A pup who could bark and bite

Marcus Horan enjoyed a phenomenal playing career with Munster and Ireland, winning two Heineken Cups and a Grand Slam. But retiring from professional rugby was something the Clare native didn’t find so easy.

It’s still a bit weird, especially weekends like this. For all the times he’d tell and still tells young fellas in Munster to remember there’s more to life than rugby and there’s life after rugby, Marcus Horan has found this first season not being out on that field, in the thick of that scrum, all a bit strange, frightening even.

Take last month when Ireland won the Six Nations Championship. Earlier that Saturday afternoon he was up in Dublin doing a bit of radio work. It left him with a bit of a dilemma: stay up and watch the game on the box there but not be home till all hours, or head back home to Castleconnell and get to see the kids before they went to bed? He headed home. Listened to the game from Paris on the radio. For 15 years he’d have ran 15 miles just to see a game like that.