SIX MONTHS AGO, Sean Rigney was mentally preparing himself to undergo open heart surgery in Australia.
Last weekend, the tall lock scored a try for Young Munster against Terenure as the Cookies made it two wins from two to start the All-Ireland League season in style. Rigney is in the second row again today as they take on defending champions Cork Con at Temple Hill.
The 26-year-old says that there was one stage in Australia when he wasn’t sure he’d be here at all.
Tullamore man Rigney moved Down Under in February to play in the famous Shute Shield club competition and do a bit of work before returning home in September. He was hoping to enjoy a month of sightseeing on Australia’s east coast before leaving.
In the end, he couldn’t get out of Australia fast enough. Rigney’s not sure if he’ll ever go back.
He got stuck into life with his new club, Southern Districts, when he first arrived and was enjoying life in Cronulla, a southern suburb of Sydney. Warm-up games had gone well for him but everything suddenly changed just before league season got going after Easter weekend.
Rigney thought he was coming down with the flu. Looking back, he feels he was naive given that he had no cough or blocked nose. He trained on Tuesday and was vomiting by the next day. Rigney still trained on Thursday, feeling he needed to so soon before the Shute Shield started.
“I was dosed up on every sort of Lemsip I could find,” he says. “I actually felt better after, I thought I was on the pig’s back.”
The game on Saturday ended up being shifted to Sunday due to a flooded pitch but by then, Rigney had listened to his family’s pleas from back home in Ireland and gone to the hospital.
He was vomiting and dehydrated, had blurry vision, couldn’t walk steadily, almost felt like he had arthritis due to sore knees and shoulders. He had the sweats and rigors where he was shaking and felt freezing but actually had a fever. His appetite was gone.
Rigney says he fell in the door of the hospital and was immediately told he wouldn’t be leaving. They got him onto an IV and antibiotics – “it was like I had put on a pair of glasses because I could see properly again” – and started tests and scans.
It took a few anxious days before the devasting diagnosis was delivered. A bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus – known as MRSA or ‘golden staph’ – had reached Rigney’s heart and latched onto a valve, infecting it and essentially beginning to eat away at it.
The antibiotics didn’t seem to be having a big enough impact, so it was decided that Rigney would be moved to a new hospital in Randwick for surgery.
“They transferred me in an ambulance and sure I was never so embarrassed being rolled out in the bed,” says Rigney in what seems to be characteristically modest fashion.
His mother, Mary, had flown out to Australia as soon as it became clear something was wrong so she was with her son as they met a surgeon to discuss what the surgery might involve.
“All the options were bad,” says Rigney.
The surgeon explained that they could insert a mechanical valve in place of the infected one, but that would mean Rigney couldn’t play rugby again.
The second option was to use a bioprosthetic valve partially made of pig tissue. That might last 1o years in a normal person but the surgeon felt that with Rigney playing rugby, it would be only three or four.
The third option was to try and clean the infection off the original valve but there was no guarantee that would be successful.
The Rigneys were in tears as they listened to the options.
“Sure I thought I was going to die,” says Sean.
“They cut open your sternum for that surgery so I was very upset, it was very emotional. I thought I was going to die, for fuck’s suck. I wouldn’t be very expressive but I just wanted to get home – get me out of here.”
That meeting was on a Friday and the surgeon said to take the weekend to decide. But when Rigney came back in for fresh scans on Monday, there had been a change. Before he left the first hospital, they had upped his dose of antibiotics and now there seemed to have been an improvement.
It was decided that Rigney should wait and see. No one told him heart surgery was off the cards so it was still a horrific time not knowing what would happen but slowly the infection began to improve.
Rigney is thankful his mother was with him because she had worked as a nurse and also understood how important rugby was to him. Had Mary not been there, Rigney thinks he might have just pushed ahead with the surgery because he was so ill.
“She was massive in fighting for me when I was at my weakest,” he says.
Back at home on the family farm in Ballinagar, 10 miles outside Tullamore, his father, Larry, was waiting nervously for every update. Sean jokes that Larry is a man of action and wouldn’t have done well having to sit around in the hospital.
But there was huge relief as the improvement continued and Rigney was able to leave the hospital a week later.
They never figured out exactly when or how the infection happened but the golden staph bacteria got into his bloodstream and then latched onto the valve as it passed through.
The doctors believed Rigney’s fitness was a huge factor in his progress. A few years ago, the second row ran a 4:22 Bronco test, a startling time for a man who is just over 6ft 6ins. In fact, it’s among the best for any second row in world rugby. Not that Rigney himself offered this nugget – Young Munster head coach Ger Slattery gave that insight.
But Rigney appreciates how his fitness was crucial and thanks his father in that regard. Larry is a lifelong runner and Sean recounts how they used to get out for four- or five-mile runs together a few times a week when he was growing up, all on top of the farm work.
While this was happening in Sydney, there was a massive fundraising effort going on to help the Rigneys in their time of need.
Alan Fitzgerald, a Limerick man playing with Southern Districts, and his girlfriend Rachel had been hugely supportive in visiting Rigney in hospital, doing whatever they could. They went a step further in launching a GoFundMe page that ended up raising more than €30,000 to help cover Rigney’s medical expenses and all the associated costs.
Rugby clubs and players from all over Ireland lent their support and Rigney is genuinely lost for words when trying to explain what it meant to him as he lay in hospital worried for his life.
“I was blown away,” he says after a pause. “Alan asked me about doing it and I would usually be very private but it was immense. The way he organised it and did all the promotion… it’s hard to say what it means.
“It was unbelievable, the support and the reaction from home, all the messages. I would have needed a secretary to get back to everyone. Alan was immense even before my mother got there, whatever I needed. There were loads of clubs who were involved. I’m speechless really.”
There were lots of other visitors to the hospital – people he knew from home, former Young Munster men, and new Southern Districts team-mates among them. That was important at his lowest points.
Happily, the infection began to lose its battle in Rigney’s heart and he was allowed out of hospital. He still wasn’t in the clear and had to return every day for a month. The doctors fitted a PICC line into his bicep and he had to carry a bottle of antibiotics everywhere he went.
His knees were still sore but slowly, Rigney started taking short walks. Having lost around 13kg while he was in hospital, his appetite came roaring back.
“I thought I’d be years putting it back on but once I got my appetite back, I was like a pig at the trough,” he says.
By the start of June, the doctors delivered the news that Rigney was clear of the infection and could go about his life again.
“The second they gave me the all-clear, I was booking the flights to go home straight away,” he says.
“I had my fill of that place!”
He will continue to see a cardiologist in Tullamore to keep a close eye on things and there is a chance Rigney will need surgery at some stage for a repair job. That could be in a few years but his specialist has seen others go more than 20 years without needing it.
Rigney explains that the area of the valve that was infected is now “basically like two French doors but with the scar tissue, it doesn’t really close right so there’s a murmur on it” but he is feeling happy and fit again.
Having been given the green light to get back exercising, he started into some light weights at the end of June and helped with the farm work. He went down to Limerick for the first day of Young Munster’s pre-season, had no issues, and was unable to resist getting stuck back into it.
Having played with his home club of Tullamore even after going to the University of Limerick to study engineering, Rigney was asked to join the Cookies by now-Munster academy manager Gar Prendergast in 2019 and never looked back.
He got a job with Kirby Group Engineering after college and quickly became a key man for Young Munster. So Rigney is loving being back in the AIL and has made a strong start to the season, including that finish against Terenure.
“In the moment I thought I was moving rapid but looking back I’m not sure how I scored,” he says with a laugh. “I only ever really get one try a year so that’s me covered for the year now.”
After what he’s been through this year, Rigney isn’t taken anything for granted.
“I’m more relaxed now on match day,” he says. “You’d see some of the young lads and they’re very serious. I was probably like that. It puts things in perspective. Now, I do love winning and I’m very competitive but it puts things in perspective.
“It could be a lot worse when you see some of the outcomes you could have had. I’m just enjoying it.”
