Donncha O’Callaghan already has us in stitches just minutes into the call. He’s at the Re-turn Awards in Croke Park, joking that it pains him as a proud Corkman to say the weather in Dublin is pretty good. When we share that the weather in Monaghan, where we’re taking the call from, is miserable, he immediately chuckles. He’ll have to rub that in Tommy Bowe’s face later.
The rugby stars co-host a podcast together, The Offload. It’s a passion project where they’re supposed to chat about rugby but Donncha tells us it tends to end up with him and Tommy just catching up. He adds that he wants to show people that rugby players do have a personality.
Don’t worry, we tell him, rugby is about to have a brand new set of fans as a romance book series set in a Cork rugby school, The Boys of Tommen, is about to get a TV adaptation. “I’d be glued to it,” he jokes.
Read our full interview with Donncha here…
Talk to us about getting involved with the Re-turn Awards.
The main thing for me is just how they recognise the unbelievable work that’s going on by primary students around the country to one, be more sustainable and two, come up with creative ways that could raise funds for things that are really important for them in their local community. So I think it’s a brilliant idea and something we need to all do a little bit more. I’m delighted with Re-Turn for doing this, hearing the voices of young people and actually giving them a megaphone to leave us all know how to be a little bit better.
You’re a busy man. Earlier this year you went on tour with your podcast, The Offload, with Tommy Bowe. Did you ever expect to go on a podcast tour?
I expected to go on tour with a podcast rather than going on tour with Tommy all over again. [Laughs] So it was good. It was great fun. Tommy had the van, so we brought the same furniture to the place. When you get on with people, it’s very enjoyable. And myself and Tommy and with all our rugby buddies, we probably don’t see each other as much as we used to, but you pick up where you left off. I’ll be honest, though, we’d rather face a haka than walking out in those venues. We’re total fish out of water. It was great to do. And we’d like to probably do it again at some point, but just trying to find out when that would work is half the battle!
When you started the podcast, could you ever have imagined how popular it has become and the reaction that it’s gotten?
I’ll be honest with you, no. But we’ve learned an awful lot, too, as well. It is a rugby podcast, but we end up kind of chatting about total different stuff as well. So yeah, it’s been good it’s gone well and all of us enjoy it. It’s an opportunity for us to catch up and just chat. So yeah, it’s been great. We know we’re not The Two Johnnies or Joanne and Vogue or Kevin and PJ. You know what I mean? They’re the ones we listen to for entertainment and fun. Two of us have a lot of catching up to be at that level. But we have a bit of a laugh and sometimes that’s important. The main thing for it was we found it was quite stiff. Rugby podcasts were quite stiff, whereas a dressing room isn’t. A dressing room’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of craic!
Rugby players do get an awful lot of slack for being boring!
And it’s something that annoys the two of us. We understand that the players have to be very careful with what they say. I feel disappointed that we don’t see more of their personalities because they’re fantastic. You just take Andrew Porter. I read his book over the last while, and what an incredible story. We were lucky to have him on the pod during the year. He was brilliant. But it’s unfortunate that it took him bringing out his book before we found it. We’d love to see a little bit more of them and have the fun. And we’re champions for them. We want to stand up for all the lads and the girls that play our game. We got into the High Performance Centre before the Women’s Six Nations. And it was a joy.
You have a busy summer ahead of you…
It gets busy. It gets busy for summertime. Obviously, our kids are off and we’ll spend time with them. But also, we record an awful lot of the shows. And the main one, probably at the moment, is Fittest Family. So summertime can get a bit busier, but it’s all enjoyable. It’s all great fun. The kids look, there’s a few concerts, be it in Virgin Media Park or down in the Marquee that they’re interested to get to. It’s just probably spending the time, isn’t it? And enjoying it.
Can you tease anything about this season of Ireland’s Fittest Family?
I don’t know too much because we’ve barely started it. [Laughs] Last year was very enjoyable. Bar Andrew Trimble winning. Everything else was just trying to catch up with Michael Darragh, Ellen [Keane], Anna [Daly], even Davey [Fitzgerald]. You’d miss those people. It gets ridiculously competitive, but it’s enjoyable.
Do you ever look at the families and go, I think my family could do that?
No, I think it’s the other way around! I think they look at me kind of going, “I think it’s time for some of the coaches to do this.” So I get a lot wrong, but I’ve no problem kind of putting my hand up on some of this. It’s very easy to watch sitting on your couch with a takeaway and be judgmental. I think it isn’t until you see what these families go through. And just the main thing is their bond for each other. Whatever about being fit, the ones that tend to come out on top are the ones that care a little bit more about each other. I know that might sound a bit corny, but like when it comes to fitness family, that ability to dig in for your mom, your brother, your sister, your cousin, whoever it is that you’re with, that you can bring yourself to a dark place to kind of get a result. We’re astonished. Every year we have this moment where you’re looking at someone doing something that you’re thinking, “How are they doing that?” Your sporting background says they shouldn’t be able to do it, and they always go beyond themselves. And we’re all there for it. We might be rival coaches, but when someone does something incredible, we’re like, “Wow, that’s amazing.”
You have more coaches now! How have you found that change?
I’ve enjoyed it. Hopefully we get to spend more time with different coaches. In other words, I’ve had enough hanging around with Trimble. [Laughs] I’d really like to hang around with Michael Darragh or Ellen or anyone bar Anna and Davy, to be honest. It probably needs a little freshening up, but the main thing are loads of the events are different as well. We don’t actually know what we’re coming up against either. So the likes of Michael Darragh will be there asking me questions but I’ve never seen it before either. The main thing is that you want families to be able to sit down at home with their kids and their own parents. You can have three generations watching this and everyone getting something out of it.
Between the pod, the TV and being an author, you’re fairly busy!
We can’t forget that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My kids are still slagging me over that. It was cool on book one, but when it comes to book three, they’re like, “oh geez, what are you at?”
A third book?
There’s a third Disaster Dad book coming out this autumn called Wildlife Wipeout. So just more silly, stupid things that Disaster Dad gets up to, all based on silly things that have happened to me in the past. So, between feeding ducks and bringing them into team meeting rooms and being afraid of snakes and stuff like that. This is basically an autobiography. It’s all the silly things we’ve seen you do before. So it’s good to get it down and for kids to have a laugh at it.
The winners of the first ever Re-turn Awards were announced this week at a special awards ceremony at Croke Park. Hosted by Today FM presenter Ian Dempsey, the Awards recognised schools that have gone above and beyond to “Re-turn it Right”, using recycling projects to support sustainability, fundraising and positive change within their communities.
The overall winner of the Re-turn Awards for Primary Schools was Pelletstown Educate Together National School, Dublin, which received the top prize of €5,000 for its imaginative “Monster Bin’ initiative. Judges were impressed by the school’s whole-community approach, involving pupils, staff, parents, the PTA, local businesses and the wider community in making recycling part of everyday life.
