THE HARD ROAD
Sean O’Brien interview
‘I’D A MASSIVE CHIP ON MY SHOULDER AT THE LEINSTER ACADEMY’
GIVEN the competing dramas in his career, the role of the European Cup could be overlooked in the story of Sean O’Brien. It consistently brought the very best out of him, particularly in the successive victories under Joe Schmidt in 2011 and 2012.
That Leinster side has a good claim on being considered the best to ever win the competition, and O’Brien was a big part of their success.
In 2011, he was named the European player of the year after playing all nine matches in the tournament, winning man-of-thematch awards across all three positions in the back row, and delivering a thundering display in the breathless final comeback against Northampton.
A year later, he scored one of the first-half tries that collapsed the Ulster challenge at Twickenham.
The years since have been complicated for the province and the player, with injuries ravaging one of the outstanding talents of the professional age in this country.
Last year he should have been leading the Leinster grind in Bilbao
in that tense final against Racing that returned them to the top of the European club game. Instead, he celebrated in his suit. He came into the season after starring for the Lions in New Zealand, but hip surgery, and then a persistent shoulder problem, ruined the second half of the season – including that final in Spain.
He watched his team-mates celebrate, but couldn’t feel a true part of the joy.
‘I didn’t really join in and neither did the other lads in the suits – well, a couple of them might have. But the lads, they’re after winning it,’ he says now.
‘They’re after doing the hard work. We had probably a small part to play in it along the year but on the day, they’ve won the game, they’ve battled it out. It’s their time. That’s the way I’d look at it.’
Getting a chance at a third winner’s medal next week came thanks to the highly efficient semi-final win over Toulouse, in which O’Brien played well and after which he gave an interview on the field that saw him appear close to tears.
It was his last time playing at Lansdowne Road for Leinster, after confirmation in February that he was leaving to join London Irish.
He speaks candidly in these pages about his desire to stay at Leinster, and explains there was much more to consider than simply the prospect of filling his pockets with the money of an ambitious Premiership club.
‘It’s ideal, as you say, to go for it (the London Irish deal), but when you’ve poured your whole life into a place and started in an environment (different to the winning one it became), and developed it with a group of other guys, and have done whatever you could in your power to get it to where it is now, it’s very hard to walk away from it, regardless of money or what other club it is, or anything else.
‘And it’s a club that as a young fella I always dreamed of playing with. There is more attached to it than just another club, or another season, or money.’
His pride at the role he played in shaping the modern Leinster is justified. Not only has O’Brien been a world-class talent, but he has also been a vital symbol of the club’s progression: a province in the fullest sense of the word, one willing to rely on more than the south Dublin private school circuit for its talent.
O’Brien was portrayed almost as a curiosity in his early media profiles. A farmer playing for Leinster really did strike some sheltered souls as astonishing. And O’Brien drew on that. He relished it. ‘I had a massive chip on my shoulder coming in; there’s no point saying anything else,’ he says of his arrival into Leinster’s academy.
‘I probably disliked all the schools’ lads from the off. When I was Under 18s, the first team that came together was a schools and youths (selection) and when we met they were all like, “Where are you from?” ‘“Tullow”. ‘“Where’s that?” in a real patronising way nearly.
‘There was no genuine interest in where you were from. They were in their own bubble at that stage.
‘It changed, though. It changed very quickly over a couple of years. Once I was embedded in here, you gradually win over a few lads, and you give a few lads a few thumps
‘YOU GIVE OUT THUMPS AND LADS CHANGE THEIR MINDS VERY FAST’
and you change their mindsets pretty quickly.’
Hunger drove O’Brien from the start, and it fuelled his rise to the top of his sport.
The farmer background was turned into a caricature in some portrayals, but his upbringing has, he says, been critical to everything that came next.
‘I never got anything easy anyway, and I appreciate that,’ he nods.
‘And I appreciate the value behind working hard and the privilege I have now in the situation I’m in with the province and Ireland, and even moving forward now.’
He tells a story of his early days in the Leinster academy. ‘When I came into the first year academy, we had very little money at home.
‘Initially, I was meant to go into the sub-academy but it wouldn’t have been viable for me to come up and down at all. We wouldn’t have been able to do it at home.
‘They actually took a bit of a chance on me putting me straight into the academy. That gave me the few bob we were getting. I think it was €333 a month.
‘Getting into UCD then as well, I had my accommodation and a small scholarship from them.
‘So I was able to live, basically, and when I came in here then, I said to Dave McHugh, who was the manager, if there was any work going at all, anywhere, to let me know.
‘And so I used to fill the ice baths for the boys and clean the changing room. I didn’t really clean boots now, but I used to help the bagman.
‘It was usually filling the ice baths and cleaning out the changingrooms and the shower-rooms after the lads were finished.
‘It suited perfectly for me because I’d be finished my academy training and I’d wait around and watch them train, and then wait until they were finished.’
The young O’Brien (right) stood on the sidelines watching the men that would transform Leinster, first under Cheika and then Schmidt. And O’Brien became a part of the revolution.
He remembers watching Keith Gleeson doing extra running sessions, marvels at the recall of Brad Thorn’s insatiable appetite for training, and laughs at Rocky Elsom, the opposite to Thorn, who had little interest in training but who starred in his brief time in Dublin.
O’Brien prepares for the game of the season against Saracens next Saturday while also thinking about the life to come.
It’s clear that his good relationship with Declan Kidney was vital in his move to England. Kidney gave O’Brien his first cap, and the flanker played some of his best rugby under the Corkman. ‘Deccie has a funny way with people,’ he smiles. ‘Everyone knows that. I know that as well, and he knows I know that.
‘We are very honest with each other and always have been.’
Their conversations have included the need to mind O’Brien, given the punishing reputation of the Premiership and his wretched experience with injury.
‘I’ve had those conversations already, so it will probably be a case of managing my training load, and for me to keep myself in the best shape possible, and play as often as I can.
‘That’s what I want to do. I think it’s done me good this year. Even though I haven’t played an enormous amount of games, I’ve been available to play.’
And he would have played on, too, but the business of professional rugby dictated otherwise. O’Brien will, then, move on soon, his work done at Leinster and with a new club counting on his ferocious appetite for battle renewing them, too.