‘I’m surprised it has taken so long for another Irish player’: Former NFL star Neil O’Donoghue on Daniel Whelan

Soldier Field, Chicago, December 1982. The Chicago Bears and the St Louis Cardinals, fourth quarter, game tied, wind chill of minus three. Neil O’Donoghue, a son of Clondalkin, enters the fray.

He nails a 48-yard field goal to earn the Cardinals a 10-7 victory. O’Donoghue would play three further seasons in the NFL, a career spanning nine years and three franchises: the Buffalo Bills, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Cardinals.

Last Sunday, sitting at home in Clearwater, Florida, O’Donoghue waited for Soldier Field to appear on his screen. Ireland’s last NFL player was keen to see the wheel finally turn.

“He seems like the real deal,” says O’Donoghue of Wicklow-born punter Daniel Whelan, who made his debut for the Green Bay Packers against the Bears last weekend.

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And O’Donoghue should know. In an extraordinary and incomparable sporting career, O’Donoghue played against Jimmy Barry-Murphy aka JBM at Croke Park, alongside OJ Simpson in Buffalo, featured in the landmark inaugural NFL game at Wembley, and kicked the field goal which sent the Bucs to the play-offs for the first time.

He’s 70 now and has been in the US for more than 50 years, but before we talk NFL he wants to chat about Ireland’s Rugby World Cup chances. He has views on Stephen Kenny, too. Opportunity might have seen him leave Ireland, but it is clear Ireland never truly left O’Donoghue.

Growing up, he played Gaelic football with the Round Tower GAA club. In 1971 he featured in an All-Ireland minor football semi-final against Cork at Croke Park. Among the Rebels was JBM, while John McCarthy was one of Dublin’s forwards. John’s son James captained Dublin to All-Ireland glory just two months ago.

O’Donoghue was also a talented soccer player and signed for Shamrock Rovers.

“My thing was sports, almost to a fault,” he says.

After school, while continuing to play for Rovers, he worked for CIÉ in the Heuston Station ticket office. It was a living, but it wasn’t the future he had imagined.

Then, in 1972, he was offered a soccer scholarship from St Bernard College in Alabama. At 19, he rolled the dice and followed his dream. However, when the college later hit financial difficulties, it pulled the soccer programme, leaving the six-foot-six O’Donoghue staring at a fork in the road, one of many at which he would stand. Adapt or die. He chose the former.

[ Wicklow native’s success with the Green Bay Packers no surprise to those who have coached him ]

“I had a pretty good leg on me, I’d been a free-taker with Towers all the way up. So, I taught myself how to kick a football over here.”

He was no scholar of American football; the first game he attended was a college encounter between Alabama and Auburn – a storied rivalry.

“The next game I saw live, I was playing in it,” he smiles. “That was quite the shock - ‘What am I doing, how did I land here?’”

He had turned up unannounced at Auburn, showed them what he could do, and they offered him their last football scholarship. He played there for three years and got drafted by the Bills.

And so began O’Donoghue’s journey as a place-kicker in the NFL. He made 110 regular season appearances, scoring 576 points (112 field goals and 240 extra points). He featured in the playoffs in 1979 and 1982.

On entering the Bills’ dressing room, one of the first players he met was Simpson.

“Juice comes up and asks where I’m from. He was like, ‘We’ll take care of you and make you the leading points scorer in the league.’

“OJ ran the show, he was the first superstar I met who transcended colour. He was on a different level - everybody wanted a piece of Juice.”

The Bills lost their first four fixtures in 1977 before O’Donoghue’s 30-yard field goal against Atlanta stopped the rot, the Bills winning 3-0. The following day he was released.

He feared that was it. One shot, five games, nothing but a lugubrious barstool story for down the road.

But then a lifebuoy was tossed from Tampa. He played two seasons with the Bucs until they signed legendary kicker Garo Yepremian for the 1980 campaign. O’Donoghue was cut again. Another fork.

“After that I figured my time was done. I got a job building condos on the beach. And I was okay with that - I’d had my chance.”

But a few weeks after the start of the 1980 season he was at work when word came of a call from Missouri.

At the time, Steve Little was the placekicker and punter for the Cardinals. A college football prodigy, two years earlier Little had become only the second kicker ever to be picked in the first round of the NFL draft. However, he had struggled to reproduce his collegiate form.

“There was a kick-off between the two of us to see who would get the job,” remembers O’Donoghue.

The Cardinals selected the kid from Dublin. Little was released.

“Steve was very decent afterwards, congratulated me and all that. I was staying at a Holiday Inn around the corner. He says, ‘Come on, I’ll show you around tonight.’”

O’Donoghue initially agreed but then pushed the sliding door closed.

“We were playing away in Washington that Sunday. ‘You know what, can I get a rain check on that?’” And they left it there.

In the early hours of the following morning, Little was seriously injured in a single-car accident.

“He was paralysed from the neck down,” says O’Donoghue. “The pressure of the NFL, that’s what it did to him. I’d been released twice, I knew what he was going through. I almost quit after that.”

Little was just 24. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and died in 1999. He is still the third-highest-drafted kicker in NFL history. O’Donoghue remained with the Cardinals until 1985.

[ From Shamrock Rovers to the NFL: the tale of Neil O’Donoghue ]

“Corny was one of the most talented underage players we ever had,” says resident Round Tower GAA club historian Tommy Keogh, who also coached O’Donoghue.

Corny, that’s who he was around Clondalkin – a Dublin abbreviation of his Christian name, Cornelius. The Americans went with Neil.

He was named after his uncle, Cornelius Horgan, who died while fighting in Italy during the second World War. Horgan’s sister Mary, a nurse, followed him to war.

“She was on the front line in north Africa, the nursing corps would have seen some horrific things but she never talked about the war, only that I was named after her brother,” explains her son.

Mary Horgan married Mick O’Donoghue and they had two boys. Coli, an architect who now lives in Wicklow, worked on the redevelopment of Croke Park. Mick, a talented sportsman who played hockey for Ireland, died when Neil was just 15.

Neil has three children. After football he worked for more than 20 years selling cars in Clearwater.

“I’m surprised it has taken so long for another Irish player,” he says of Whelan’s welcome breakthrough.

“He seems to be a good kid with a good attitude. He had a 49-yard average last weekend, which is exceptional. If he can maintain that average, and with good hang-time, then he is going to be around for a while.

“He could play for 10 to 12 years if he takes care of himself.”

As for his own career, the final match in the 1979-80 regular season stands out. The Bucs needed to win only one of their last four games that year to make the playoffs for the first time, but they lost three on the bounce, leaving them in a last chance saloon against Kansas in December 1979.

A monsoon had rolled in over Tampa beforehand and the game was played in atrocious conditions – part mudpit, part paddling pool. It was scoreless entering the fourth quarter.

“We were a young team, swashbucklers, for us to get to the playoffs was huge. It came down to a field goal. People still come up and say, ‘I was there when you scored that day.’” The Bucs won 3-0.

They progressed through the playoffs before losing to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship showdown – just one match shy of the Super Bowl.

“Obviously you feel there were times you could have done better, wish you had done this or that, but the goal I had, I achieved,” says O’Donoghue. “Overall, I had a good career.”

He is planning a trip to Ireland soon – catch up with his brother, see old friends, spend some time in Dublin, head out west to Spiddal.

“We used to go over to Connemara every year as kids. We had great times there, as we did growing up in Clondalkin. It’s funny how as you get older you seem to get drawn back to the places you remember from when you were younger.”

At various times in his life he played the part of a Bill, a Buc, a Cardinal. But Neil O’Donoghue was a Dub first.