BEING SENSIBLE SELDOM CROSSES MY RADAR SO LAYING UP REALLY KILLS ME!
There’s a lot more to former Leinster, Ireland and Lions hooker Shane Byrne than his famous mullet. Possessed with an unshakeable competitive spirit, he endured a frustrating, seven-year wait for the first of 41 Ireland caps. With that kind of determina
SHANE BYRNE HANDICAP: 13 CLUB: WOODENBRIDGE 1. Your love of GAA and rugby is well known. How did you get into golf?
I would have been four years of age when I was taught to play golf by my grandmother, Betty Hanlon, walking beside her, beating the tar out of the golf ball with a little cutdown club. Then when I got tired, I’d jump onto the back of the caddie car and she’d have to drag me along.
She was a former captain of Castle and Grange. She taught two or three generations of my family to play golf.
2. So golf is a big thing in your family?
Huge. My mother, Liz, was a very good golfer. She got down to seven at one stage and won the Lady Captain’s Prize at Woodenbridge five times. Maybe somebody out there can confirm it, but that sounds like it might be a record. I’d love to know.
3. How important is golf when you hang up your rugby boots?
When you retire, lives quickly head in completely different directions. So Players Association events and charity events are a great way to see everyone again. When we were playing rugby, we’d play any time there was a break from training or a day off.
And I got quite good at one stage, winning the club championship and challenging for captain’s prizes but never quite getting there. When I retired my handicap went out to 15.
4. So who are the hotshot golfers in rugby circles?
The guys that were good at everything are also good at golf. Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell were both very good. Paul’s off something like five at Lahinch, which takes some doing. Myself and Denis Hickie, Mal O’Kelly, David Wallace, we used to play a lot. And Stephen Ferris has gone mad on golf since he retired.
5. What’s your favourite course?
I have been very lucky to play some fantastic courses all around the world but give me a nice sunny day down in Woodenbridge and that will do me fine.
6. What about your favourite hole?
I love standing on the 18th in Woodenbridge, hitting across the river towards the clubhouse. On a nice day, surrounded by the trees in the valley, you’d go a long way to find a nicer place.
7. Name your dream fourball.
Muhammad Ali for his quick wit, Georgie Best for the entertainment value and Cu Chulainn for his golf swing! (Laughs).
8. Do you take golf seriously?
My philosophy would be that if you can reach it with an eight-iron, use a nine and swing harder. I’m out there for the enjoyment of it. So I’ll always have a lash at it.
Being sensible seldom crosses my radar so laying up absolutely kills me. I know it’s the sensible thing to do, but if I’m in the rough, I’m thinking, ‘If I got the little five-wood out here, I could hit the green and be going for eagle.’ Then it’s in the river!
9. Do you have a golfing ambition?
I reckon if I had a decent crack at it, I could get down to single figures. If I eased back on club selection and played more sensibly, and more often, I reckon I could do it.
10. Talking of ambitions, what’s it like to pull on that green jersey?
It’s a surreal experience. You are almost light-headed, experiencing the event as a third party. You are just witnessing the cap. My first cap was a World Cup qualifier away to Romania. It’s just something you have always dreamt of and it’s finally happened.
It’s funny. You are surrounded by thousands of people, but it’s a really personal thing because it is just you experiencing it.
11. If I gave you a mulligan in your rugby career, what would it be?
You always remember the first cap and the highlights. But as a professional, you’re always seeking to improve and it is the bad things that stick in your head a lot more. The things that went wrong.
12. You had to wait a long time for that first cap. Any regrets there?
I’d been in the squad since ’93 but it was 2001 before I got my first cap. It wasn’t just that Keith Wood was there but everyone on the planet was getting ahead of me. With the long hair and socks around the ankles, it wasn’t what they were looking for back then. (Laughs) I could always say, I’ve love to have been capped earlier. But would I have had the career if I’d been capped as a 22-yearold? I’m not sure.
13. So the mulligan?
The one I’d like to relive again would be the first test for the Lions against New Zealand. It is just the absolute pinnacle of your career to get on that Lions Test starting side and then for it to be such a disaster, you’d just love to go back and adjust that, even slightly. So many things went ridiculously wrong with the team that day.
14. How good are the All Blacks?
They are the trailblazers. They bring rugby forward. They push the game on worldwide, and when we start catching up with them, they push on again.
15. Who is your favourite golfer?
It has to be Seve Ballesteros. The way he played appealed to me — hit it, find it, hit it again. He was just fabulous. Look back at his highlight reel. It’s like watching a different sport to the game they play now.
16. Who stood out in that way on the rugby pitch?
There were guys who were gifted in different ways. I played club rugby with David Beggy, who won a couple of All Ireland football titles with Meath. He was just a talented athlete. Ball in hand, he was a joy to watch. Obviously, Brian O’Driscoll changed the face of rugby in Ireland. He was such a naturally talented guy, and when his body started changing and he aged a bit, his work rate went through the roof. He was able to change who he was as a player. And his presence on the pitch! You have got to just take your hat off to that. Johnny Wilkinson, if he had no talent, he would still have been unbelievable because his work ethic was incredible. 17. Do you have a treasured possession? I am an incredible hoarder. I kept everything. But to think of one thing is hard. Maybe the jersey for the first cap. That will always be pretty special.
18. Is there someone who inspired you or made a big difference to you in your career?
There was Eddie O’Sullivan in club rugby and internationally. But Joe McDonnell — Joe Mac — was a real, grizzly, old-school coach in school and at Under 19 level. ‘Don’t take a step back’ or ‘Don’t show the opposition any pain’. Real old school values. I really took that stuff to heart.
Anyway, in the late 90s, I had been leapfrogged for an Ireland cap again and I was thinking, ‘What’s the point?’ I was going to jack it in. And Joe saw me, asked what’s the problem and then said, ‘Well, if you quit, you’ll never be capped.’
It was a eureka moment, like a lightbulb going on in my head. Within nine months, I was capped. I never looked back. Forty-one caps later, I was glad we’d had that chat.