Home and away: Meath's Cian McBride on leaving Aussie Rules and what it means to play for Royals

After four years at Essendon, back home the Leinster final is the next challenge. 

ROYAL APPOINTMENT: Meath's Cian McBride. Pic: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

When the predictable news came that Cian McBride’s career as an AFL player was over, he distilled his Australian life down to three ties that each required careful attention: The house, a car, his partner.

The Meath underage star spent four seasons with Essendon without ever making a senior appearance. Last August, he was delisted. McBride was 22 years old and utterly equipped to ensure it was a clean break. The game was done with him. He was done with the game.

“When I moved across to Australia, I lived with a host family for the first four months,” he explains. “They were doing everything for me, which was incredibly kind obviously, but I decided to move out and do my own thing.

“It’s a cliché but it was the best thing for me. It shapes you completely. Shit or get off the pot. Sort an apartment, a car, adulting basically. So that stood to me really when I finished up. I had my lease in order, going month-to-month just in case. The car was sold off quickly.

“The last piece was most pivotal, my partner Liv (Olivia). We made a plan; she came over here for a bit, but she is back there now. Hopefully, she can come across down the line. If I wasn’t with her, I could have disappeared within 24 hours. I was ready to go.” Even when accounting for the brutally erratic sea that is professional sport, McBride’s voyage was particularly cruel. The 2018 Leinster minor winner left at the end of 2019 primed to make his mark. Four different clubs had expressed interest. He was a monster yet agile and athletic. Headlines raved about the import who could be something special: ‘The Irishman turning heads at Tullamarine.’ He was one of three Gaelic footballers at the club, along with Tyrone’s Conor McKenna and Armagh’s Ross McQuillan. It was destined to be plain sailing.

Covid crashed down and tossed everything overboard. Both of his Irish teammates left in a matter of months. The VFL, where McBride was due to develop as a rookie, was cancelled. Financial concerns saw clubs lay off swathes of their development and support staff, the very people a foreign rookie should rely on. Lockdown in Melbourne forced Essendon to scramble out of state. He spent months at a Queensland hotel hub without any competitive games.

There was a general appreciation of how desperate the circumstances were and the club tried to take that into consideration. McBride was granted permission to play for Meath that winter. It was the Covid championship ultimately defined by other AFL returnees Colin O’Riordan and Mark Keane. The Meath midfielder observed from the sidelines. He came back to discover a stress fracture in his foot. Surgery was required; a series of screws and wires were inserted between the fourth and fifth metatarsals.

McBride returned to AFL training two months later and in his first scratch game back, a screw slipped. Out of action again.

“Covid hampered it all. Coaches weren’t there, you didn’t get the work you needed. At the start, it was actually great. All the attention, you do well and play in practice matches, then Covid comes and to be honest it wasn’t ever the same after. I broke my foot, had surgery on that after a year.

“Coming into my third year, I broke my foot again on the other side. Same surgery, same process. It all started to snowball. I didn’t get on with the coach at all. For basically the end of my second year and all of the third. At the end of my third year, I thought it was done and dusted. I don’t want to play anymore and then he was sacked. As soon as he got sacked the mindset switched, I can give it another crack because hopefully it’s a fresh start and this new coach will take to me more than that other fella.” The AFL granted Essendon special dispensation to extend McBride’s rookie contract beyond the usual limits. It expired at the end of his fourth campaign. His passion was shattered by then. He picked through those shards, piece by piece and saw a future with the Royals. His former St Patrick’s principal Colm O’Rourke was Meath manager now. The fit was perfect.

“Coming up to the end of the year I knew the writing was on the wall, I actually just started to dislike the game in general. Training was grand but it would come to game day and I didn’t want to even play anymore. I felt like I had the life and enjoyment for the game beat out of me. It felt like when you were doing well, it still wasn’t rewarded. I ended up in a bit of a slump for a few weeks and couldn’t get out of it in my last year.” His frustrations generated by the situation reached an unbearable threshold. It needed a release. For the first year of the pandemic, DIT allowed him to continue his studies online. When that arrangement came to an end McBride sought to continue his college education in Melbourne.

The only viable opportunity was to do so as a foreign student and stump up astronomical international student fees. The AFL Players Association endured their own Covid complications. Former Cavan footballer and AFL coach Nicholas Walsh went out of his way to offer assistance when he heard of his plight but in the end, there was no resolution.

Solace came elsewhere. What Ability is a disability community service that was set up by a group of former NRL players. They utilise professional athletes as support workers. McBride spent some time bringing children to JumpZone or the beach and found fulfilment in doing so. When other organisations came calling, he leapt at the opportunity. If there is any lingering resentment towards the sport, it is overwhelmed by sheer gratitude at the life he got to live Down Under and everything it taught him.

Throughout the stint away, hometown neighbour and former Meath footballer Barry Callaghan was in regular contact. McBride watched every available game as O’Rourke and Callaghan steered Meath to the Tailteann Cup last year. Where there wasn’t a stream there was live late-night LMFM commentary. Urging. Yearning.

“It’s funny, I kept speaking to people at home and they were saying, ‘there is nothing here. Everyone is leaving.’ But for me it was never the dream to go to Australia. It was a great opportunity and I’m glad I took it but all I can remember is dreaming of playing for Meath. After talking to the lads and realising the opportunity was there, I would have been crazy not to come home and try to play.” He sits in Glasnevin, where he recently moved to work as a trainee quantity surveyor until restarting university in September. Reintegrating to football and Irish living is a step-by-step process. None of it has been smooth. The world doesn’t work that way. He knows that all too well.

McBride started to feel ill early on during their Round 4 victory over Kildare and left the Pairc Tailteann field at half-time. Whatever bug it was that infected him quickly set in and he was rushed home to bed before the final whistle sounded.

A host of his underage team-mates, Matthew Costello, Sean Coffey and Cathal Hickey, are members of the squad now. A younger cohort is there too. He is adjusting to it all. “It’s crazy, I’m still young but I land there and feel on the older side! It shows how much potential is there though.” Coaches emphasise that he will find his sea legs in time. But it will take time.

“The game has changed so much since I was here,” McBride says with a sigh. “Obviously, the game has changed and adult football is also really different. My running patterns are so different. I was a full-back in AFL.

“I wasn’t doing creative stuff compared to being in the middle, pulling strings and trying to start or end attacks. I’m probably not hitting that mark right now. It’s really frustrating but at the same time, I have to realise you can’t disappear for four or five years and expect to set the place alight start away.

“I didn’t go straight back to college or work, I said to myself I’d get back to football first. I wanted to get back into the swing of things. It is difficult. I’m nowhere near the finished product of what I hope to be as a Gaelic footballer, over the league I felt like I progressed in certain games and in others I missed the boat on a great opportunity. There is so much learning to do.

“Since I started working full-time now, it is harder to get time to do the extras, but I am hoping that life will feel more settled because of it.” For the entirety of his adulthood, McBride has been known locally as the AFL player. He never allowed that to define or become a self-imposed parameter that constricted every conversation. It was merely part of him. That part has now been discarded.

He still knows who he is: “Just Cian from Bohermeen,” he laughs. He knows what he wants to be. He has always known.

“My granddad on mom’s side is originally from Drumconrath. Him and Colm were very close. He’d go to watch Meath training sessions when they were below in Dalgan Park in Navan and all that, over-night trips for away games. Just an incredible supporter.

“I was around that from a really young age. He passed away when I was seven. Ever since it has been with me, it would be some tribute to play for Meath. You had that ambition for yourself but there is another driving factor, what it would have done for him to see it happen.

“As a kid, you were known as a Meath footballer from the underage ranks. You always wanted to play for the seniors. I still go visit my granny in Navan, go in the back door and in the kitchen in a frame with all the All-Ireland winning teams. There are signatures on the pictures. Really faded but you can still make it out.

“I still remember when I went on the first trip to Melbourne for a visit, I thought it was just a trip away. Then an offer comes and while weighing it up, the first question I asked myself was what would he think? But I don’t think he would have knocked me back. It felt like he’d support whatever was best for me. In the back of my head, I was never going to be there forever. I was always going to come back and play for Meath. That is what I wanted to do since day one. I knew I was going to come back and try to be Cian McBride, the Meath footballer.”