“There’s always somebody in the audience talking about ‘Get up. Get UP!’ … I’m like, ‘F**k you! That’s how I got down here in the first place.”
Richard Pryor was not always keen on fighting on after he got knocked on his ass. Sean O’Brien keeps getting up.
Life is knocking him back down and it may take longer to get back up than when he was 23 but he’ll keep getting up until they tell him to stop.
O’Brien will be 30 next February. Nobody is quite sure how that happened.
How does a man we were banking on as our back row stalwart for a decade only have 42 Ireland caps?
Injuries. Pure, simple, horrible injuries.
From November 2010 to November 2013, O’Brien was Ireland’s star flanker. He was the man making everything tick. The Tullow Tank destroying all comers over 29 awesome Test appearances.
Hamstring and shoulder injuries have been the common theme but there was a nasty infection that set him back three further months after one invasive procedure, performed in London. O’Brien has missed 20 of Ireland’s last 32 Test matches.
2016 was going to be different. O’Brien had missed the World Cup exit to Argentina after his punch on the agitating French lock Pascal Papé copped him a one-game ban.
He missed the opening Six Nations game – a draw against Wales – but was restored to an Irish back row that contained Jamie Heaslip and, at blindside, the in-form CJ Stander. It made for a potent mix. Fittingly, France were the opposition on St Valentine’s Day in a Parisian stadium ringed by armed soldiers and police officers.
“It was an exciting game to be involved in,” O’Brien tells us.
“I thought we were going pretty well, as a unit, for the first 20 minutes. I was looking forward to playing with the two boys but that’s the way it goes.”
24 minutes in, O’Brien’s hamstring went. His face was planted in the sodden Stade de France turf. He had risked it and lost. No more rugby for a few weeks, we were initially told, but we all knew it was worse than that.
“I was in the changing room. I didn’t see the rest of the game. I had ice on it straight away; I knew what had happened [to my hamstring].
“I had to lie down for the rest of the game. I was keeping an eye on the score, obviously, and there were lads coming in and out to me.
“[At half-time], I was lying in a corner away from the lads. They wouldn’t be too bothered or thinking about me at that stage. They’ve their own jobs to do and messages to get from the coaches.”
Brilliant for 24 minutes, packed into a corner of the away dressing room for the rest.
He simmered then and is still simmering now.
Revenge for 2013, 2012, 2012, 2012… and the rest
O’Brien is ‘back in the rugby programme’ at Leinster but, unlike Robbie Henshaw, unable to ring a fixture date in red and gun for it.
He is hoping to feature in his team’s Champions Cup fixtures in October and insists his focus on on Leinster first. Ireland’s November internationals are way, way off in the distance.
Still, we ask him about the All Blacks.
He has faced New Zealand on four occasions and lost each time. In Christchurch [2012] and Dublin [2013] it was absolutely tragic that the Carlow man was on the losing side. His team let two famous wins slip but O’Brien never eased off for a second. He didn’t deserve to lose either game.
After the latest of those defeats, 22-20 at the Aviva Stadium, O’Brien gave such a memorable interview that talk of him becoming Ireland captain was entirely reasonable. He had declared:
“Yeah, I’d say I’m angry. Yeah, we should have trusted each other there in the last couple of minutes… They’re only a team at the end of the day.”
That team have won another World Cup since those frustrated words were shared. They will take on Ireland twice in the space of 14 days this November.
“It’s going to be an interesting November,” he says, “and they’re the games you want to play… I need to get playing with Leinster first.”
Nearly there. Nearly.
Sean O’Brien was talking to SportsJOE at the launch of the new Leinster Rugby European Cup jersey, designed by Canterbury and available now.
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