‘Everybody experiences ups and downs ...it’s how you deal with those things.’
Rugby icon opens up about playing for Ireland while dealing with family tragedy
TWO former Ireland captains. Two rugby legends from Munster. Two books. Donal Lenihan didn’t plan going head-to-head with Paul O’Connell for shelf space in the run up to Christmas. However, February’s retirement gave his fellow second row breathing space to get his story out a fortnight after Lenihan’s My Life in Rugby hit the shops.
The unfolding shop-floor battle isn’t a worry. ‘In some ways they might complement each other. One is the modern second-row forward whereas the other is the remnant of the amateur era,’ he says, gingerly nestling into a chair at a Leeside hotel after hobbling through the lobby with a slow-to-wake-up gamey knee, saying hello to numerous acquaintances and strangers who had spotted his arrival.
A talisman of Ireland’s championship-winning teams of 1982 and ’85, Lenihan, who juggles investment company directorship with rugby punditry work, never had aspirations to commit his tale to print, spurning numerous previous approaches.
However, with Irish people increasingly thinking the sport has only been in existence for just the 21 years since pay-for-play was introduced, the 57-year-old eventually felt compelled to script his reminder of the amateur era’s rich tapestry.
‘Nearly every record now in Irish rugby is held by someone from the professional era. They play so many more games and it’s almost as if the amateur era has been completely obliterated. Written out of history,’ he said.
‘When I was involved you had all the Troubles, and from a management perspective the transition from amateur to professional, so I just felt things needed to be presevered for posterity.
‘I’d sit down with a Ronan O’Gara or a Donncha O’Callaghan and tell them we had Special Branch people with guns outside our door with Ireland. They would look at you as if you had two heads. They are fascinated.
‘Then there was the whole 20th anniversary thing about Ireland’s Call and the 1987 World Cup Rose of
Tralee debacle that came up last year. The description of it was just so far from reality. It was time to put those things down in record. They are in the book and it doesn’t matter who reads it. It’s there. It’s preserved.’
Most poignantly remembered are the memories of Sarah and John, two of Lenihan’s three children who tragically passed away when his playing career was in its pomp. His baby daughter died shortly after the epic ’85 win over England, his baby son lost on the same June 1990 day the rest of Ireland celebrated the World Cup soccer penalty shoot-out win over Romania.
Few knew of Lenihan’s enormous family heartache. Such is the private way he goes about his business, he never once mentioned his own painful memory on that celebrated June afternoon 26 years ago when accompanying Ireland’s goalkeeping hero Packie Bonner on numerous country-wide bank promotion events in the months that followed.
BACK then, your private life was private. ‘The media back then would have been a lot more respectful, more understanding in letting you have private moments,’ he explains about his privacy to grieve.
‘Sarah was eight-and-a-half months old when she had an operation only three or four weeks after we won the Triple Crown. It was the footnote in some papers but that was it. There was no intrusion.
‘She died in Dublin in Crumlin Children’s Hospital. I was staying with cousins and remember meeting Ciarán Fitzgerald after Sarah passed away and he was like, “Will I get on to the team and get them down?” I just said, “No, let’s just keep it private.
‘Likewise with John. Nobody would have known apart from close friends. There was nobody trying to make a big story out of it and with the benefit of hindsight it was something we appreciated because it was a private moment.
‘But from the book’s point of view, the fact they are recorded in it is something that is actually special to my wife Mary and I because it preserves their existence for future generations of our family.
‘It wasn’t easy to write but when you look back you are reliving things you mightn’t have visited for
a long, long time and I wanted it to be in the book without over-dramatising it.
‘It would have been hypocritical to write a book and not mention it. It’s part of my life. Regardless of who the most successful man in the world is, there are days when things go wrong. Everybody experiences ups and downs and it’s a measure of how you deal with those things. You just have to get on with life.’
Doing so was understandably difficult.
‘There were times when it did affect (performance),’ admits the lock whose stellar 52cap Test career lasted from 1981 to 1992.
‘I remember chatting to the late Mick Doyle in depth at one stage because the early part of the following season (1985/86) after Sarah, I was struggling with form, but in time things just clicked back into place.
‘Then there was the connection with Packie Bonner through Irish Permanent after John’s death. I was working with him around the country and everybody was eulogising this brilliant moment in Irish sport and it was just one of the most horrible days in my life.’
Lenihan is thankful there was no such thing as social media.
‘The TV coverage was nothing like it is now. It was significant enough to know you would be recognised for rugby, but it was never the intrusive thing the modern player has now. The whole world of Twitter, cameras on phones changed the ground rules immeasurably.
‘Some things we might have got up to, it’s what players get lacerated for now. It’s a different planet. All players of my era preferred not having that interference. We’d nice recognition, but at the same time it wasn’t interference. You could go out with your wife, have a meal. For the O’Garas of this world, the interference is just constant.’ Having played through the Troubles, Lenihan finds it ironic how the Brexit vote in Britain has potential to re-establish a policed physical border, dividing north and south again. How rugby managed to survive and thrive as a 32-county sport in previous divided island days is a captivating part in his autobiography. ‘I remember going through the border where you had the army presence in Newry, but the beauty about rugby in those days was all clubs in the south maintained excellent relations with clubs in the north. You didn’t have to play for Munster or Leinster to play in Belfast. Every club player experienced playing there.
‘It was a different environment. With Munster we always stayed in the Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe. They would tell us close the curtains in the room because if a suspected bomb went off they had reinforced curtains to make sure no shattered glass would come in. That was a run-of-the-mill thing.
‘I also remember being in the hotel bar area and somebody throwing their gear bag on the floor. The locals stood back. In a way it’s a bit like being in Paris now. People were on heightened alert and we were also conscious of certain areas in Belfast you wouldn’t stray into.
‘It was different times but rugby was a unifying force for people from different persuasions, differ-
52 Donal Lenihan won 52 caps for Ireland between 1981 and ’92
ent backgrounds. It was complicated but people just got on with it. You might have had specific views, but rugby superseded all of that.’
The generally robotic modern game doesn’t excite him as much, Lenihan fearing academies are robbing the sport of leadership skills his teams used to rely on.
‘They all come from the same background, all go through the academy systems whereas in amateur rugby you had people working in different spheres of life, people who had different off-field responsibilities. All that contributed to taking more responsibility on the field, putting your hand up looking for responsibility.
‘If you didn’t have a particularly good game and Ireland were hammered on a Saturday when we played, you had nowhere to hide. You were at work on a Monday morning dealing with the general public, so you got it in the nose.
‘The modern professional player deals with that in their own little bubble. You always hear about their Monday morning analysis.
‘We’d to do that analysis in the general public and it wasn’t Joe Schmidt giving out to us. It was some fella angry after paying 40 quid to get into the match – and Munster people aren’t slow to give their opinions.’
The recent hot topic is Munster’s decampment to a single training centre in Limerick, taking team preparation totally out of Cork. ‘You’re hiding behind a bush if you don’t think it’s an issue,’ accepts Lenihan. ‘Overseas people now tend to associate Limerick with Munster. Cork people are up in arms but it’s all done for the right reasons. Genuinely, it had to happen.
‘It was madness (having two training centres). Everything they did was against high performance. And trying to attract overseas coaches? I got on quite well with (previous coach) Rob Penney, as he lived in Cork, but he couldn’t get his head around this thing.
‘Munster could have handled it better, but the people of Cork have no point giving out. Having the one training centre was absolutely necessary.’
Can the change improve results, though? Not in the short-term, he feels. ‘I’d like to think Munster could be back up there competing. There is a lot of very good young players but winning a European Cup, I don’t see that happening for some time yet.’
Donan Lenihan: My Life in Rugby is published by Transworld Ireland, retailing at €24.99.