It can be a bit jarring to hear that a man who is among the most accomplished players in Irish Rugby history is not motivated by winning.
After all, when you have won so much, at such a high level, for such a long time, does winning not become the only thing that motivates the athlete?
Jamie Heaslip has won three Heineken Cups, three PRO12 titles, three Six Nations titles, two triple crowns, a Grand Slam and a Challenge Cup over his career with Leinster and Ireland.
He has been nominated for the World Rugby Player of the Year, twice, and the EPCR European Player of the Year four times. He’s won Lions series and he’s lost Lions series. He’s achieved an awful lot in professional rugby.
But for a man that has achieved so much individual and team success, he does not place a great deal of emphasis on winning.
“Early on in my career I would have set goals for myself,” said Heaslip speaking on behalf of Headbomz, a ISPCC childline campaign designed to encourage children to talk about their feelings.
“My goals would have been starting for Leinster, or starting for Ireland, or start a Six Nations game. Then you get in there and you want to win something.
“But that can change, for me now it’s more about the process. I know if I max out and get the most out of the process, the rest will look after itself.”
In professional sport, all we hear is that winning is everything. Winning hides a team’s flaws, it saves jobs, it creates jobs, it is the ultimate and only validation for effort.
As legendary American Football coach Vince Lombardi once said ‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’.
But winning isn’t the only thing for Jamie Heaslip. Life without rugby in the last year has seen him prosper away from the sport. He has not retreated into some cave to dwell on his back injury and lick his wounds, or sit there idly and watch from the sidelines as the final years of his prime begin to drift away from him.
He’s lived and taken advantage of opportunities. During his time away from rugby he went to the 2017 Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Inis Mór, he attended the National Ploughing Championships in Tullamore, and in June, alongside Barcelona’s Gerard Pique, the Portland Trailblazers’ C.J. McCollum and former NFL Pro Bowler Rashean Mathis, Heaslip enrolled in Harvard University’s Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports program.
“It’s by far the best thing I’ve ever done in terms of challenging your thinking, changing your perspective and investing in yourself,” added Heaslip.
“I’ve a big interest in the business of sport and the media in all forms. It was something I always wanted to do but I was always touring and playing rugby in June.
“You get to connect with gamechangers and leaders in different industries. Sport, entertainment and media, it has all smoldered into one now. The lines are blurred.
“There was an interesting mix of people from actors to DJ’s to heads of companies, it was something that really interested me.”
https://www.facebook.com/jamieheaslip/videos/1496347623793329/
His interest in the intersection between sports and the media is clear from speaking to him but his views on the media are complex and layered.
Heaslip has held a longstanding belief that you should not read about yourself in the media, and that if you do, you have to read about both the good and the bad, and while he has little interest in what the media has to say about him or his performances on the pitch, he is intensely interested in the different forms of communication with which ‘talent’ can convey their message.
He engages with audiences regularly in Facebook Live videos on his page. He has written a column on the Players Tribune, an outlet he says has flipped the script on sports storytelling. He does not read about himself, but is stunned at what media coverage has done for the game of rugby over the last decade.
For Heaslip, he’s innately intrigued by how to get his message across to the masses, examining alternative ways of cutting straight to the market, becoming the source instead of going to a source, but he’s always been an outside thinker.
Even in his own realm of rugby, he’s pushed the boundary of what you can do to improve or how you can approach training differently. He’s meddled with reflexology, flotation chambers and altitude tents. He once turned down the chance to be a groomsman at a friend’s wedding because it conflicted with his training.
“My thinking would be different. I wouldn’t be comfortable with who I am [if I missed training for the wedding].”
He’s complex. He takes one day a week to shut off completely from rugby yet will renege on wedding invitations because it coincides with a training session. He has little interest in traditional media outlets but is fascinated with live forms and podcasts.
He wins almost everything in rugby yet places little emphasis on winning.
“My ultimate goal is the jersey and to leave it in a better place,” he adds.
“I want to be able to look back and say ‘from my first game for Leinster and Ireland to my last’, whenever that may be, that I helped play a small part in leaving the jersey in a better place.
“That’s the overriding goal or purpose. It’s not to win stuff because winning is finite. What do you do when you win something?
“What do you do when you get the nomination? I always want to chase. I always want that challenge and that’s what drives me.”
Success seemingly hasn’t changed his mindset, if anything, he has doubled down on his principles in hope of extending his career.
He won’t reveal anything on his injury or his return date, but if Ireland v Wales in the 2017 Six Nations is to be the last time he suits up for a professional rugby game, if it is to be his swansong, he won’t be like a dog chasing his tail when it’s all over, he’ll be a man chasing down the rest of his life. Documenting it on his terms along the way.
https://www.facebook.com/jamieheaslip/videos/1516892648405493/
- Headbomz was launched last year and aims to spread the word among children in a fun and engaging way that ‘Talking Makes Us Stronger’ and empower them to talk about their feelings.
- The videos feature Jamie Heaslip, Amy Huberman, Nicky Byrne, Pippa O’Connor and Brian Ormond, revealing what caused their ‘Headbomz’ growing up and how talking about their concerns helped them to overcome issues they struggled to deal with.
- Research carried out by the Vodafone Ireland Foundation and ISPCC Childline found that 95 per cent of children agreed it is essential to have someone to listen to them and help them talk through their worries. By identifying their own ‘Headbomz’, the aim is that children will have more open conversations about their worries or troubles, regardless of how big or small.
- For more information go towww.Headbomz.ie
