No luck in this IrishJonathon Drennan
Irish News
Wed 29 Dec, 2010The airwaves and sports pages in Australia are obsessing about the upcoming installment of the Ashes series at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. A short drop punt away from the historic ground, the former Down under 21 star Jamie O’Reilly has another sport on his mind. Pre season training has finished at the AFL’s Richmond Tiger’s training facility for another day and O’Reilly is able to reflect on a momentous year. “I can’t talk enough about how positive this experience has been for me. I’m only 22 and to be playing professional sport for a living everyday is incredible. It’s a privilege and that’s not something I’ll forget too quickly.”
Last year, O’Reilly reported in Melbourne for training with little idea of what being a professional athlete in Australia involved. For a solitary teenage year he had supported the Essendon Bombers in the AFL, “because they wore the same colours as Down.” But apart from this brief teenage flirtation with the game, O’Reilly had to learn Australian rules football completely. It was a frustrating time for a self confessed perfectionist. “At the start, if you don’t get the fundamentals pretty quickly you’re in big trouble. At times I found it very difficult, it was a mental and physical strain, especially in the first few months, but I got some great help from the staff here and eventually got the hang of things.”
Adjusting to life as a professional athlete has forced O’Reilly to become fixated by routine. He wakes up most days at his apartment as the sun rises at 6am, before arriving at the training facility for meetings at 8am sharp. He doesn’t leave the building normally until at least 4pm after rigorous weights sessions and ball work. He is also expected to analyse all of his games on a laptop, studiously picking apart any the flaws in his game. He normally crawls into bed exhausted. Melbourne’s recent attempts to enter into the festive spirit with decorations and brass bands have been lost on O’Reilly.
“I can’t believe Christmas is so near, I’m panicking a bit as I haven’t had a chance to get near the shops. It’s just the way it works over here that the hours of work you do at the club are relatively intense and it’s not like a desk job where you can go home still feeling ok. It’s definitely got better though, last year there were times when I could barely walk because of all the weights.”
The hard graft and sacrifices paid off for O’Reilly last year when he made his debut against Setanta Ó hAilpín’s Carlton Football Club. He went on to play two more games before the season ended, justifying Richmond’s faith in making him their first international recruit. O’Reilly was delighted to make his debut in front of his family who flew over for the game, but it made him even hungrier to succeed in his new sport. “It’s funny, but I don’t think I’ve achieved anything yet. People tell me quite a bit how well I’m doing, but I can’t appreciate it just yet when I’m in the middle of it. Maybe when my career is over I’ll be able to look back and appreciate what I did, but at the moment, I just want to play more games.”
The rave reviews of last year have brought O’Reilly fleeting moments of fame. You can now buy a large Jamie O’Reilly badge in the club shop and he is even starting to get noticed in the street. He laughs at the memory. “I had a friend from home staying with me last year and we always used to go to the same Greek coffee shop near my apartment in the evening after training. One day I didn’t go, but my friend did and the owner demanded to know where Jamie O’Reilly was. It turns out the guy was a massive Richmond fan, but I have to admit it’s something that happens every day.”
O’Reilly is a man of many interests outside of his day job. He is in the process of finishing the last year of his business degree that he started in Queen’s and has found plenty of things to amuse him in one of Australia’s most vibrant cities. “You know I’m into the weirdest things, you wouldn’t believe it. I have this personality that once I hear about something, I have to find out more. One of our players here came back from a trip to Asia and was talking all about Buddhist mediation and how it’s helped him relax for training, so I’ve started reading all about that. I obviously haven’t started practising it, but sure if you could only talk about football you’d become pretty dull very quickly.”
Interestingly, O’Reilly hasn’t felt the need to contact his former county teammate Martin Clarke for advice in the AFL. So far, everything has worked out extremely well. Part of O’Reilly’s success arguably derives from his reluctance to keep looking back at Ireland. “I do miss certain things like my family of course, but I said to my Dad before I came out here if I keep thinking about home it’s going to make me miserable and affect my football negatively so then the whole thing would be a waste of time. You’ve got to embrace the life and the culture here and then you start to enjoy it all that bit more.”
The last time O’Reilly was home in Loughinisland, he put in an appearance as an unlikely Santa Clause for his former club mates. He visited their houses and gave them as much Richmond Tigers merchandise as he could carry to say thank you for their support throughout the year. O’Reilly’s own Christmas list will be extremely simple this year, more AFL games and a few more kilograms of muscle will do just nicely.
http://www.richmondfc.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/6301/newsid/106553/default.aspx
