News

“You Can’t Just Tape Up the Head”

There’s a kind of silence that comes after the final whistle of a big game. It’s not the tidy silence of peace, but the hollowed-out kind that comes when the body is emptied and the mind hasn’t yet caught up. The din of the crowd may linger but inside players’ heads, it fades to a hum.

Rónan Kelleher knows that silence well. It’s a feeling he can also draw on during a game. Whenever the ball finds touch in his team’s favour, he welcomes a brief pocket of solitude and focus in otherwise chaotic circumstances.

For a few seconds, it’s just him, the ball and his target before the world rushes back in as the ball leaves his hands. Then it’s back to the engine room, where the grunts, the roars, and the commands may reach only a select few but ring loudest until the next whistle cuts through.

A lot of noise can accompany the life of a rugby player, and in recent years it has only grown louder. Kelleher, though, has been trying to pay more attention to the quieter moments. It is there he meets the thoughts and doubts that every honest player encounters. At first he chose to shut them out; now he’s learning to listen, and to find meaning in their arrival.

It’s led him to become one of a new generation of players stepping forward to talk about something that doesn’t make the headlines: mental wellbeing. As part of the Tackle Your Feelings (TYF) campaign, Kelleher wants people to be as serious about minding their heads as they are about their gym sessions, with a particular focus on students.

“For me, getting involved with TYF is about raising awareness and encouraging people to stay on top of their mental wellbeing,” Kelleher says of his involvement with the campaign. “The main thing is that it’s not just about reaching people who are struggling with something, it’s about reminding everyone that stuff will happen to all of us, and there are ways to be ready for it.”

Like a lot of sporty young lads at school, Kelleher admits that he tended to be largely unmoved by the well-meaning messaging about mental health awareness that filtered through assemblies and decorated the classrooms at St. Michael’s College. Across the country, students of that age are a notoriously tough nut to crack.

“In fairness to my school, they were strong on mental health and wellbeing and we had some great speakers over the years,” he acknowledges. “But honestly? It probably went in one ear and straight out the other.

“I didn’t think that sort of stuff affected me, so I tuned out pretty quickly. I didn’t even want to be seen to be paying attention to it. I was more concerned about training that afternoon and all the other things that occupy the mind of a teenager.”

It might seem somewhat ironic then that it was only when he started to scale the heights of men’s rugby and that supposed bastion of machismo, that he began to understand what those talks were really about. The higher the level, the higher the stakes and with it came more noise from social media, from endless analysis, and even from his own expectations. All of it makes it harder to hear yourself think.

“Like any young lad living out his dream, I was a bit swept up in the excitement of becoming a professional rugby player at first,” he concedes. “There’s nothing wrong with riding that wave for a while, as long as you know that the hard work is really only beginning.

“That’s when the mental side of things, and how much it affects performance, really started to hit home for me. Talent only gets you so far at this level and I found that the better I felt mentally, the better I played. It’s simple, really. If your head is in a good place, everything else tends to follow.”

These days, Kelleher’s proactive approach to the mind is no longer the exception. It is an accepted part of dressing room culture which has learned that looking after the mind is an important form of preparation.

In his contributions to TYF, Kelleher’s teammate Tadhg Furlong referenced how ten years ago a player would have been ‘laughed out of the building’ if he said he was going to do a meditation. However, the experienced Irish prop acknowledged that these days mindfulness is just as important as the physical training.

Times have clearly changed. Dressing rooms are a far cry from the sanctums of stoicism that once defined the sport. If something was on your mind back then, it was easier to bury it under a joke or into a tackle. Now Kelleher suggests that all the squads he has been part of are very different. They are open, talkative, and supportive.

Even when he linked up with the British & Irish Lions last summer and found himself in a melting pot of big personalities, he found that they all had their own methods for keeping the mind steady. Having also toured with the squad in 2021, Kelleher noted how the space has developed.

“It’s come on a lot in the last few years,” he says. “There’s a lot more open dialogue now. There’s no stigma about chatting to a sports psychologist or therapist anymore. It’s become part of the job.

“I also found it interesting how everyone had their own way of handling things. Some lads loved the mindfulness and group sessions, others preferred their own space. Guys were quite open about what works for them and everyone was picking up tips from each other here and there.

“I have a few basic breathing exercises and mindful routines I practice before a game,” he reveals. “They help me before find the right balance between focus and calm before a game. Some people might call them superstitions, but I call them ‘processes.’

“I suppose it goes to show that there’s no one right way to look after yourself. People change, techniques change, and what works for you now might not work later. It’s an ongoing process, and that makes it a really interesting space to explore.”

While Kelleher places clear importance on mental preparation, he avoids overcomplicating it. For him, it’s less about the theory and more about the people around him.

“I lean heavily on them,” he says of his family, friends and girlfriend. “The nature of rugby means it can take over a bit. I know it’s my job but I also understand that it doesn’t have to be who I am. They are all great for getting me out of the bubble because to them, Rónan Kelleher the rugby player came after everything else.

“I don’t mean that we always have these big deep conversations or anything,” he clarifies. “I think it’s just being around them and dipping into their worlds for a while. Sometimes a walk, coffee or having a laugh is therapy too, in their own way. It’s what keeps me grounded.”

Kelleher’s openness to the topic is one, he is at pains to say, that hasn’t developed overnight. Instead, it’s been a meandering journey with different insights picked up over time. He’s no preacher, but he knows what he’d say to his 16-year-old self.

“Firstly,” he says with a grin, “I’d probably tell him to stop stressing about everything. It’s grand… it’ll work out. In fairness, problems are often relative to the age you’re at. They feel huge at the time, but you’re too afraid to talk about them to realise they’re not.

“When I was younger, and this is the kind of thing we’re trying to get at, if you talked about something like your mental health, people thought you were a bit crazy or something. So you bottled things up instead of getting the help you needed to sort it out.

“The way I see it now, there are kids everywhere who dream of playing sport at the highest level, and they know well that you wouldn’t wait for a muscle to tear before you start stretching. So why wait for your head to go before you look after it?

“Like anyone, I have my good days and I have my bad ones too. That’s life. I think TYF has an important role in encouraging us to get a base so that when the bad days hit, we’ve an idea of how to deal with them.”

And for him, starting somewhere means speaking out and normalising the idea that toughness isn’t that old dressing room habit, and pretending you’re grand. It’s about making sure your head gets the same attention you’d give a sprain or a bruise. 

“You can’t just tape up the head,” he says. “You have to look after it.”