LOOKING AHEAD HAS always been a much more natural setting for Luke Fitzgerald than peering at what has passed.
For a man who has been plagued by injury throughout his career, his out and out positivity has always felt infectious.
It’s how he battled back from so many knee, groin and abdominal injuries time and again to push for honours at the highest level.
With his retirement, his roll of honour has a full stop, and it’s a list that most rugby players with more than a fair share of seasons under their belt would bite an arm off for (we’ll be as brief as we can be): Six Nations champion, Test Lion, European champion, 34 international caps and over 140 for his home province.
Yet Fitzgerald’s positive outlook isn’t something he developed along the way as a pro, the superstar schoolboy had it in spades. And he expected more himself.
“When I look back (now) I realise it was very successful, but coming out of school at 18 I had incredibly high (expectations). I would have expected that to be a middle ground,” the 28-year-old said at today’s launch of Eir Sport in Dublin today.
“I always felt, with the crop I grew up with, we always should have been winning those things. We should have won every year, we should have won doubles, I was disappointed we never got to do that.
Coming in, I had this incredibly inflated opinion of myself, thinking I was going to be the difference. I always felt that about myself: ‘if I’m playing I’m going to make the difference here’, which didn’t always turn out to be the case.”
A weaker-minded man might have realised that he wasn’t going to be the game-breaker after about 10 minutes of the Pro12 final defeat to Connacht. Fitzgerald later found that he had torn hie medial ligament after 10 minutes. He continued.
Before half an hour was up, he had suffered the final injury of his professional career. A neck injury was the one — out of the long, long list of other strains, tweaks, tears and ruptures he’s suffered — that finally forced him to hang up his boots. He continued.
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Fitzgerald played the full excruciating 80 minutes of Connacht’s day in the sun, putting his presence on the field down to one simple reason: “it’s a final.”
“When you get over a few hurdles you always feel, that’s you done, the bad luck is out of the way.
“For it to end the way it did, an innocuous enough tackle where I got tackled by one guy and fell into another guy’s hip and that’s it… I played on for a bit more, but I had a feeling it was pretty bad. Searing pain at the time and I knew it was different.”
“You could see I was throwing a couple of wobbly passes because I was throwing with one hand. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong – I don’t know why your mind convinces you it’s something different, it took until I saw the surgeon, and once he said you can’t play, then I knew it was an easy decision to make. I just followed doctor’s orders.”
The eir Sport Pack is now free to all existing and new eir broadband customers. Customers can access this content via their TV platform or the device of their choice. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
After untold hours spent rehabbing injuries, after he could often be seen on dressing room camera footage doing core warm-ups while team-mates were still in street clothes, the decision was finally out of Fitzgerald’s hands. He would have happily worked through any programme he was given to recover, but this time there was no road back. Stopping was the only course of action left.
“I didn’t say it right there and then (in the surgeon’s office). It takes a bit of time to let it marinate a bit, let it sit with you and get comfortable with it.
“It did make it easier that it was taken out of my hands to a certain extent. It’s still disappointing to end it there, especially when you feel you’ve more to give. The only thing I would say as a silver lining is that I’m at a good age still to get involved in the workplace. I’ve got a lot of skills that are transferable from rugby.”
And there’s the Fitzgerald step, off one path and back onto the road ahead.
His options remain wide open, he enjoyed his recent outings as a pundit on Sky, but certainly won’t limit his horizons to picking up a microphone on matchdays.
Tough it out
“One thing that makes it easier is that I never thought of myself as just a rugby player,” he says.
“Most of my friends are outside of rugby and they’ve kept me in touch with what they’re all doing. That gives me a a grounding in what different jobs, a normal job you might say, is like. So I’ve been able to see that.
“Ending it now probably leaves me in a stronger position than if I was 34 or 35 without much of a plan and a couple of kids to support. I’m at a nice stage where I can look after myself and take my time to decide what I want to do next, make sure it’s the right thing to do and tough it out if needs be.”
Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
“I think rugby can make you tough in the workplace and well able to deal with ups and downs. I don’t think the swings are as quick; you make a mistake on Monday and you’re not going to be in the paper on Tuesday getting absolutely rinsed. It’s more of a marathon, I suppose, than a sprint. There are going to be challenges, but I think I’d be suitable to any workplace.”
The Blackrock gaeilgeoir won’t be short of offers from media or any other sector. But he’ll happily fold away his old CV, sit down at the same desk he wrote his parting words for Leinster’s press release and type up a new one.
“Looking back, I’m definitely happy with the honours list. I was able to be part of a lot of successful teams and I was able to fulfill my potential to a certain extent.
“Injuries held me back at certain points and maybe I’ll never know how good I could have been, but I was pretty good and I feel pretty good about moving on to the next challenge.”
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'I always felt, if I’m playing I’m going to make the difference' -- Luke Fitzgerald
LOOKING AHEAD HAS always been a much more natural setting for Luke Fitzgerald than peering at what has passed.
For a man who has been plagued by injury throughout his career, his out and out positivity has always felt infectious.
It’s how he battled back from so many knee, groin and abdominal injuries time and again to push for honours at the highest level.
With his retirement, his roll of honour has a full stop, and it’s a list that most rugby players with more than a fair share of seasons under their belt would bite an arm off for (we’ll be as brief as we can be): Six Nations champion, Test Lion, European champion, 34 international caps and over 140 for his home province.
Yet Fitzgerald’s positive outlook isn’t something he developed along the way as a pro, the superstar schoolboy had it in spades. And he expected more himself.
“When I look back (now) I realise it was very successful, but coming out of school at 18 I had incredibly high (expectations). I would have expected that to be a middle ground,” the 28-year-old said at today’s launch of Eir Sport in Dublin today.
“I always felt, with the crop I grew up with, we always should have been winning those things. We should have won every year, we should have won doubles, I was disappointed we never got to do that.
A weaker-minded man might have realised that he wasn’t going to be the game-breaker after about 10 minutes of the Pro12 final defeat to Connacht. Fitzgerald later found that he had torn hie medial ligament after 10 minutes. He continued.
Before half an hour was up, he had suffered the final injury of his professional career. A neck injury was the one — out of the long, long list of other strains, tweaks, tears and ruptures he’s suffered — that finally forced him to hang up his boots. He continued.
Fitzgerald played the full excruciating 80 minutes of Connacht’s day in the sun, putting his presence on the field down to one simple reason: “it’s a final.”
“When you get over a few hurdles you always feel, that’s you done, the bad luck is out of the way.
“For it to end the way it did, an innocuous enough tackle where I got tackled by one guy and fell into another guy’s hip and that’s it… I played on for a bit more, but I had a feeling it was pretty bad. Searing pain at the time and I knew it was different.”
“You could see I was throwing a couple of wobbly passes because I was throwing with one hand. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong – I don’t know why your mind convinces you it’s something different, it took until I saw the surgeon, and once he said you can’t play, then I knew it was an easy decision to make. I just followed doctor’s orders.”
After untold hours spent rehabbing injuries, after he could often be seen on dressing room camera footage doing core warm-ups while team-mates were still in street clothes, the decision was finally out of Fitzgerald’s hands. He would have happily worked through any programme he was given to recover, but this time there was no road back. Stopping was the only course of action left.
“I didn’t say it right there and then (in the surgeon’s office). It takes a bit of time to let it marinate a bit, let it sit with you and get comfortable with it.
“It did make it easier that it was taken out of my hands to a certain extent. It’s still disappointing to end it there, especially when you feel you’ve more to give. The only thing I would say as a silver lining is that I’m at a good age still to get involved in the workplace. I’ve got a lot of skills that are transferable from rugby.”
And there’s the Fitzgerald step, off one path and back onto the road ahead.
His options remain wide open, he enjoyed his recent outings as a pundit on Sky, but certainly won’t limit his horizons to picking up a microphone on matchdays.
Tough it out
“One thing that makes it easier is that I never thought of myself as just a rugby player,” he says.
“Most of my friends are outside of rugby and they’ve kept me in touch with what they’re all doing. That gives me a a grounding in what different jobs, a normal job you might say, is like. So I’ve been able to see that.
“Ending it now probably leaves me in a stronger position than if I was 34 or 35 without much of a plan and a couple of kids to support. I’m at a nice stage where I can look after myself and take my time to decide what I want to do next, make sure it’s the right thing to do and tough it out if needs be.”
“I think rugby can make you tough in the workplace and well able to deal with ups and downs. I don’t think the swings are as quick; you make a mistake on Monday and you’re not going to be in the paper on Tuesday getting absolutely rinsed. It’s more of a marathon, I suppose, than a sprint. There are going to be challenges, but I think I’d be suitable to any workplace.”
The Blackrock gaeilgeoir won’t be short of offers from media or any other sector. But he’ll happily fold away his old CV, sit down at the same desk he wrote his parting words for Leinster’s press release and type up a new one.
“Looking back, I’m definitely happy with the honours list. I was able to be part of a lot of successful teams and I was able to fulfill my potential to a certain extent.
“Injuries held me back at certain points and maybe I’ll never know how good I could have been, but I was pretty good and I feel pretty good about moving on to the next challenge.”
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