Peter and Jessica O'Mahony on life after rugby and how a love of the outdoors sparked a joint business idea

Retirement from rugby has given Peter O'Mahony something he never had before: time. Together with his wife, Jessica, the Cork-based couple share with Vickie Maye how family life, gardening and a love of the outdoors inspired their new Irish lifestyle brand, Søw Sē

Peter and Jessica O Mahony. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan.

Fri, 10 Jul, 2026 - 18:00

Vickie Maye

Last summer, to cement the family time that retirement from rugby gave Peter and Jessica O’Mahony, they secured a mobile home in West Cork. It was a dream come true.

“We’d asked about getting a deck onto our mobile,” Jessica begins, “but we realised that no one else had decks yet. We asked the owner and he said no problem...” Peter interjects, shaking his head: “Ah, you’re not going to tell this are you?”

Jessica laughs and continues with her story: “We were down at the beach, at the end of this amazing summer... and this guy says, ‘ah, Posh and Decks’. And we were looking at him blankly. And he goes, ‘you don’t know? You’ve been called Posh and Decks all summer’.”

Peter jumps in again, smiling: “No it was the Deckhams.” They both take it with a pinch of salt, laughing and appreciating the Cork humour more than anything else.

“Whoever came up with it, it’s pure Cork. So witty... The relief, then, when we went back, and we saw a few more decks popping up — the heat is off us now!”

Peter and Jessica O Mahony. Photo: Bríd O'Donovan.

One thing you don’t find in the O’Mahony house is ego. The mat at the front door reads ‘Be Our Guest’, and the welcome inside is real. They flew in late the night before from Portugal, Jessica tells me, apologising for the unpacked clothes waiting to be sorted on the table.

“Thank god the weather is like this,” she says of our current heatwave. “I think I’ve done nine washes already.”

They are heralded as Cork royalty — and when I tell them so, it prompts Jessica’s Deckham story. In reality, there isn’t a trace of Posh and Becks in this Blackrock home. We sit in their back garden on an idyllic morning, the older two kids are in summer camps — one art, the other, unsurprisingly, rugby. Their youngest — too young yet for camps — entertains himself in the garden; their two-year-old black lab, Bond, popping over every so often for a pat or a cuddle.

We are here to discuss their brand new business venture, Søw·Sé, a new gardening and interiors range.

It all began during covid, they explain. Peter always had a love of gardening, at his grandmother’s house in the city, at his uncle’s in West Cork. It was always, he says in hindsight, a reprieve for him, headspace from the demands of professional rugby.

“Definitely it was a big release for me,” he says. “Obviously, rugby was very stressful, and you’re in the public view, and all that. So it was nice to just be able to get out and spend a bit of time out there on your own.”

The idea for Søw·Sé came gradually, and organically. The couple were thinking about life after rugby, and then, during covid, the interest in Peter’s gardening took off. He ordered raised beds from Amazon at the start of that beautiful April lockdown.

“We planted loads of fruit and veg in the raised beds. Ralph wasn’t born yet, but Theo was about one and a half, and Indie was about four. We spent so much time outside with the kids, and we loved the fact that we were growing our own veg,” Jessica recalls.

“I started documenting Peter’s gardening online, and he actually said, ‘don’t bother putting that online, no one wants to see it’. But the following grew and grew, and more people were looking at the gardening stuff than the rugby stuff. I think with the interest that people had in Pete showing his gardening, we said, maybe there’s something in this.”

They knew lockdown had also led to a new interest in gardening in a younger demographic: “We really felt like, we could make it maybe a little bit more interesting for young people to like their garden, and show it doesn’t need to be difficult.”

Peter O'Mahony and Jessica O'Mahony Sow Se

So, five years ago, baby Ralph still in a Maxi Cosi, they met with Dee Corcoran and Simon Murphy from Chapter, a design duo who partner with clients to bring their vision to life.

“Those raised beds,” says Peter. “We got endless queries about them, it was half the reason that we started designing.”

“We couldn’t find a stunning one,” says Jessica. “And then we thought, what if we do it ourselves, make really beautiful, aesthetic planters, something that people could look out into their garden, and it wasn’t just functional, it was actually really beautiful.”

And so, this week, as they launch Søw·Sé, the planters are the centrepiece. Smaller ones sit on the wall by their sunken patio. Walking up the steps to the garden pathway — past the perfectly manicured grass, with its crisp, alternating light and dark stripes — there, almost hidden behind hedging, the larger planters take centre stage. Their garden sauna looks out at them, and Jessica admits it is her favourite outdoor spot in her home.

“All year round, you can change it — Pete packed them with alliums a couple of months ago, or at Christmas, you can put in Christmas trees,” says Jessica.

“You can totally play around them, or else you can use them for veg, whatever you want. They are modular, so they can connect together, so if you buy one, you can build your collection and we have four different sizes.”

Sow Se products by Peter and Jessica O Mahony. Photo: Bríd O'Donovan.

The garden, they admit, was the reason they pulled out all the stops to buy this home. They met in 2010, and five years later accidentally stumbled across the property. “I was in Dublin, but then moved back down,” says Jessica. “Would you believe, we viewed the house behind us, but it was too much work. We didn’t have the money to do it, and it was too much of a job. But we walked down this laneway, and we looked in the side gate here. It wasn’t for sale yet, and I said, ‘that’s my dream house’.

“Two weeks later, Pete texted me, saying it was in the paper [the Irish Examiner’s Property magazine]. It was the front page. I remember reading the last line in the article — I still have the paper upstairs — and it was something like, ‘this is someone’s dream escape’, and I said ‘oh my god, I want that house so much’. There was a bidding war and we put in our last possible bid... We didn’t have a cent after that, never mind the couches or anything else. They were going to have to wait. But that’s half the joy of it. We were just so happy. We renovated it slowly, a job each year for about 10 years. Each year we had a little project. It’s nice now that we’ve got to a point where we feel like we don’t have anything big to do.”

They took the same approach to Søw·Sé. In reality, the business could have been launched a year ago, but they wanted to get it just right. Where possible, everything was sourced and made in Ireland. But equally, they were anxious to include an affordable price point, so as well as the planters, there’s a room spray — “to marry the inside and the outside” — wicker baskets, even a children’s book.

Jessica O Mahony. Photo: Bríd O'Donovan.

The wording on the high-quality tote bag, “especially for Peter!”, Jessica laughs, reads ‘I’d rather be mowing the lawn’. It’s printed in neon green, one of Jessica’s favourite colours. Flourishes like this discreetly give Søw·Sé personality and individuality. Everything about the range has been considered, right down to the labelling. “Obviously, if people don’t like neon they can hide it as well, but I really wanted our love of colour to be there, but to keep it refined.”

Jessica worked with Peigín Crowley of GROUND to create the bergamot and fig room spray. The candle is coming soon. This, says Jessica, is just the first wave for Søw·Sé. Even the name has great meaning.

“We both went to Japan for Peter’s World Cup, and we were both very much in love with Japan as a country,” Jess explains. “We loved the idea of a name that almost sounded Scandinavian or Japanese, that kind of feel, but we also wanted some meaning tied into the garden. So the sow was like to sow a seed, where things grow from or where it all begins. And then Pete said he’d love to tie in something from his rugby that meant so much to him, so Sé came from the fact he played six for his entire career. We loved the sound of it. We loved it from the beginning.”

A bespoke service is also available for different colours or sizes, and Peter has already been working with clients.

Any one of Jessica’s 133,000 Instagram followers will know her love of interiors. And she has so many ideas about where she could take this.

“I loved the interiors and the decor side of things,” she says. “I was a solicitor for 12 years, and I really found that my interest lay in other things so I slowly, organically started doing a bit more content creation. I’m constantly taking photos, looking up interiors, fashion. I just love it. So, I think organically we realised our interest lay in these areas, and thought, can we do something with it?”

There is stress though, launching this new business, especially for Jessica. “It’s extremely nerve-wracking. I’m having sleepless nights,” she admits.

There is an easy banter between the couple. At one point she calls herself the ‘gardening director’. There’s a side eye and a raised eyebrow from Peter; “I’m known for slagging him,” she laughs later.

“I’d very often go off to the garden centre, and pick up stuff I like. He might say that actually won’t work at all, because you’ve got the wrong style of flower. Like, I went to buy climbing roses, and I just bought regular roses.

“I know what I like, and then Pete will say what will work. I’d be looking at the interior magazines of houses in the Hamptons, and I’ve seen something, and Pete will say, listen, that took 20 years to grow.” Ultimately, the garden they created would be the venue for their intimate lockdown wedding, “a gathering for 15 people”, Jessica recalls.

But back to the Deckhams. They push back at the idea of celebrity, but equally, they know they are recognised often in public. After decades in rugby, Peter is used to it. But for Jessica it was something newer.

"We try our best to chat to people,” says Jessica. “People might approach us more on nights out.

“We appreciate and are very mindful of the fact that you rely on the public for your careers. If people say ‘I love what you posted’, I actually appreciate that, because sometimes you can become quite self-conscious. Pete isn’t like that but I’d be constantly doubting myself.” There’s also the backlash that comes with it all, especially online.

“I’ve had it throughout my whole career — 99.9% of the stuff that I’ve always had has been positive, but there’s always a handful,” says Peter.

“You would fixate maybe on a negative comment,” says Jessica, “but I’ve gotten better now.

She admits she struggles to pinpoint a ‘job title’: “I was calling myself a content creator there for a while, because I don’t like the term influencer. I feel people give it negative associations when actually, there’s a lot of work involved in it... you unnecessarily get backlash.“

Her career change was gradual, she says: “It was very organic in the sense that I’ve always, since the age of five or six, had a camera in hand. I loved taking photos of outfits and clothes.

My background is a family of lawyers. When it came to choosing a course in college I didn’t even put thought into it. But I realised all my interests lay in other areas. When I was between law exams, I’d be cutting out outfits from a magazine, and I never even thought that was a career.

“I remember someone telling me they worked in a magazine. My heart sank in a way; I knew I would love that so much — putting a page together with outfits and inspiration. I was like, oh my god, that’s a job? And I was going down to court every day... I used to go to Brown Thomas on my lunch breaks when I was a solicitor to try on outfits because I liked doing that, and then one day they said, we’ll pay you for seven posts, and I was like, ‘oh my god’.

“But I look back and I’m thankful for the discipline of training and studying. I don’t feel like [that was] a waste of time. I learned a lot there — how to read contracts, how to reply to people in emails, how to deal with professionals, accountants, all these people that you deal with daily.”

The joy of this career change is flexibility with the kids — she can work hours that best suit her family.

It’s a world away from the period when she was working full time as a solicitor with two small kids in tow, at a point when Peter was away with his rugby career. “Those years I spent over 200 days in hotels,” says Peter. “That was the career that I’d chosen. Even playing at Munster, I know it’s my home club, but it’s based in Limerick, so I was four days a week overnight. And then, obviously, with Ireland, there was Six Nations. I was seven or eight weeks in Dublin. You’re in the Southern Hemisphere...”

He looks to Jessica. “It was probably harder for you, because I was living my dream.”

Jessica says: “I think we focused heavily on the fact that, how lucky were we as well, because we made the best friends, who are still our best friends, and the life we got to experience... I always looked on that side of things. There were certainly moments — at one point Pete went back to work when Ralph was small, he never got leave or anything like that. There were those times where you’d nearly be crying putting everyone to bed.”

Family were a great help, but Jessica also knew it wouldn’t be forever.

“I could see there was an end in sight,” she says. “I used to love going up to the matches with them, it was so exciting. Though, I think if Pete said, ‘I’m heading off there to be a coach’, I might have cried...” She trails off, laughing.

“With that career,” he says, “you always know that there’s [an end], whether it’s pre-empted or not, if you finish through injury, or contract wise, and so you’re always kind of planning for it, but it is a big change. I did it for a long, long time, since I was 17.”

Peter will reflect on his life in rugby in his memoir, published by Sandycove, due for publication this September. But it’s safe to say life post rugby, is treating him well (recent surgery on an arm injury aside).

“We have had the best year,” Jessica says. “We did so much travelling, got to do things that we really wanted to as a family. Pete went skiing for the first time, we got the mobile home in West Cork,” she says, adding with a smile, “and the decking.”