There was no more distressing sight in the World Cup warm-up games than Tommy O’Donnell being treated four minutes toward the end of the first of those games in Cardiff. Having received oxygen and been stretchered off, the dislocated hip he suffered in that endgame against Wales duly ruled him out for the World Cup at a time when he was in the shape and form of his life.
It was a cruel blow for the player himself but he has shown immense mental resilience in the way he has returned with Munster in the last three weeks. If any player was entitled to harbour bitterness or even regrets, it is assuredly the 28-year-old Munster flanker; yet, a little remarkably, he says, with some conviction, that is not remotely the case.
‘Made peace’
“For me, no. Not at all,” he said from the Irish squad’s base in Carton House yesterday. “Because of the nature of the injury and everything like that, I made peace with it very quickly. And actually, I’ve said it a couple of times that I really enjoyed sitting down and watching the World Cup and the few weeks after it. After the summer we had I got to meet and socialise with a lot of friends that I hadn’t over the summer, so I think that you can’t hang on to these things.”
Such an attitude, in his mind, has to come with the territory of being a modern-day professional rugby player. “I think it comes from how we should be as players. If you make a mistake in a match you have to move on from it, so if something happens like that, a big moment or an injury, you need to be able to move on from it. And I think that’s how you have to go about your career, that’s how you keep setting goals for yourself and keep moving on. It’s the only way. If you dwell on the past you’re going to be stuck there.”
In a similar vein, O'Donnell said that Ireland had to leave the World Cup in the past. "You need to draw a line after the World Cup because England will be a completely different squad. France have a new coaching system in. You have to leave the World Cup where it was. You can't dwell on it. You have to judge the Six Nations as a barometer of where we are."
O’Donnell was speaking on foot of Ulster Bank announcing an extension of their partnership with the IRFU, which will see them remain the title sponsors of the All-Ireland League until 2018 as well as official community rugby partner to the IRFU, which also includes the Club International.
Individual cases
Munster was rocked by losing JJ Hanrahan to Northampton last season and the distinct possibility of Keith Earls leaving to join Saracens at the end of this season, but O’Donnell maintained that these were individual cases and that Munster’s collectiveness will remain strong.
“No, no, it’s individual circumstances. Coming from Munster, I think we’re very collective. We’ve actually come together over the last couple of weeks from the pressure a few voices were putting on us. You find you do come together in those times. Hopefully, we’ve grown from it and we’ll be better for it.”
Besides which, O’Donnell maintains that for every player who leaves, opportunity knocks for someone else. His own late development at Munster is a case in point: he remained at Munster despite a welter of international back-rowers blocking his path into the team.
“When David Wallace got injured, everyone was asking where players were going to come from. At that stage, people were probably saying that I wasn’t ever going to be international standard or wasn’t good enough.
“The players in the Irish ranks are there and sometimes they just need the chance, they just need the game time. I think Josh van der Flier is a great example this year of what young players can do with game time and how they can thrive.
“If a key player moves on, the talent is there in the Irish pool that it will be filled.”
