Shane Horgan As the Six Nations kicks off, Donal O’Donoghue meets the rugby legend (and new father) to get some insight
In his day, Shane Horgan scored two famous tries against England but how will the boys in green fare in this weekend’s clash with the old enemy? The new dad talks Six Nations, fatherhood and memories with Donal O’Donoghue
“There’s a lot of love here,” says Shane Horgan from his home in London. Two days a er the birth of his rst child, baby girl Neala, things are a bit hectic for the former rugby player turned TV analyst and sports writer. It takes three phone calls before he manages to make contact, all apologies. “We just got home from hospital yesterday, I have my little girl here in front of me,” he says, adding that both baby and mother, Shane’s wife Emma, are doing well. He sounds over the moon and I imagine the last thing he wants to do is talk Six Nations rugby and how Ireland will follow up on last year’s Grand Slam. “Now I just have to look a er Neala forever and that’s all,” he laughs.
Of course there’s a lot more. Since calling time on his professional career in 2012, the Irish winger has built an impressive career as a rugby analyst and writer, with a Sunday Times column and working as a pundit for Sky TV and also Virgin Media One (he previously worked for RTÉ). Yet Google ‘Shane Horgan’ and it’s likely it will throw back ‘Sharon Horgan, famous writer and star of such TV shows as Pulling and Catastrophe. Shane is a big fan of his big sis (he has three other siblings) but right now, on the eve of the Six Nations, and even with a baby on board, there’s only one game in town. “Back-toback Grand Slams is not beyond the realms of possibility for Ireland but it would be an extraordinary achievement,” he says. As New Zealand coach Steve Hansen put it last autumn, after Ireland felled his All Blacks, Ireland are now the team to beat. “It has been like that for a while but this Irish team is quite good with dealing with expectations as well,” says Horgan. “Success is part of their makeup, for country and province, and anyone who has played for this Irish team over the last number of years has this expectation that they are going to win as well. In the game against New Zealand there was a huge expectation that Ireland would deliver and they did, brilliantly. So while they have a target on their back they have had it for a long time. I don’t think that will be as big an issue. For me, the big issue as to whether Ireland will deliver a Grand Slam or not is maybe their Six Nations’ schedule.” First up this weekend is a resurgent England. “There is the possibility that Ireland could be caught cold here at the start of the competition,” says Horgan. “The danger is not having momentum in a tournament that is all about momentum. But on paper, the Irish squad looks stronger than England’s, with great strength in depth and well-covered in almost every position, even the core positions of nine and ten. England will have to play at their very best to be in contention. If Owen Farrell is not playing, that will be a huge blow to them. The other big loss is Sam Underhill who had a brilliant autumn series. Of course, the impact of Billy Vunipola can be considerable and key players like Jamie George, in the absence of Dylan Hartley, will also have to perform well.” In his early days, as Shane once put it, there was no rugby in Meath outside of his own backyard (his father John, a Kiwi, was rugby-mad). “Well there was rugby in Drogheda – two teams there – and I ended up playing for both of them,” he says. “So I was aware of rugby growing up, just not in my area of Meath which was all Gaelic football. It was a short trip into Drogheda to play mini rugby at weekends and now like everywhere in Ireland it has grown massively in the last number of years, from Leinster to Munster and Connacht, where it is being played in parishes it was never played before. And that all comes out in the Six Nations, which grips the country at a time of the year that is normally pretty fallow for sport generally.” Horgan made his international debut in February 2000, one of fi ve new caps (among them Ronan O’Gara and Peter Stringer), picked by Warren Gatland to face Scotland.
England will have to play at their very best to be in contention
Johnny Sexton is the most important player in the Irish team
It was a memorable debut for the winger who would become known as Shaggy (after Scooby Doo’s wailing sidekick) as he got to score a try, the first of 21 for his country. “It fades with time, like everything,” he says of that day. “Most of the game I don’t remember apart from a ball being thrown out to me and I just ran it in.” Over the years such memories have also melded into hours of TV footage so that it has become difficult to separate first-hand experience from second-hand TV watching. “I’m asking myself is that my memory or is it the memory of having watched it a number of times on TV?” he says.
For his first 15 caps, up to the 2003 World Cup, Horgan admits that he didn’t feel entirely comfortable in himself physically or mentally. But then something changed. “You have this imposter syndrome, thinking that at any moment you’ll get a tap on the shoulder telling you that you’re not good enough. But if you hang in there for long enough, fight your way through it, you began to believe that yes I can do this after all.” He has told the story of playing alongside someone who seemingly never lacked confidence, a young Johnny Sexton at Thomond Park who was taking no crap from anyone, not least Horgan. “I still think that Johnny Sexton is the most important player in the Irish team,” he says. Yet Horgan’s contribution to province and country was, by any standards, impressive, including 65 international caps and 207 appearances (and 71 tries) with Leinster. He was part of the 2009 Ireland Grand Slam team, featured in three Triple Crown-winning sides, won two Heineken Cups with his province, bagged three caps with the Lions for their 2005 tour of New Zealand and played in both the 2003 and 2007 World Cups. Not to mention those two iconic tries against England at Twickenham for a Triple Crown in 2006 and that ‘Gaelic Football’ catch and grounding at Croke Park in 2007. “They are the two stand-out moments of my career and my best memories,” he says. As poacher-turned-gamekeeper, has he shipped any criticism from former colleagues for his punditry? “I’m sure it’s going on somewhere but that’s just part of the job.
If you didn’t have opinions that grate with current players and management then you wouldn’t be doing your job. Players do have bad games and make mistakes, I had bad games and made plenty of mistakes in my day, and it’s important to point that out. The key is to look at what’s behind the mistake or why certain aspects like the line-out or scrum are not working. If players or management have an issue with you pointing that out, well that’s really on them.”
Working as an analyst keeps him in the game. “(Coaching) would have been a nice thing to do, to be as close to playing rugby as you can get, but you can only sit on one side of the fence and I made my call pretty early. There is also the non-glamorous side to coaching, like the long hours.” What of the glamour of being involved in shows like Dancing with the Stars, following in the footsteps of former colleagues like Tomás O Leary and Peter Stringer? He laughs. He hasn’t been asked and doubts he ever will. “If I ever did Dancing with the Stars the ratings would plummet and I’d be out in the first week,” he says. “It’s not for me. I’ll just stick with the rugby.”
Nowadays, he prefers to watch TV drama not make it. Peaky Blinders is a favourite, as is his big sister’s show, Catastrophe which he watches with his wife. “It’s a real thing for husbands and wives to watch together,” he says. “I suppose it’s just very relatable, not just in how the couple relate to each other but also how they interact with their kids. I love the new series and yes I’m always proud of Sharon. It could be a bit cringy at times, like watching your sister in bed with someone and your parents are in the same room. After that first series, we made a hard rule to never let it happen again.”
It’s too early to tell how fatherhood has changed him. A private person, he’d rather not speculate on such matters. Apart from his media work, Horgan is also director of strategic development with the UNICEF charity Soccer Aid. He has lived in London for nearly seven years and while he says he “will always be a Meath man from Bellewstown” there are no plans to go back to Ireland for now. “But you never know how life twists and turns,” he adds. “I do get back to Ireland a lot for the rugby games and family and that.” But life is changing for the 40-year-old. Right now rugby might be the only game in town but in the background I can hear the cries of his future.
Now I just have to look after Neala forever – that’s all