My one true love
Greg O’Shea turns back on Love Island fame for rugby
Greg O’Shea looks mildly embarrassed as he explains that he is the world’s most followed rugby player on Instagram. Considering this is a man who is best known by British television audiences for playing out his romantic life while wandering around topless in the Love Island villa, selfconsciousness may seem surprising. However, the reality show is partly the cause of the Irishman’s blushes.
Having won the fifth series of the ITV show with Amber Gill last summer after coming on as a
“bombshell” for the final two weeks of the two-month run, O’Shea is proud of the on-air popularity he achieved but seems uncomfortable this side of his life has eclipsed his sporting achievements. This has led to 1.2 million fans on the photo-sharing platform.
Also, as a player, O’Shea is regarded more for his work rate than dazzling skill, so perhaps it is unsurprising the 24-year-old decided to turn his back on celebrity or what he describes as “the big life” in favour of chasing a spot in the Tokyo Olympics with Ireland’s rugby sevens side, which is less lucrative than XVs.
“Being honest with you, I have missed out on a lot, a lot of money on deciding to do what I am doing now. I could have moved to London and me and Amber could have stayed together and tried to make it work,” he tells The Sunday Telegraph.
“I could have tried the whole celebrity lifestyle and be making a lot of money and making a lot of deals but that didn’t sit right with me. You have to stay true to yourself.
“I set the goal with the lads here to try to get on the World Series and to the Olympics. The Olympics is the pinnacle of sport and you can’t get higher than that. Why would I throw away everything I worked for in my adult life for a couple of months of fame? On the pitch I would like people to think I work hard and always try my best – off the pitch I am just one of the lads. Just because I went to Love Island doesn’t make me anything special compared to the other boys, being honest, the other boys are probably better players than me!”
Peppering his speech with a multitude of “thank Gods”, O’Shea comes across more as the Limerick lad who had dreamt since childhood of playing for Munster than a typical reality television celebrity. Maybe this is due to Love Island pursuing him to become a contestant rather than the other way around.
O’Shea recounts that a year ago he had a little over 2,000 Instagram followers, most of whom were “rugby people”, but this did not stop the Love Island production team from being attracted by his social media. Snaps of life on the road with his sevens team-mates dominated his feed, including what he describes as his highlight of 2019; Ireland qualifying for a place on the
HSBC Sevens World Series in Hong Kong. Based on these photographs, the producers asked if he wanted to audition.
With a laugh, O’Shea explains how he played hard to get with Love Island.
“I never planned on it at all. I made it through all the rounds of interviews and they asked me to be on the starting line-up. I had to say I couldn’t do it because I had commitments with rugby. So, it was thanks but no thanks. I was back playing rugby and they got on to me saying would I come in for the last two weeks in my offseason and thankfully the IRFU let me go and I ended up winning it!”
With a new series starting tonight, he believes he would be battling for celebrity status. “The hype is definitely gone or maybe that is just Irish people? The thing I knew about
Love Island is that the hype is very short-lived,” he says.
O’Shea found the experience of life in the villa more daunting than lining up in front of baying crowds. “Love
Island is the most intense thing I have done in my life. It is more intense than anything I have experienced in rugby, I have played in front of stadiums of 60,000 people with the sevens lads and people screaming at you,” he says. “But Love Island was more intense than that because it is 24 hours of cameras and microphones and everything is recorded. You are in there with strangers, which is tough. It was a lot. I am lucky I only had to do two weeks, while other people had two months. I would say to anybody who had the opportunity, do it, but I wouldn’t do it again.”
The Munster academy product who was picked up by Ireland’s sevens programme after failing to make it into the province’s senior side opted to return to his first love, but his loyalty did not stop his team-mates from mocking him.
“Straight away the boys were slagging me and pulling me back down to earth, it was what I needed,” he explains. “That is the great thing about having a team environment, there are no heroes and everyone is in it together. Because we have all not been successful in the provinces, we are used to setbacks and we bonded over these and being ‘rejects’ and we are doing well for the country now, thank God.
“The only reason I got on Love
Island is because of the life I had with rugby. I wanted to get back to the life I had and take opportunities in and around what would work with that life. And I love my family and friends in Ireland; what do you have if you don’t have family and friends?”
‘Straight away the boys were slagging me and pulling me back down to earth. It was what I needed’