The big interview with Tommy O’Donnell: ‘It’s easy to make the decision - I gave it everything’

Former Munster Player of the Year and Ireland star Tommy O’Donnell has decided the time is right for him to retire from rugby. The dynamic back-rower tells Simon Lewis he has an MBA to study for but he will miss the craic in the dressing room and would love to give it a really good rattle for the last few games of his career

DISTINCTION AND DEDICATION: Munster’s Tommy O’Donnell intends to expand his horizons and see how different clubs operate and get a bit of career professional development in and to go and see different coaching systems. Picture: Matt Browne

The standing ovation Tommy O’Donnell received when he announced to his Munster teammates his intention to retire at the end of the season spoke volumes for the regard in which the back-rower is held by his peers and would be echoed by supporters had they the chance to say goodbye themselves.

Many of those squad members will have voted for him as their Munster Player of the Year in 2013 and represented Ireland alongside him on one of the 13 Test teams he graced including two Six Nations-winning campaigns. Keith Earls was even in the same 2007 Ireland U20 Grand Slam-winning squad, along with former teammates Ian Keatley and Felix Jones, and they will also have been at his side when the low points came, as they did with numerous injuries in his 14 seasons as a professional rugby player.

But for those injuries, including the hip dislocation that denied O’Donnell a place in the 2015 World Cup squad, the Tipperary man may have accumulated more Ireland caps and certainly more than the still-impressive 186 games in which he represented his province with distinction and dedication.

Yet as O’Donnell, 34 later this month, explained to the Irish Examiner this week, he knows the time is right to call time on that playing career. He will not go kicking and screaming but without regret, content in the knowledge he gave it everything he had, though at least one last appearance in red would be gratefully appreciated.

So why is retirement the right option now?

“I knew during lockdown that I was heading into a big contract year and it was going to be that decision. It was going to either go really well and I was going to keep playing or it will be my final contract and I am going to give it everything I had.

“I was training last year during lockdown with that intent and I came back and gave the pre-season a really good lash but as the season went on I just felt that I wasn’t responding physically. It was getting harder and harder on Monday mornings to be as fresh and as agile and especially for the Tuesday sessions, when you’re backing up double days, I just found it was getting harder and harder.

“So I just found from my own point of view that rather than just trying to push it a little bit further, like take it on my terms. It’s a big decision and you chat to people who’ve retired, to be able to call it a day on your own terms…

“I made the decision in November that okay, this is going to be my final year, then Munster approached me with another contract and the intent to negotiate, so I mulled that over for a week or two but went back and said ‘no, we won’t even enter into the negotiation, I think I’m just going to knock it on the head here’.

It was just the way I was feeling physically and mentally with the year and thinking about how another year would feel like so I decided it was my time to retire. That was it for me.

“My wife Elisse was seeing first-hand the physicality of it and how I’d feel and when we discussed it back in December we both kind of knew, the decision was easily made and it was made before the new contract came about. It was made through the harder winter months when it’s a little bit harder to answer the bell for training so that was it. So it wasn’t that hard a decision.

“It’s passing me out now. There’s lads playing better and you could try harder but trying harder won’t be able to match the skills and the physicality and the talent they have now at this stage.

“So it’s easy to make the decision when you’re grateful for what you were able to accomplish and knowing I gave it everything.”

Is that a difficult thing to come to terms with, or just the natural order of things?

“I think I would view it as the natural order of things. Other players do fight it and they can’t see the decline or they refuse to decline and they fight and they fight but I can see there’s a natural order to it and so I took it as my time to step away.

“So no regrets and I’m looking forward to the next chapter of being able to enjoy bank holiday weekends and book weddings and stuff six months down the line or a birthday party in six months and I can say, ‘You know what? I’ll be there. I’ll tell you now, I will be there’.

“That’s one thing the rugby schedule doesn’t give you, predictability. So there’s a fair amount of catching up to do, a lot of people to meet, especially now with Covid and when we get out of this. There’s a lot of friends and family to meet and catch up with, to see and to chat to.”

So where does the future lie for you in terms of that next chapter? We spoke a year ago during lockdown and you were busy building a playhouse for the kids and talking about setting up a home gym, is that all part of the plan now?

“You’ve knocked it on the head there with a few things I’ve to do. I’ve deliberately left my garden as a project so I’ll be building more stuff and I’ll be able to go mad. But I haven’t had the chance to build anything since last year because I started the MBA course in UL last September.

“So that’s the plan now for the next year, to give that my all and take a bit of time out, assess my next career path and finish off the MBA to get the best result out of it that I can.

I’ve to come up with a thesis now so I’ve got to put a bit time and research into that and figure out how to try and get the best grade I can in that.

“It’s been difficult this year and I haven’t even been playing that much rugby. I’ve been training lots but have played a lot games-wise so it will be nice next year to have clear schedules and being able to put some solid time into the MBA.”

Does rugby play any part in that future?

“It would do, I suppose I’d be looking to expand my coaching role on what I was doing with UL Bohs last year and take more involvement with them. I’ve spent my whole life inside of Munster, at this stage I need to expand my horizons and see how different clubs and systems operate and get a bit of CPD (career professional development) in, go and see different coaching systems, how different coaching styles work outside of the Munster system and expand my knowledge in that regard as well.

“And experience coaching as well. I’ve only coached from the player-coach mentality where you’re helping other players who are of similar talents and mindsets to you, or a younger player who has all the exuberance but mightn’t have the knowledge yet. They’re easy to coach, so going coaching the more raw-talented players and getting to learn what it’s like purely as a coach, not from a player’s perspective.”

That’s the future, let’s go back to the beginning. You made your debut in the same game as Billy Holland! First game of the season against Scarlets in Cork, September 22, 2007. There’s a wonderful symmetry to that given you’re both retiring at the end of this season.

“Yeah, that’s amazing. Billy may have started at 6 that day and I came off the bench. It’s mad to think about, there’s so much that’s gone on. I was only new in the academy and I think Holland was nearly gone out of the academy or in his final year and he was gone up to a development contract the year after.

“He always seemed to be that far ahead of me but we were never too far apart either and so we made our debut on the same day and we’re retiring in the same year but what he’s done in between, he’s managed to stay fit and healthy and accumulate a hell of a lot of caps (245 to O’Donnell’s 186) so fair play to him.”

How was the progression through the Munster ranks?

“It was a tough year because the back row at that stage was full of competition with the Leamys, the Wallaces, the Niall Ronans and Axel was there for the first part of it, it was a very competitive back row. It was hard and you were picking up caps here and there.

“I was lucky I suppose that when injuries did occur I was able to take my chance and get some solid game time. My confidence grew and you can capitalise week on week on what you’re able to do and let your abilities show.

There’s a bit of resilience to it as well. You have to grit your teeth a few times and take a few home truths as well because when you have a bit of success you probably think you’re better than you are but you have to keep improving week on week.

“I learned a lot from Jerry Flannery who was still playing at that time. It was 2011 when David Wallace had his cruciate injury and Fla was injured as well after the World Cup and what I learned from work-rate and dedication from those guys, the time and the effort, it clicked with me that the level I had been at while I thought I was good enough wasn’t enough.

“I started really working then, getting my diet right, doing extra tackling, the extra sessions, and it was in 2012 when those fruits really started showing and I was rewarded.”

And then to become Munster Player of the Year in 2012-2013, that must have been some boost, how do you look back at it now?

“At the time it was incredible. Ah sure, to win that award is a massive achievement when you see the players that have won it at Munster. It felt really good and it set the bar at what I had to do season on season. I was unlucky then, the following season I broke my leg in the second game (and was out for four months).

“Momentum is huge. I feel maybe if I didn’t get injured that year, momentum from that 2012-13 season would have taken me a bit further and you never know what would have happened but you can’t look back with too many regrets. You just deal with injuries and you keep moving on.”

On similar lines, that hip dislocation in Cardiff in 2015, eve of the World Cup, that must have been a very difficult period for you?

“Yeah it was. It’s the one thing people will always reference. People come up to me and say, ‘you were flying in 2015’ and it’s hard not to agree with them because I was flying. I had put down an incredible pre-season that year with Ireland, had pushed myself really hard mentally and physically and then to get to the 79th minute and nearly have done it…

“The injury itself wasn’t too bad…”

Really?

“Yeah, as dislocated hips go I was very lucky. It didn’t disrupt the nerve supply, or the blood supply, it was literally a straight ‘out’. It dislocated out and stayed out. But just like that, the momentum had changed and by the time I managed to get back fit again the momentum had changed. Other players had started to establish themselves and all of a sudden that space for playing time had closed up again.

“What didn’t help either was the 2015-16 season, we didn’t have the best of years… The following season though, I look back on that 2016-17 campaign with fondness.

"I played an incredible amount of games for Rassie and captained the win over the Maori, we got the to the European semi-final, the PRO14 final and if we had changed a few things we could have come away from that season a lot more happier than we eventually did but I look back on that as a very good season for myself because I played some really, really good rugby.”

There is some talent and experience leaving Munster this summer aside from yourself isn’t there?

“There is a lot of caps walking out the door at the end of this season. It’s going to be a different environment next year and it’s going to be interesting to be on the far side of the door to experience it from the completely objective fans point of view!

“What will I miss? I’ll miss the craic, the craic in the changing room. I don’t think there’s any workplace that can replicate it, 40-something contracted lads just having the craic, even with Covid, it’s definitely been a strange year with protocols and stuff but the fun in the changing room and the canteen when you sit down.

“There’s a great environment we’ve established at Munster, like we’re limited to four to a table and you sit down with your food and you could be sitting with a coach or an academy player and you just got to know everyone. I think it’s been a real benefit to Munster this year.

"It’s helped the young lads bed in and really helped them establish themselves because their comfort levels have gone up and the senior fellas’ comfort levels have gone up because we now know these lads coming through, their personalities and their jokes. I think it’s one of the best environments I’ve been part of in Munster in my career.”

Winning the Rainbow Cup would be nice to be a part of before you bow out, wouldn’t it?

“It would. It’s huge and I’d love to contribute to it in whatever way possible and get back on the field again and just give it one or two or three or however many appearances I get and give it a really good rattle for the last few games of my career.”