Olympics 24: ‘You could see straight away that he had talent’

IRELAND’S record goalscorer, Shane O’Donoghue is preparing for his second Olympic Games with high hopes of a medal in Paris.

Dad Rory, himself a sporting man of some note says, “He deserves all the success he’s now getting.

“I can attest to his dedication to the sport through the number of times I’ve had to redecorate the hall in our house.

“He wrecked it so many times practising his shots!”

The O’Donoghue’s are quite the sporting family.

Whilst Shane is the high achiever, Rory played rugby for St Mary’s, his sister Saoirse played for Glenanne and Leinster and mum Paula was a soccer player who has an LFAI winners medal “in a cupboard somewhere.”

Rory tells me of Shane’s early years in hockey and his road to the pinnacle of the sport.

“Well years ago while I was playing rugby for St Mary’s I got a fairly serious back injury.

“When I healed up I was concerned about going back to rugby and doing myself some real damage.

“I still wanted to play sport and came across Glenanne and thought I’d have a go.

“That’s how the game came into our lives.”

Shane was quite a shy young fella at first, you’d be surprised to learn.

At about five or six, he’d just stand next to me.

Eventually I managed to encourage him enough to go out on the pitch and have a go.

You could see straight away that he had talent.

In his formative years, Shane was an all round sportsman.

He played GAA for St Anne’s, soccer for Knocklyon United and of course remained a steadfast forward at Glenanne.

Eventually the time came where he had to make a decision on what sport he would concentrate on and hockey won out.

Although as Rory attests, he still had a lot of work to do to make it at the top level of the game.

“At about fifteen he was in contention for under age honours with Ireland. We could see that technically he was very good, but he was losing physical battles and it became clear that he really needed to work on his strength and fitness.”

“To Shane’s eternal credit, he knuckled down and worked extremely hard to get where he needed to be physically and, there was no stopping him from there.”

Shane went on to represent Ireland as a Glenanne player through all the age groups until eventually, the Ireland manager at the time Andrew Meredith gave him his first senior cap.

Not long after, Shane and the Irish team made history by qualifying for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro. A gallant campaign ultimately ended in disappointment as even with three goals from Shane, we failed to advance from our group.

“It was still a wonderful experience,” Rory says.

“And it put Irish hockey on the map.

“In fact from that team, only Shane and our keeper David Harte are going this time, so we’ve got a good crop of young lads moving us forward.”

Before long, Shane was offered a contract to play professionally for KAC Dragons, a huge club in Antwerp, Belgium.

Rory says, “It was a big challenge, and to be honest, it could have gone wrong for Shane, but again, he made that step up with no problem and soon enough he was scoring plenty of goals against Europe’s best.”

I ask Rory how it feels to be the parent of an Olympic athlete about to do his thing in front of the world at the very top of the sport.

“It feels almost surreal,” he says.

“I nearly have to pinch myself, but I’m just so proud of him.

“We’ve got a big gang of family and friends going over and we honestly can’t wait.”

“Our biggest supporter will I’m sure be Emma, who recently married Shane.

“It turns out Emma’s dad is a Terenure Rugby man of long standing, but I’m proud to say we managed to keep it civil on the day,” Rory says with a laugh.

“As for our chances, sport is all about ‘on the day.’

“We’ve taken some notable scalps recently, not least two wins over Belgium.

“We’re going in as underdogs but there’s no reason we can’t come home with a medal.”

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