The joker in the pack
We’re here to talk about his new autobiography, but all he wants to talk about is Tom Gleeson, the Munster player he just left in the gym.
“He’s been working on his flexibility — fantastic. I said to him, ‘I’m meeting you here next week’. I’ve got to find out what he’s been up to.”
O’Callaghan’s book is called Joking Apart, a nod to his reputation as a prankster, but his transparent enthusiasm for training reveals the dedicated professional.
So does his candour about family tragedy. Given the light-hearted image, readers may be surprised to read of the blow that struck his family early on: O’Callaghan was five when his father died suddenly, and he describes the experience honestly and movingly in the book.
“I suppose the way we are, if you tell someone your Dad died when you were five, people say ‘sorry to hear that’ — but going on to talk about it, that can be tough. I’m glad it’s down on paper, because in a few years Sophie [Donncha’s daughter] can see how I felt at the time.
“It was a tough time. I’m an open person and wouldn’t have a problem talking about it, but in our culture I suppose the circumstances in which you’d talk about something like that don’t arise too often: when you mention it you wouldn’t get four or five questions about the how or when or why.
“Obviously it was a huge part of my life, and my dad’s absence has shaped my life and my family’s.
“The lads [brothers] were a different age then, for instance, and I remember bawling because they were all bawling. I was five. I didn’t understand death, and as I said in the book, the biggest thing was the chat with my mam when she reassured me that everything was going to be all right.”
Rugby was a good escape valve for an energetic youngster, and O’Callaghan impressed as a kid. When he got to the professional ranks with Munster, though, he didn’t meet a speed bump but a red light.
“There was a stage... no light at the end of the tunnel, no game time and another year wasted. You can see it with the younger guys now, but I’m glad I stuck it out and went through the pain then. I appreciate it all the more now.
“This morning in the gym I had another one of those moments, when Tom was showing me what he’s been working on, but it was tough when I was starting.
“I wouldn’t change it, though; as Declan [Kidney] says, your apprenticeship stands to you. I had a difficult time in the last few weeks, too, not playing, and you’d rip off your arm to get out there.
“But while I’m glad I went through that early in my career, if Donncha now chatted to Donncha then and said ‘you’ll be glad of it’, I’d knock him straight out. The pain of it — coming home not having had a break, it’s so frustrating.
“How do you keep yourself motivated? People come across that in all walks of life, and you have to keep knocking on the door and hope it’ll come.”
Warren Gatland almost tempted him to Wasps (“he wanted me to play in the back row, but at least it was game time”) but Alan Gaffney was coming in as Munster coach. Over coffee in Jury’s Hotel, he reassured O’Callaghan.
“‘Next year, no matter who’s there, the best second rows will play,’ he said. I clung to that and took him at his word, and I was thankful.”
While he wasn’t in the team he did his best for those who were. O’Callaghan has a pro’s clear-eyed view of what that involves, and says it’s a concrete example of what people think of as mystique.
“That’s what we’re all about in Munster — you hear about the X factor but what you see is the guy getting the hardest deal gives the most. I wouldn’t say it’s unique to us but I think great teams have that.
“It’s a hard gig, but you’ve to put the team first. It’s easier for us to do that because we care about the place and about playing for Munster. If the game had not become professional you’d still want to play for Munster. But the good guys can do that, they can put the harshness aside to help, and the lads on the team are aware of that.
“And that’s where Declan comes to the fore. He’s about the entire group, the 15, or the 22, represent the lot of us, or the province, and that hasn’t changed under Tony [McGahan].”
Declan Kidney often comes across as impassive, if not actually reserved. Does O’Callaghan regard him as a friend?
“It’s a hard one to define. Do I respect him, do I know he does everything right for the team? 100%. Now, there are times when the call is tough on you, but I know he’s making the calls for the good of the team.
“I’ve seen him shaking when it comes to team selection, because it hurts. The night before he announces a team he can hardly eat. It’s the hardest part of his job and I wouldn’t do it for any money.
“I’d like to think there’s a healthy respect between us, but there’s a line, and you’re not buddies and friends, and it’s the same for all coaches. You see it with guys who swap over, Jim Williams and Axel [Foley] — straightaway something goes up.
“But I have an awful lot of respect for Deccie. One Sunday paper pulled out bits of the book which were tough on him, maybe, but if someone reads through the book, they’ll see it’s a lot more balanced.”
We meet the week that English rugby is in meltdown, with Martin Johnson — an O’Callaghan hero — resigning amid leaks of player feedback. O’Callaghan contrasts English rugby with the domestic game.
“We got it 100% right by centrally contracting players here and putting them in the provinces. You’re rested when necessary and so on, while there’s constant fighting in England.
“I’ve been at Irish camps where Geordan [Murphy] can’t get over from Leicester because it’s not a free week.”
The culture among the players is different, too. O’Callaghan’s seen that for himself.
“I remember going into the England dressing room a couple of years ago to swap jerseys with Simon Shaw after a game and I couldn’t believe the number of them already dressed in their suits and ready to go, right after the game.
“I asked one of them, ‘what’s the gig here?’ and he said, ‘oh, there’re corporate tents outside so they’ve an hour to pick up some earners’.
“You go into our dressing room and it’s all about recovery; you mightn’t get out of it for an hour — which reporters probably know all about — because you want to be right for the next day.
“Even from touring with them, you can see the English lads are superstars, they have huge profiles. If I walk down the road in Cork someone says, ‘how’s it going, Shane Horgan?’”
O’Callaghan’s depths may surprise those accustomed to the joker, but that doesn’t mean the deadpan one-liners are all in cold storage when you roll out a few simple questions.
David Wallace, Cork or Limerick? “He’s a Corkman, but if Limerick go well in hurling, he’s there on the bandwagon...”
Too many Tipperary men on the panel? “Absolutely. We’ll have to bring in a quota. Particularly after the hellish year we put down when they won the All-Ireland... now they’re like the Offaly team in 1982.”
A broad interest in sport influences his use of the TV remote, but even there the professional commitment kicks in.
“I tend to watch a lot of rugby, and I was only saying it to Elliott Corcoran, our video guy, the days of watching rugby are gone — you’re looking for little tips about how they defend and so on.
“You see certain plays and so on, and you’re always looking for best practice anyway, and no matter where you find it you implement it yourself.
“Now, I like watching Cork play because I’m from Cork, and I get lost in it, while with rugby I nearly watch it with a notepad.
“It gets technical: you wouldn’t expect Joe Soap to pick up that the pillar on a ruck on the minus side must tag on the far side, for instance. But we’re lucky with the Munster crowd, they’re educated in rugby — and they’ve never once separated themselves from the team.”
He distinguishes between watching games for pleasure, ostensibly, though taking notes as you do so, and actual video analysis with the team.
The latter can be a tough room, as experienced comedians might put it.
“Oh, there’s a red zapper in the video review, and if that falls on you on screen, you’re in for it. But while the coaches will come in on points, there’s no problem with someone like Wally, who’s out injured, coming in to say, ‘couldn’t you have done that to help him?’
“But that’s always been driven by Jerry Flannery, Marcus, Wally. If you’re making a point on something, there’s no point in me saying, ‘that’s a shocking missed tackle from you’ because two minutes beforehand you might have missed one yourself.
“If someone says, ‘well, that was someone else’s fault’, they’ll be pulled, but in fairness, you’ll often have someone say, ‘I missed that tackle’ and someone else will come in with, ‘well, I should have given you more help there’.
“I suppose it’s different to a lot of workplaces. I was talking to John Kelly and he was saying some of the things we think are acceptable in our workplace don’t cross over, to put it mildly, but the games keep coming, so you’ve got to address things and sort it. Learn and move on.”
That kind of frank exchange was something they learned along the way in the professional era. Other lessons were slower to take.
“Starting off, nobody knew the best way to work professionals, and there was a sense that ‘we’ve to fill their days’. You might do in two days back then the amount of work we do in a week nowadays.
“Sleep was part of that — I try to get that in all the time now but I remember at the start I felt guilty — my brother would come in from the sites and say, ‘this lazy...’ but if I want to train at the level I need in the next session, and to get the benefit from the last session, you need that nap. It’s gone on miles from where it started.
“I remember Jim Williams and the amount of stretching, and he’d say, ‘you’ve got to think ahead, not just wait till you’re injured before you do this’. And Trevor Halstead, he was incredible around the gym because he questioned the programmes — he’d say, ‘why am I doing this, I want to get explosive, will this help me?’ And now everyone questions the programmes.
“A lot of the training ideas are fads, too — knowing my luck, they’ll probably realise a nice warm bath is the best way to recover after a session, not the ice baths we’ve had for years.”
Professionalism means attention to other areas as well.
“I got a bit over the top with food before the World Cup,” says O’Callaghan.
“Jenny wanted to go out one night and I was saying, ‘I want to stay in and know what I’m cooking’. We could have gone out and just made good choices.
“But it’s funny, you see younger lads coming into the squad and get caught out at sessions, say: they’ll be hungry while the likes of Flannery will always a have a protein shake or a porridge sachet. From going through it you don’t get caught out.
“An awful lot of it is down to what you do when you’re not training. Bryce [Chambers] our new fitness guy, asks us – ‘how good a pro are you in the other 22 hours of the day, when you’re not here?’ That’s all part of it, and going through it is how you learn.
“Our nutritionists are very good, but it’s not all about what you eat before a game either. The day after an international, for instance — a rest day — you’d have to eat 5,500 calories. After a Test game your body’s like an oven, still turning over from the stresses of the week and the game itself.
“Eating 5,000 calories... people think a calorie is a calorie, but they’ve got to have nutritional value. The way the game is gone, a second row can’t afford to carry a pound because of the work-rate that’s needed.
“People think, ‘they can eat what they want’, but you sit down with another tin of tuna, or another few boiled eggs, and you’re saying, ‘this is tough work’, and that’s why you eat a lot of supplements. Sometimes you’re just sick of eating.”
Beyond the fanfare — and the 5,000 calories — O’Callaghan has to look to the future. He’s optimistic. You probably didn’t need to be told that.
“I think I can play on another few years. Simon Shaw was playing second row at 38 so I hope to play on for a while.
“I’d like to get into health and fitness afterwards, maybe run a good gym in Cork, I think I could help people improve. I didn’t know the stuff I know now 10 years ago. I’d like to give something back.
“And something back to rugby. Not the constant hours the lads like Tony [McGahan] have to give, but coaching at some other level.”
The tea’s gone, and then he’s gone.
Tom Gleeson had better bring his A game to that flexibility session.
* Joking Apart by Donncha O’Callaghan and Denis Walsh is published by Transworld Press
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