O’Rourke on road to recovery but prank left him sweating

Some might call it cruel but at least Paddy O’Rourke can laugh about it now.

At the time, cracking a smile was the last thing he was considering.

Just 24 hours after arriving in Melbourne, he was struck down with a bug that kept him in isolation in his hotel room. It got a hell of a lot worse for the Meath goalkeeper when he received a phone call from the GAA’s director of games administration, Feargal McGill, to inform him Paul Earley was dropping him from the squad due to the illness.

O’Rourke takes up the story: “He left a voicemail that he was after chatting with Paul and the management team and the doc and they’d all come to the decision that it was too big of a risk, that I had to either go down to the hotel that my parents were staying in or else they’d arrange for flights straight home to Ireland. And that I’d leave my suit and gear out for Tommy Walsh — he was rang and was going to come up from Sydney.

“I was locked away in my room — the lads were away at training — and I got this voicemail, saying ‘We’re on our way back — we’ll meet in the lobby and chat more.’

I was in my room thinking, ‘They couldn’t just fly me out here for three days!’

“I went down to the lobby and in came Feargal, in came Doc and they came over and said, ‘Look, there’s nothing we can do. The management have made the decision. It’s a tough call — where do you want to go from here? Do you want us to organise something down in the hotel with your parents or have you thought about going home or have you packed? Have you the suit ready?’

“As the players were going past, a few of them were giving us the wink, a few others were trying to keep a straight face — after a minute or two it ran its course.

“They all started laughing. I knew then it wasn’t true.”

O’Rourke initially thought it was a harsh form of jetlag that had withered him. “The first day we landed I was fine. Trained the next morning. We had our downtime and went in to the city for a while, walked around, came back to the hotel then and all of a sudden it came on me. I was sick as a dog then for 24 hours, from Friday evening right through to Saturday evening.

“I didn’t eat for 24 hours. I was isolated in the room. The doc told me to stay away from the lads in case anything was passed on. It was touch and go. It was just a 24-hour bug though so I’m over it now.”

It might have been a reason why Niall Morgan started in goal in Saturday’s warm-up game but at least O’Rourke saw second-half action.

“When I was up locked away in the room, that’s all I was thinking about — would I be okay to take part in this game? Because in terms of training, there will be tactical stuff but there won’t be much of a physical run-out.

“It was vital that I got game time and was fit enough to play a part. In the backs or the forwards you can slot in somewhere but when you’re a goalie and you’re up against another fella, if you’re not fit to start, that’s it. You’re going to be sitting on the bench. It was vital that I go over it quickly, got into the swing of things and take part.”

O’Rourke is taken with the bond among the group. The fines system, which he was the victim of because of the prank, is one way of engendering the camaraderie although it doesn’t need much assistance. “When you step onto the pitch and you’re standing beside a fella in an Ireland jersey, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, you’re going to have his back.”