There’s Paul O’Connell and then there’s Paul O’Connell.
We all know the legendary number five. We know the Irish man. The leader. The warrior who’d run through a brick wall for his country.
We never often saw him vulnerable though. We never saw the family man that he is or just the man that he is. He wouldn’t let us.
Even at his lowest point, his international career ended, a move to France up in the air and bowing out of the World Cup prematurely – and, oh, his hamstring hanging from the bone – O’Connell refused to bow his head. O’Connell was still putting others first.
In his autobiography, The Battle (out October 6), the Limerick native told the story of the moment it all stopped. From being at the centre of the war with Ireland, one pop, and it was finished for him.
Not that he’d let anyone know.
The Munster man instead hid his pain as best he could. He hid it for his family and for the Irish fans and, even afterwards, he hid it from the players so he could enjoy one last celebratory changing room with them after the France victory.
“My foot got stuck in the ground. I could feel my hamstring tendon stretch to breaking point and pop. There was a searing pain as it ripped off the bone,” O’Connell’s autobiography is being serialised in the Sunday Times.
“I started thinking, this is just a hamstring injury. I haven’t broken anything – I can surely get back up. So I tried, but it was too painful.
“The medics came on. They were talking about bringing on a stretcher. I said, ‘I don’t need a stretcher. Just get me up and help me get off the pitch.’
“I didn’t want my wife Emily, or my parents, to have to see me going off on a stretcher. I thought that Paddy my son would be watching at home and maybe he’d get upset too. They got me back on my feet but I went straight down again.
“I’d ruptured my tendon but it was the sciatic nerve that was causing the worst pain.”
There was no going back for O’Connell, he was fully aware of that. But he had one final battle to face as an Irish player and that was getting off the pitch and easing the fears of everyone looking on.
“I knew my Ireland career was over. I thought my move to Toulon after the tournament was gone too.
“I thought of Emily and the house we’d picked in Toulon, a really nice place by the sea with a pool. I knew how much she was looking forward to a new experience and I was sad for her.
“I put my arm over my eyes because I didn’t want people to see I was upset.
“Eanna Valvey, the Ireland doctor, was alongside me on the motorized stretcher. He said, ‘you need to put your head up in the air when the camera comes on you so that Emily knows you’re OK.'”
So they get inside, he gets seen to and it’s bad.
It’s not about Paul O’Connell though. It never is for him.
“They moved me to the medical room and after a few minutes Emily arrived. She was crying. The first thing I said to her was, ‘Sorry about Toulon.’
“At full time, I was brought into the changing room in a wheelchair. They lifted me off it and I was just about able to sit down at my place before the players came in. I was glad to be able to share that moment with them because they are moments you fight for and they’re what sport is all about.
“During the tournament, our defence coach, Les Kiss, talked about the Spartans. He said they were told before they went into battle to come back with their shield, or on it.
“And he said: ‘that’s the attitude we need in our defenders. You finish the game with your shield, or on it.”
If ever a man, a warrior refused to give up his shield.
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