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Making Tracks

As the final whistle blew on the Irish Men’s 7s programme, Matt McDonald lingered in the High Performance Centre, slowly packing up his things. Silence had begun to settle over the building as his teammates moved on with their lives, and with the stillness came a rush of memories.

Back in his bedroom, a World Cup bronze medal lies tucked away in a drawer. He’s fairly sure there’s a photo somewhere of the team that qualified for the Olympic Games too. And woven through it all is the quiet satisfaction of having played his part in Ireland’s unprecedented rise on the SVNS Series.

Born in South Africa, McDonald had crossed continents with the dream of representing the home of his grandparents. Proudly, he had achieved that feat. But now, as he clung to the fading moments as a professional athlete, a question also lingered: what now?

“The last few weeks were weird,” McDonald says, as he reflects on the Men’s 7s last days in Abbottstown. “We were usually a very electric bunch of lads but the vibe was very low and deflated. I’d describe it like a coke gone flat. The fizz had gone out of us.”

In a sport where resilience is currency, emotional processing often takes a backseat. For McDonald and his teammates, it was time to park their 7s adventure.  

“As guys, we tend to just get on with things, don’t we?” he suggests. “The ending of the programme was a bit like the elephant in the room. Even though there was an idea that something was going to happen, we didn’t really speak about it.

“By the end, I think everyone found that the HPC was actually bit of an escape from the uncertainty of it all. In the background I was helping a few of them pull their highlights reels together and stuff. You could tell everyone was a bit distracted trying to figure out what to do next.

“I was in a different boat myself, but I felt it’d be a real shame if some of these really talented guys didn’t find something. I wanted to help them in whatever way I could.”

Having battled with injury in recent months, the attentions of the Johannesburg-born player had already begun to shift towards life after rugby. While that didn’t make the news any easier to stomach, he accepts the IRFU’s decision may have hit him a little less harder than others.

It nevertheless proved to be a sobering end to an eventful rugby career that almost never began, given McDonald’s prodigious cricketing talents.

“I actually got a scholarship to High School as a cricketer but fell in love with rugby while I was there,” he says. “It wasn’t a top rugby school though so we flew under the radar a bit and as a result I never got picked up. I stopped playing for a while after that.

“I went away to university and drinking with my mates became the priority.”

The result was a downward spiral. McDonald was soon failing courses, lacking fitness, and losing direction before his father stepped in.

“I got myself into a pretty bad state to be honest with you, and so my dad decided he was going to get me out of the hole I was in and brought me on a trip to see the Lions play New Zealand in 2017,” he recalls.

Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Billy Stickland

“We were in Wellington for the second test and the atmosphere was nothing like I’d ever experienced before. Thousands of fans shouting ‘LIONS! LIONS! LIONS!’ as Sam Warburton led them out in the rain and through these massive torches of fire, and I just thought to myself, ‘this is it. This is what I want to do.’”

It’s not that McDonald ever expected to play his part in a Lions series. However, it did flick a switch in his head.

“I sometimes wonder whether my Dad knew what he was doing when he took me on that trip,” he reflects. “He went to considerable expense but we had loads of quality time together to talk things through and enjoy a bit of rugby.

“At the time I was a bit resentful of the game because I felt that I’d never received the recognition I deserved as a player. Like, I didn’t even make The Bulls’ U18 D team.

“My dad was the one who saw through it. He was the one person who never doubted my abilities. He knew that I could achieve whatever I put my mind to. ‘Just because it hasn’t been seen, doesn’t mean it’s not there,’ he’d say.

“So from drinking and partying five nights in the week at college, putting on weight and failing exams, I got my shit together. I stopped messing around. I worked harder at class. I went to the gym. I worked on my fitness, my kicking, my passing. My life did a full 180.”

McDonald & Charlie Tector on a TYF Schools visit

A social animal by nature, McDonald’s head was always expected to pop up at some stage during a night out. So when he turned down a big event at the height of the South African party season in December, he braced for backlash. Instead, he was taken aback when his drinking pals raised a glass to his commitment. 

He took further steps to escape the noose of his reputation by considering a year abroad. With family roots in both Mayo and Dublin, in addition to the country’s strong rugby culture, Ireland was an obvious destination and so he had a think about who might be able to help him open doors.

“I connected with Angus Curtis who played with Ulster to get a better idea of the rugby landscape here. Unfortunately, he had to retire early through injury and I’ve never been able to meet him but he was very helpful because he gave me the final push I needed. He told me to give it a shot and that I had nothing to lose.”

McDonald also had nothing to show. With limited footage of him in action, he drove from school to school in the Gauteng province collecting old clips and piecing together a highlights reel with whatever he could find.

“At the time Rassie Erasmus was with Munster and a club contact told me to send a clip down there,” he recalls. “Somehow it crossed George Murray’s desk and he encouraged me to come to Limerick and play with UL Bohs for the season.

“I never thought about the weather though,” McDonald admits. “Back then I was a scrum-half and I think I’d only ever played twice in the rain before so that was a steep learning curve!”

As he struggled to adjust to the inclement conditions, McDonald was becoming increasingly acquainted with the substitutes bench until an injury to the UL Bohs’ fullback gave him an unexpected opportunity. McDonald was summoned to fill the void.

“They literally threw me on, and I stayed there for a run of games including the big one against Shannon. On a Friday night under the lights, I managed to run in an intercept try from about 70m.

“It plays out like a slow-motion replay in my head. The ball bounced around the tips of my fingers for a few moments before I gathered it and I often think if I’d dropped it, my chance in Ireland might never have materialised because that’s how my name started to get out there.”

His impressive club form duly earned a call from Noel McNamara and the Irish U20s. However, given his relative inexperience as a back-three player, his stint was not a long one. Nevertheless, as his GAP year came to an end and he returned to Johannesburg to take up a rugby scholarship at the University of Witwatersrand, he knew he wasn’t too far off the standard. 

And so as McDonald lined out in the prestigious Varsity Cup, he nailed his colours firmly to the mast. An Irish flag adorned the screensaver on his phone on which he’d religiously watch clips of Brian O’Driscoll on YouTube, while after training each day he’d douse several worn rugby balls in water to simulate Irish conditions.

His performances in the Varsity Cup also ensured he remained on the Irish radar and following his star-turn in Witwatersrand’s march to the final, IQ coach Joe Lydon informed him that the IRFU had been back in contact.

“Initially I was invited up to Dublin for a two-week trial,” he reveals, “but somewhere along the line they came across Zac Ward and Fergus Jemphries so they got back in touch to say that they’d only need me for a few days, and that I wouldn’t be travelling to the Elche 7s as I’d been told.

“So I picked up the phone to Anthony Eddy and said ‘no, it’s not happening like that. I’ll be going to Elche.’ It worked! And even though I got injured during the tournament I think that phonecall and the bit of grit I’d shown in training was enough to convince them to have another look.”

Having worked hard for his contract, McDonald ensured to make his mark on the programme. Though his time was punctuated by injury, he seized several opportunities to impress not least beating his homeland in their own backyard at the Rugby World Cup 7s in Cape Town. He’s not sure anything could top it, and yet he’ll try.

“For quite a while I’d been thinking about the future but it’s fair to say I also began to overthink it too. I was probably a bit afraid that I’d let old the old habits and temptations slip back in and I began to rush the process a bit.

“I was determined to find something that could fulfil me the way rugby did, something that allowed me to be the best version of myself.

“The answer was right in front of me.”

McDonald’s rugby career has long been intertwined with music. When he crossed the globe to pursue his dream, music helped him to touch base with home. His preference for ‘summer house’ was always more suited to the sunny climes of Pretoria than Castletroy.

An advocate for meditation, McDonald would also take a few moments each day sitting alone with his headphones and thoughts, losing himself in ambient sounds as he visualised his game.

“Sport has always been everything to me, and I like to think the same energies and feelings wrap around music,” he says. “In my world, one always leaned into the other because the music helped me to get into a flow state, and helped me to perform on the field.

“Playing a set is a bit like preparing for a match,” he adds. “But the nerves are something else. As a DJ, you’re completely exposed… there’s no team to fall back on. In that sense, it’s a totally different pressure. But rugby taught me how to hold my nerve, and there’s nothing like the euphoric release when it all comes together.”

For someone who once threatened to drift aimlessly through his young life before hustling his way into professional rugby, it’s no surprise that McDonald has thrown himself into his next act with similar determination.  

Indeed, to record some content to help launch his new career, he recently lugged equipment around Lough Tay and perched himself above the famous Guinness Lake before sending sounds across the Wicklow Mountains. It was a bold move. But bold is nothing new to him. 

“There are certain things in life that are worth the risk, aren’t there?” he says with a grin. “I like to back myself and take a leap of faith now and then. If it doesn’t come off then, in the very least, you take a few lessons from the experience.

“I know it’s a saturated market but the way I see it, let’s get something out there. Let’s see what the reaction is. Let’s see where it leads to. It might be someone’s 21^st birthday party, it might be Ibiza… who knows. You have to try.”

McDonald has spent much of his 27 years embracing the unknown. Yet now, as he trades the buzz of the 7s circuit for the pulse of the dancefloor, it seems the question about what happens next no longer hangs in the air. He’s all in.

And besides, it was never just about the outcome. It was always about who he became with every leap of faith.