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How a 'weird enough journey' keeps inspiring Munster's Shane Daly
By Simon Thomas
Shane Daly has become a key player for Munster in recent seasons, racking up more minutes in the URC last season than any other in the league. He started all 18 regular season games for the Irish province, playing an astonishing 1,430 minutes.
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That’s an ironman level of durability for someone who didn’t start properly playing rugby until his late teens. “I’d a weird enough journey into it,” said Daly, who unfortunately left the Ashton Gate pitch with a hamstring injury last Sunday when playing for Ireland A versus England A.
“I only started playing when I was in secondary school. I would have done a handful of sessions with Highfield RFC, which would be my family club. They were keen to get me in there but I was mad into the soccer and the Gaelic football from a young age, so I didn’t really have time to play rugby. But when I went to a rugby school (Presentation Brothers College), it’s kind of something that you kind of get drawn into.”
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Daly quickly excelled at the sport and credits one of his former coaches, Paul Barr, as the first person to help him fully understand and fall in love with the game. “The first coach that made me love the game and understand the game was Paul Barr.
“But that wasn’t until the senior cup cycle, so fifth year really was when I left the soccer behind and rugby was my only sport from there on. The way that Paul saw the game, and they way that he wanted it to be played, was everything that I liked about it.
“I still have things that he taught me that I produce in games. Or things I think about that he taught me to think about. He was a huge influence on me and it was just such an expansive way of playing. It was like a southern hemisphere style and he kind of gave me a complete free licence to do what I wanted.”
Daly was given an opportunity to play sevens for Ireland not long after leaving school while still finding his feet in the Munster academy. He was part of a relaunched programme, playing in a side that included the likes of Hugo Keenan, Jimmy O’Brien and Will Connors, and he credits it for helping his development as a player.
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“We all saw the benefits of it very quickly,” Daly said. “We were quite young. We were one year out of school, but we hadn’t really got a look in at the provinces yet. So it gave us time to accelerate our development.
“Both sides of the ball, you learn so much. You’re kind of forced to learn; like there is no provincial level of sevens. You are straight into international. You are playing against Fiji, South Africa, New Zealand. Some of your first games could be against those teams!
“We got a lot of experience out of it and you can see from the players I have mentioned how well they have gone on to develop their 15s game and you can see that they were sevens players in the way they play, especially the likes of Hugo and Jimmy – the touches they get on the ball, defensively they are very strong as well.”
Now a seasoned professional at Munster and an Ireland international, Daly is one of the top stars in the BKT URC, but he will never forget where he came from with the league celebrating origin round across rounds 11 and 12.
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“It’s massive,” Daly said when asked about the importance of players remembering their origins. “Players look for their why and what motivates them. You never forget the coaches that you had, the people that brought you to training, my parents that gave so much for me to even play the game. That’s the reason that you do it.
“When you actually think back to that, it’s the origin that you are always kind of playing for, and it’s those people who want to make proud. You will always remember that everyone that has coached you along the way has such a pride in you as well, and you want to make them proud in return.
“It just becomes a ‘why’ for players and that is such a powerful thing. Sometimes it can be difficult to kind of get out of your own head and times can get difficult, especially periods in every season where things are challenging and you have got to remember why you are doing it – and the origin story is exactly that. So it’s something that I think about a lot.”
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