You look at Jack O’Donoghue now and you think, ‘That’s a big lad.’
You looked at Jack O’Donoghue in 2011 and you though, ‘Jeez, that’s a big lad.’
Remind O’Donoghue of that crunching fend-off, on Leinster’s Stephen Duke, back in 2011 and he’ll tell you it was a long time ago. He was big then. He’s bigger now. And he’s not done yet.
I caught up with O’Donoghue the day after the Rugby Players Ireland awards up in Dublin. He had stayed at Munster’s training base at University of Limerick and had undertaken the second Dexa Scan -[measuring the density of bones] for the second time in his relatively young career.
“They use it as a way of monitoring body fat composition and stuff like that,” he explained. His next step, ahead of Munster’s run-in and a summer tour with Ireland, was to sit down with the Munster and Ireland nutritionists.
“It’s all about putting on size,” he says.
Judging by every photo I had ever seen of O’Donoghue, he was a man-child in a body built for rugby. It was not always the case.
“I was relatively small, growing up. I had a growth spurt in my mid teens and got kind of gangly.
“The lads used to call me a big, lang fool. A big awkward fella with long legs running around the place.”
The Waterford native showed early promise in Munster’s underage set-up and was brought in to train with the senior side – with the likes of Paul O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan – long before he led Ireland U20 in the 2014 Junior World Championship.
Head coaches Rob Penney and, then, Anthony Foley spotted his potential a mile off and put the strength and conditioning coaches to work on getting the young lad ready for a man’s world, as quick as possible. O’Donoghue says:
“When I first came in – and it still irritates me when I see in a programme that I’m down as 97 kilos [213lbs] – that was the weight I was when I first came in [to the senior team].
“I’ve put on the bones of six or seven kilos since then, I’d be flying around the place at 97 kilos. Your weight is often depending on what stage of the season you’re at. at one stage I was up to 108 kilos but the weight tends to fall off me. I’m playing at about 106 now. 106, 107 [235lbs].
“I’ve put on about 10 kilos since I first came in and that was always the big focus the S&C coaches had with me. After I came back from the Under 20s World Cup in New Zealand, I had to do a 10-week pre-season as they were conscious to ensure I wouldn’t break down and could be called on for selection later on in the season.
“It was pretty gruelling now. There were two or three gym sessions a day, a few hypertrophy sessions [Hypertrophy-Specific Training – strength training to induce fastest muscle growth] after training, and push-pull exercises.
“It was tough at the time – going on for 10 weeks and you were wondering when it was going to end but it stood to me and I put on a significant amount of size… but there’s always room for more. That’s what the focus will be going into pre-season [2017/18] and those sessions in June, July and August. Trying to put on another bit of size, kick on and progress.”
At 23, O’Donoghue still sees himself as relatively young with more room to grow physically and in terms of his game.
“The way the game is going,” he says, “players are getting bigger and stronger and it is getting much more physical. You have to be able to adapt your body to withstand the heavier hits and to pack down at a maul or scrum.”
O’Donoghue starts Saturday’s Guinness PRO12 final on the bench but he is ready, whenever he is called up, to bring his burgeoning size and talent to bear as Munster look to win their first trophy since 2011.
As O’Donoghue noted earlier – it was a long time ago.
