In the opening chapter of his terrific new book, Tony Óg Regan is attentive to first impressions. Nothing is Photoshopped or reflected through a filter; he describes himself through his experiences, bluntly. He wants you to know the part where he fell down, and the part where he got up, and the part in between where he was scrambling for a leg to stand on.
At the end of 2008 the pillars of his life collapsed in a cluster of earthquakes. He failed two papers in his final accountancy exams, which meant that he couldn’t continue in the practice where he had worked for four years. A month later a letter arrived from the Galway County Board to say that he had been cut from the senior hurling panel, firm and formal, like an eviction notice. Around that time he also suffered a relationship break-up.
Regan was about to turn 25. He felt that his identity had been stripped naked. Without an income he moved back home to live with his parents. Without the status of being an intercounty hurler his ambition had no horizons. The major funders of his self-worth went into liquidation.
“Three years previously you played in your first All-Ireland senior final and were nominated for an All Star. You had two or three job offers. Then you think how quickly things can be swept from underneath your feet. You feel ashamed. You’re going into the dole office on a Wednesday with your hood up. It just felt like I had failed in a lot of aspects of my life. It took a month or two to admit that to myself.
“I felt burnt out. I look back at what I was trying to manage: a professional career for the first time, professional exams, studying and lectures at weekends, and 30 hours a week of an intercounty career that was really taxing under the Ger Loughnane regime. I was 14½ stone [at my athletic peak] and I was down to 12 stone. The training we were doing didn’t suit my body type. I got injuries in those two years that I never had before. I just spent myself.
“I felt huge uncertainty and a loss of hope for a while. There was loneliness and isolation with no schedule, no routine, struggling to get out of bed. No purpose today.”
Over the next year Regan rebuilt his life. He worked with a physical therapist to restore his body and a sprint coach to gain half a yard. He was invited to join the Galway intermediate panel, and he swallowed the drop in grade with humility. He found some part-time work and passed his exams. He made a standing start from a dead stop.
At the end of 2009 he summoned the courage to approach John McIntyre, the Galway manager. A year earlier the boldness to do such a thing didn’t exist in him. They met for coffee and Regan made a pitch like it was a job interview. Twelve months after dropping him McIntyre was persuaded to give Regan a chance; a year later he made him vice-captain. For Regan the journey had been 360 degrees around his inner hemisphere.
For the last 10 years Regan has worked as a performance coach, in sport and in business. The book he has written is ostensibly about potential: its power, its elusiveness, how to chase it, what to do when you catch it. The relationship is abstract; the outcomes are what you fashion them.
There is a thread of autobiography through the book, but mostly Regan’s story is a case study. Very few people in this field have lived experiences as an elite sportsperson. Regan is intimate with the suffering.
“I competed in national finals at every age group, at times in front of 82,000 people,” he writes. “I had moments in my career where negative thoughts and feelings took over, and I choked in front of thousands of people.”
In sport “choked” is a taboo word. It describes the most virulent strain of weakness. Regan played for years on a Galway team that were labelled as “chokers” and every big-game defeat blindly perpetuated the stereotype whatever the reasons for losing might have been.
Regan wrote the book himself with the help of a writing coach rather than a ghostwriter. In that sentence there were a range of euphemisms open to him to convey the same thought, but, against himself, he chose the word that expressed it most fiercely.
“I probably chewed over it a few times,” he says. “It’s not a word I like, and it’s not a word I use with the teams I work with, but I think, after you finish [playing] there is a level of acceptance. You can admit these things.”
Early in his Galway career there were three experiences that were formative in ways that he only understood looking back. He won a minor All-Ireland as a 17-year-old in 2000, but was so overwhelmed by the occasion and his doubts that he sank without trace in Croke Park. Two years later he was taken off after 20 minutes in an All-Ireland under-21 hurling final; a year after that he lasted 27 minutes in a National League final. The pattern doubled as a commentary on him.
“After the league final you realise ‘there’s something not working here’. I built up that final to be something that it wasn’t. Next thing you know you have negative memories and negative energy from the other finals. You can’t see the ball, you’re not thinking clearly, you’re caught up in your head. You’re kind of emotionally hijacked and you’re no use to anyone.
“You realise that there’s something happening here, but I hadn’t the language around it, I hadn’t a means or a resource within the team to speak about it. I can remember losing matches and for two or three months just being in a low mood. I was in a depressed state. In our sports teams back then nobody talked about mental health or depression. In my workplace that time there was no such thing as workplace wellbeing.”
Over time he looked for solutions. He embraced visualisation and yoga and breathing techniques, gateway practices for training an athlete’s mind. He was introduced to good people: John McGuire, Gerry Hussey. He read widely. He was open to knowledge and learning. And change.
“I had these demons that I had to take on at different times. ‘You’re not good enough for this level’; ‘You’re not fast enough’; ‘You’re not strong enough’. And you had the knock-backs [in big matches] to reaffirm those thoughts. But you get back up and say, ‘No, I’m going to walk towards this because I know I can cut it at this level'.”
That thinking bled into other choice. When he was 29 Regan quit accountancy. He met Fran O’Reilly, a career coach with the GPA, and planned his exit. “I was thinking, ‘Am I going to sit at this desk for another five years?’ Another five months was going to be a challenge, that’s how honest I was with myself. I just wasn’t passionate about it. I was struggling to stay motivated.”
At the end of the same year, 2013, he was cut from the Galway panel for the last time. He didn’t see it coming. He pleaded with Anthony Cunningham to give him another chance, but Cunningham’s mind was made up.
Regan did a 20-week course in sports psychology and then enrolled in a masters in SETU Waterford. For his thesis he explored how sports people coped with leaving the arena, knowing how much he was struggling.
“Some players [processed it] in six weeks, some were six months, some go as long as three years. It definitely took me three years to overcome it. I remember being at the All-Ireland final in 2015 – I was working with the Galway minors the same day – and I felt like going at half time because the senior team were winning.
“I just felt I couldn’t sit there and maybe deal with them being successful and not being on the panel. I know that sounds like a selfish thing, but it would have been heartbreaking, after spending 10 years with that group not to have been part of that special moment.
“I got blocked off by one of the [minor] selectors and I stayed until the finish. (Galway lost). I really recognised that I still had work to do [with letting go] and that was a sign of it. In 2017 I was working with the minors again. We won the All-Ireland and the seniors won after us, but my heart was just open for joy that day.”
Over the last decade he has worked with a bunch of Galway teams, hurling and football; the Offaly hurlers; Ballygunner during their best years; and Oughterard on their greatest day in Croke Park.
In 2019, when Caroline Currid took a year out to have a baby, she recommended Regan to replace her with the Limerick hurlers. People told him that “he was on a hiding to nothing”, but he couldn’t understand that thinking. They won the Munster championship and the league that year and lost the All-Ireland semi-final by point. In his growth it was another spurt.
“If we just stay the same, and do the familiar, we’re probably only working at about 20 or 30 per cent of our potential. I love stuff now that stretches me. I try to find one or two things a week where I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know how it’s going to go. Having that open-mindedness as a coach and as a person, having that vulnerability is hugely important.”
The vulnerability was there from the beginning. The ownership changed.
– MVP: Raise Your Game, Unlock Your Potential, Tony Óg Regan, Hachette Books
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to the Counter Ruck podcast for the best rugby chat and analysis
