Getting back to business
After the exigencies of his seven-week trek around South Africa, you can tell he’s enjoying being back amongst his own. The photo-shoot for the new Munster kit is going on in the main banquet hall of Thomond Park, and the wit assassins are back in town: Paulie (O’Connell), ‘Dunners’ himself, before the five modelling the shiny new kit are joined by another in Quinny (Alan Quinlan). Then the squad arrives for the official team photo. God only knows what they’re saying about the new red shorts when referencing O’Callaghan’s infamous choice of scarlet attire at the Arms Park in 2006.
He’s portrayed as the team joker, the prankster, the man who’s good for a laugh but there’s always been a serious side to O’Callaghan. On the field, he’s the work horse, the enforcer, “Ireland’s Bakkies Botha,” as Gert Smal (Ireland forwards coach) once described the 30-year-old lock forward.
Some might have said his growing maturity as a player was reflected in Ian McGeechan’s decision to hand him the Lions captaincy for the Southern Kings match in June. But it was a Tuesday game on Test week and as Ronan O’Gara says “if you captain the midweek team (on Test week) it’s not the news you want to hear.”
Incredibly, it was the first time O’Callaghan captained a team since his U10 Gaelic football Street League days with Bishopstown in Cork.
“It’s something I always get asked: what’s the latest joke or prank? But I’m sure that if you chat to the lads when it comes to playing ball, I take it very seriously. I think it’s about setting standards really. Even if I wasn’t captain I’d want us to perform to our best and us to play well.
“Before I’d have kept my mouth shut and said nothing and got on with it, but I think it’s from being affected by good leaders like Paulie, Drico (Brian O’Driscoll), other guys like that. And when you look around the squad there are plenty of leaders.
“I didn’t expect the captaincy at all. I was delighted although it was a big surprise. Still, it was a tough game to motivate the lads for, and as much as the management was saying that the Test team wouldn’t be picked until the Wednesday, I don’t think a lot of the lads believed that, so trying to gee them up for it. Well… personally I was probably the only one who thought it on that Tuesday match. Mike Blair slagged me over it. He was there saying, ‘hold on a second, you thought you were going to play Saturday, Tuesday and Saturday’, and he burst out laughing! ‘you’re mental, Dunners’! “I took the coaches at their word, and I’ve no doubt they didn’t pick that Test team until the Wednesday but I wasn’t able to force my way into it.”
He got selected for one Test 22 (as a playing replacement in the opener in Durban), but O’Callaghan is determined to prove a few people wrong when his season begins in late September. “Of course I was disappointed not to get in the Test team. I went out there to get in the Test team and didn’t. I wasn’t the only one – there were 36 of us out there and anyone who didn’t get in the Test team was disappointed so I was no different.
“I went out there saying that I would give it everything and I think I could come away saying I did. It didn’t go my way, I suppose, and the best thing at this stage when you come away from something like that is looking to prove people wrong.”
He’ll likely have a chance to do just that when Springboks bound into town in November, probably as Tri-Nations champions. While some believe the gap between north and south is widening, O’Callaghan returned from South Africa believing that there is nothing to fear in southern hemisphere opposition.
“I do think the gap between the hemispheres is closing if we keep playing them an awful lot,” he adds. “If you look at the Tri-Nations now after coming away from it ourselves, you wouldn’t fear any of them. I think that was the case with an Irish tour a few years ago (2006) when we played New Zealand twice and in the last eight minutes we were leading.“I just think we need to play them more and that’s where you get the experience. When you don’t play them a lot, you can put them up on pedestals.”
As another season comes into view, his enthusiasm remains undimmed. He won a Grand Slam and Magners League last season but deposits the 11 months as a disappointing season. It’s all about Europe for Munster, he says, and Munster didn’t deliver.
“We want to do well in all competitions, we want to set new standards but you ask any of our supporters and it’s all about Europe.
“Can we come back? That’s the test, isn’t it? People are saying we’re an ageing team with our backs to the wall, but I’ve never been more motivated for a season. Lads are going to be hugely disappointed with different things that have gone on. Through Europe and Lions, things like that. But I think we’re always in a good place when our backs are to the wall.”
And do ye all need to put that chip back on the shoulders to conquer Europe again? “It was never missing,” he says. “As Axel says we’re always better when we’re bitter. We played some great rugby last year and have come on as a team but it’s about driving that on and achieving everything we can.”
O’Callaghan was recently appointed UNICEF Ireland’s newest ambassador. Following the Lions tour, he remained in South Africa taking a fact-finding mission to learn more about the impact of HIV/AIDS on children there and highlighting the plight of unaccompanied migrant children (mostly from Zimbabwe) who are now living in central Johannesburg.
Describing the experience as “eye-opening and humbling”, it’s clear he was moved by his visit. “I think UNICEF is a great organisation. They do great work; they don’t just try to fix the problem, they work a lot with governments and try to get good infrastructure and give these kids a real chance instead of just helping them out with food and stuff like that.
“Because of all the trouble in Zimbabwe people are heading there and a school was set up. Last year I think they’d 17 students, now they have 516. Incredible really – all these kids want is education.”
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