spinal-cord research.
Hansen reflexively reverts to his on-field success, which he attributes mostly to a combination of hard work and good fortune. He has put in the hard labour to become the player he is, but until recently he had also stayed on the right side of the injury gods which allowed him to bear the fruits of that labour. Back-to-back-to-back games are the making and breaking of a rugby player at elite level, Hansen insists, and he hopes to begin a similar sequence when he pulls his boots back on in a couple of months’ time.
Hansen reveals has also finally visited Castlemartyr, the East Cork town from which his mother Diana O’Shea moved to Australia with her parents and seven siblings just over 50 years ago.
Mack Hansen, mac Éireann, united with the O’Sheas and further branches of the family to explore the roots that would lead to his pulling on the green jersey of his mother and grandparents’ homeland half a century after their emigration.
“I’ve been down, saw the old family home, caught up with a lot of cousins, made a trip around Cork and all that,” Hansen smiles. “No, it was great fun.
“It was really cool to see where my mum grew up. It’s now a Chinese takeaway or something like that, which was funny enough. It’s called, like, ‘Mr Tasty’ or something. (Tasty Bite, FYI).
“It was cool to see where she grew up, where my Nana and Grandad grew up and stuff like that. It made me feel a lot closer to that side of the family, catching up with all of those cousins that I hadn’t seen before.”
But it changed nothing of what Hansen feels to represent Ireland, his pride in which was already at 100% capacity, he says, even before he connected with his relatives.
The 25-year-old says he was thrilled when he received the call from Andy Farrell inviting him to join camp this week and buzzed at the thought of reuniting with “the fellas”.
“Every time you get there, it is really good fun, like,” Hansen says. “It just doesn’t seem like a typical footy camp.
“When I had to go away for [Australia] U20s, it just felt like a bit of a chore. It was great to play for Australia then but at the same time, you’d almost dread going up to camp a little bit. Whereas this is the complete opposite.”
But for the moment, the national team’s summer tour to the world champions’ backyard is almost an abstract concept to Hansen. Instead, he’s looking forward only to pulling on his other green jersey and picking up where he left off on the remarkable rise that he launched from the west in 2021.
“Being out this long has definitely made me miss it. Coming back in from the World Cup… I definitely wasn’t taking it for granted but I was a little bit tired, I guess.
“Then, the first couple of weeks out, not playing, I just missed it and just wanted to get back involved again for sure.
“So, I’m not really looking forward to the South Africa tour or anything like that. I just want to get back playing for Connacht — and try to win a trophy with them as well.”
Connacht and Ireland wing Mack Hansen was today announced as the Irish ambassador for this year’s Wings for Life World Run, the world’s largest running event. Taking place globally on Sunday 5 May, all funds raised from the run go directly to spinal-cord research at the Wings for Life Foundation. To register and to join Mack’s team, visit www.
