It was an odd end to what was a decent post-match interview.
Jack O’Donoghue would have cut a forlorn figure in Cardiff, on Saturday night, as he reflected on his first game as Munster captain.
The 24-year-old Waterford native has settled into the Munster senior squad well and, having previously captained Ireland U20s, was earmarked a good few years back as having leadership potential.
With many of his senior players off on Ireland duty, Johann van Graan bestowed the captaincy honour on O’Donoghue for the Guinness PRO14 away date with Cardiff Blues.
Munster got off to a shocking start and found themselves well adrift at half-time, only to get back into the game through an Ian Keatley penalty and a Chris Cloete try. That was as good as it got, however, as Cardiff won a couple of late penalties to keep the Irish province at arm’s length.
In the end, it took a late penalty from the returning Tyler Bleyendaal to ensure Munster would return home with a losing bonus point. Following the game, Sky Sports’ Graham Simmons caught up with O’Donoghue for an interview.
“We had 10 changes coming into the game,” Munster’s newest captain began.
“We didn’t have the best of starts. We made a few errors and they got a couple of tries off that. We came in at half-time, regrouped and threw everything at them at the start of the second half. To come away with a losing bonus point, well, we’ll take that and we’re looking ahead, now, to next week.”
Simmons then asked if changing ‘two-thirds’ of the Munster starting XV had been the reason for his side looking so disjointed. “I can’t say that’s the reason why,” he replied. “We’ll have a look back at the video to see where it went wrong but I can’t say that.”
Simmons upped the ante by highlighting Munster’s ‘dodgy decisions’, dropped balls and penalty count that went ‘off the scale’ in the last quarter of the game. O’Donoghue’s eyes flashed at that one, and a nervous smile was raised, before he responded:
“I don’t think that was the reason why [we lost]. You can make a dropped ball here or there but I think we stuck to our game-plan in the last 15 minutes. Decisions didn’t go our way but you have to take that on the chin. We’ll do that, regroup and look ahead to next week.”
On captaining his province for the first time, O’Donoghue said, “It’s a proud moment for myself. I’ll let it sink in over the weekend but… that’s disappointing.”
The interview then ended in odd circumstances that appeared to irritate O’Donoghue. Simmons remarked that, as captain, he had at least won the toss.
“I did, yeah,” O’Donoghue replied before Simmons said “Good boy.”
O’Donoghue stalked away from the scene.
"You won the toss though, didn't you? … Good boy"
Strange end to a good interview with Jack O'Donoghue pic.twitter.com/fQhjilsYgI
— Pat McCarry (@patmccarry) February 18, 2018
He handled himself well after a poor away defeat and an awkward post-match interview.
There will surely be better days ahead for O’Donoghue when he gets the chance to captain Munster again.
