With the three other provinces richly represented in our heroes series so far, it’s about time we paid tribute to a Connacht player and where better to start than with friend of the site, Johnny O’Connor.
Connacht’s debut season in the Heineken Cup last year was a step into the unknown for the vast majority of their squad, but it wasn’t a new experience for everyone.
Mike McCarthy, for example, had experience of the competition with Newcastle, but the man who had more knowledge of the tournament to draw on than most was Johnny O’Connor, former Irish international and a man from whose strength and conditioning expertise you may well have benefitted from if you’re a regular reader of the site.
Hold back with those accusations of favouritism though because Johnny’s inclusion here has nothing to do with that; his performances in the competition speak for themselves.
They’re not the force they once were, but in the middle of the last decade, Wasps were one of the powerhouses of European rugby and O’Connor had a large part to play in their success on the domestic and continental stages.
Johnny back in the early days at Wasps… the very early days
Signed from Connacht by Warren Gatland on the personal recommendation of Lawrence Dallaglio, O’Connor became a fixture in the Wasps number seven jersey and such was his reputation for toughness that he earned the nickname ‘Johnny O’Concrete’.
With the likes of Dallaglio and Joe Worsley around, the Wasps back row wasn’t an easy place to get into in those days, but O’Connor had seen off the challenge of Paul Volley to make the openside berth his own until injury cruelly robbed him of the chance to be a part of the Heineken Cup Final victory over Toulouse in 2004 and the subsequent victory over Bath in the final.
2005 was a disappointing one for Wasps in the Heineken Cup, but an excellent one from a personal point of view for O’Connor, who established himself in the Irish set-up after making his debut against the Springboks in 2004. The Galway man was so impressive, in fact, that he was awarded the Irish Rugby Union Player’s Association (IRUPA) Player of the Year.
2006 saw Wasps exit at the pool stage yet again and it was also the year when O’Connor was hit by a career-threatening spinal injury which sidelined him for more than six months. By the time Wasps had got around to winning the competition again in 2007, O’Connor had fallen behind Tom Rees in the pecking order and had agreed to move back to his native province.
Johnny began the second step of his Heineken Cup journey last season and although injury affected his involvement, it didn’t dull his passion for the fight one bit, as anyone tuning into the recent ‘The West’s Awake’ documentary which followed the western province’s fortunes in the tournament will have noticed (you might want to turn it down if you’re watching the below clip in the office).
He’s been involved in both games in this season’s competition from the bench and although qualifying from a pool that included Harlequins and Biarritz is a tall order indeed, it would rank up there with Johnny’s biggest achievements in the competition if his home province could pull it off.
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