‘You still wake up some mornings and you don’t believe it’s all over’

It is early evening in Sydney, and the rain is tumbling down.

Colin O’Riordan is negotiating the traffic as it snakes slowly out of the city. Just over a month ago, a chronic hip condition forced him to announce his retirement from Australian Rules. He will turn 27 next Wednesday.

“I’ve started to come to terms with it more in recent weeks, but you still wake up some mornings and you don’t believe it’s all over,” admits O’Riordan.

He lives close to Centennial Park, just a decent punt away from the Sydney Cricket Ground. Last week, driven by a mixture of frustration and determination, he went for a jog.

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“I just wanted to see where I was at, but when I woke up the next morning I knew I was still well off it, so it probably reaffirmed that my decision was the right one,” he says.

Truth be told, O’Riordan has been managing his hips since his days playing with Tipperary. If there were gold cards handed out for frequent visitors to Tipp physio Paddy O’Brien, O’Riordan would have accumulated a tidy bullion.

He always knew it would catch up with him eventually, but until now he was able to manage it, able to outrun it, carving out a seven-year professional career with Sydney Swans during which he played 34 matches. His last game was against Port Adelaide on June 18th. The hip had been niggling that evening. He was sore, but there were no thoughts that it was the end.

And then the simple things in life became increasingly more difficult. Putting on shoes was a task of physical capability; coughing and sneezing sent shards of pain shooting through his body. The anti-inflammatories helped, but they were merely masking the reality.

“I have a little lump on my hip, on the joint, but it’s a weird one because the left hip is actually diagnosed as the worst, but all of the pain is in the right hip,” he says.

“It got to the stage where I just couldn’t function. I can’t say it came on me suddenly, but at the same time it kind of did, because I had been playing and then it just fell off a cliff. I had been chatting with my partner, Louise, for four or five weeks. She knew I was in a lot of pain. Eventually, I woke up one morning and said to her: ‘I think I need to go have a chat with the doc.’”

My passion in life is playing. The realisation that it can be taken away from you in an instant and there’s not much you can do about it . . . it’s devastation

It soon became clear that O’Riordan’s season was cooked, but in that moment it also dawned on him that he might no longer be able to outrun the problem. He weighed up the risk-reward as to what his body and life post-football would be like if he continued playing. He spoke with specialists. It was over.

“Sadness and devastation,” he says. “Every kid’s dream is to play professional sport. You’re at the highest level and suddenly you come crashing down to earth. You’re like, ‘Right, I’m not going to play this ever again and what are the chances of me playing any elite sport ever again?’

“There was probably a two-week period there where it was mostly devastation. I love sport, that’s all I’ve done for my whole life, it’s my passion. My passion in life is playing. The realisation it can be taken away from you in an instant and there’s not much you can do about it . . . it’s devastation.”

He told family and friends first, but the hardest act was addressing the players and telling them he was done. There was no going back then.

“That was probably the toughest thing I have ever done in my life, to be honest,” he says. “To stand up in front of your peers and team-mates and tell them you are leaving, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel emotion.

“There were tears. You’re up there crying like a baby, everybody’s looking at you, you could hear a pin drop in the room. But I’ve always said if you see somebody talking passionately or crying, the only reason they get that emotional is because they care. And that’s the bottom line, I care for the place.

“It was a surreal experience, you don’t want to make that speech, nobody wants to make that speech, but the reality is everybody is going to make it. Unfortunately, it came to me a bit earlier than I would have liked.”

The club ensured that O’Riordan remained involved for the Grand Final. He was at training every day, doing whatever he could to help. Geelong ran out 133-52 winners, in an encounter O’Riordan says that Sydney Swans “just didn’t show up for at all, we probably had our worst game for four or five years, and we had it on the biggest day on the biggest stage”.

Despite his personal despondency, O’Riordan understood the night would forever be remembered differently by two other Irishmen in the MCG. So he made his way over to the Geelong dressing-room, listened to the singing and celebrations, and sought out Zach Tuohy and Mark O’Connor.

“There is a massive Irish connection with the lads who come out here,” he says. “So I just wanted to congratulate them, you are obviously very disappointed but at the same time you can appreciate what they had achieved and what it means to them.”

Tuohy’s achievement is particularly impressive, and O’Riordan understands more than most the journey the Laois man has been on in Australia.

“It is incredible what he has done. He is arguably one of the best sportspeople Ireland has produced, it’s incredible what he has done. I’m not sure if people at home realise how hard it is to do what he has done and to succeed the way he has.”

“I’m a competitive person, and sport is everything to me. I’d love to come back and give something a go again, whatever that might be

And now to the future. O’Riordan has always preferred to manage his hip condition conservatively, staying away from surgery – where the lump could be shaved off. In 2019 he visited Enda King in Santry Sports Clinic and reckons that what he learned there extended his AFL career by three years.

“You can shave it and get more range and it might reduce pain somewhere, but you can’t regrow cartilage,” he says. “The reality with me is, there is not much cartilage left, if any. So it might have a detrimental impact, it might mess you up completely, and suddenly you are going for a hip replacement within the next couple of years.”

O’Riordan cannot say enough good things about Sydney Swans. In them, he found a home from home, a proper club. His club. A club that allowed him to fulfil a lifetime ambition of becoming a professional sportsman, and also facilitated that other lifetime ambition of winning a Munster senior football title with Tipperary. In 2021, he won the Best Clubman award with the Swans.

The club have put together a personalised rehab programme for O’Riordan and told him that whatever he needs to get himself right over the next few years, they will provide it. “They really do have a sense of care to a player, they have been incredible through it all,” he says.

There might yet be a role for him somewhere with Sydney Swans, but either way the plan is to remain in Australia for now. The club always encouraged him to further his studies and he completed a commerce degree this year.

“We’re happy here, we love it,” he says. “We have a great tight-knit community of close friends. Since we came over, we fell in love with the city and the people here.

“People always ask me, ‘Will it ever be home?’ You can’t really answer it, but at the same time I’ve been here since I was 19, my whole adult life has been here. I’m not saying we are going to stay here forever, but while we are both in our mid-twenties, we’re pretty happy with the lifestyle here, to be honest.”

Gradually, week by week, the pain has been easing too. The rehab is working. The road ahead is uncertain, for it is yet to be travelled. But playing for JC Brackens or Tipperary again? Well, maybe.

“I’d be silly to say I wouldn’t like to do any of that stuff,” O’Riordan says. “I’m a competitive person, and sport is everything to me. I’d love to come back and give something a go again, whatever that might be.

“I’ll rehab it for a while first, and get it right. I’m not going to say I’m not going to play again, but I’m not going to say I will play again, either. It’s a case of wait and see. I just want to get it right first, that’s probably where the head is with that at the minute.”

The immediate plan is to do some travelling next month, taking in Fiji, before an extended break in Ireland. O’Riordan will be home for Christmas, but also – by accident rather than design – back for the presentation of Tipperary’s 2020 Munster SFC medals. The ceremony was fixed and postponed a couple of times in the past, but the stars have aligned for it to now coincide with his trip home.

“It was meant to be last year, but got cancelled,” says O’Riordan. “I don’t know who is looking down on me, or who is arranging everything that I can attend all of these things, but somebody is, it seems somebody wants me there.”

It is late evening now in Sydney. The rain has eased. Tomorrow will be a brighter day.