Jerry Cahir never doubted that he could be a professional rugby player, but it’s been a circuitous route from Roscrea via Old Belvedere, Trinity, Lansdowne and Leinster to joining Connacht this summer.
Sometimes, he thinks of the days he was, as he puts it, “drowning” in the All-Ireland League (AIL) at scrum time.
Two days stand out.
The first was his debut for Trinity at the start of the 2022-23 season.
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“I was just coming back from injury. I had torn my hamstring clean off the bone. It was a nasty, nasty injury, but I was very confident, borderline cocky going into the game. I was [taken] off after 25 minutes!”
Tony Smeeth was his coach and Cahir admits: “Tony gave me so much help and support. He probably did me a favour taking me off because it saved me a yellow.”
The second day that stands out was his debut for Lansdowne at the start of the 2024-25 season away to Garryowen.
“We would have been confident going into it and they gave us some hiding. And ‘Fassie’, Declan Fassbender, who also gave me the right level of harshness and pressure, had me off after 20 minutes. I was like, ‘Feck, this is a trend here now’.
“But all of a sudden, I became quite comfortable in my last two seasons in the AIL. I never had any doubt in myself. Then, coming to this level, I’m also thinking, ‘you could be drowning here, but keep working, develop, learn’. I got that mentality through playing club rugby.”
He had even considered moving to Spain and Japan but is glad he cut his teeth in the AIL, an invaluable education for props.
“It’s so important to get that experience because there are lads who are extremely high-quality scrummagers and just big bodies in the AIL.”
Another major influence was the Clontarf number 8, John Vinson, when a Trinity teammate.
“A phenomenal player and a really good guy. I remember him pulling me aside a couple of times and saying, ‘look, get your head out of your arse – take a deep breath and just focus on playing’. That was a big turning point for me.
“I know it can be frowned upon to move clubs, but everyone I’ve met along the way has been so good to me. And I’m so lucky to have experienced all these different environments.”
He describes the AIL as the unsung hero of Irish rugby.
“There are countless players I’ve come across who I’m like, ‘how aren’t they in the system?’. It just blows my mind how talented they are. It’s a great league and it’s full of really good people as well.”
He hopes another difficult day, away to Vannes in pre-season, is his bad debut for Connacht pending what could be his first URC appearance for them away to Glasgow next Friday.
Plucked from the AIL by Leinster amid an injury crisis at loosehead last season, Cahir made his URC debut against Zebre last October, aged 25.
One of six debutants, he started, played well and even scored a try.
“I don’t know what happened there. I think that was all my luck piled into one day. It was funny too, I hadn’t scored in a couple of years and a few of my friends from school won a bit of cash off me. I’m still waiting for my payout.”
An injury to Paddy McCarthy two minutes into the second half meant Cahir made his Champions Cup debut in Leinster’s dramatic pool-stage win over La Rochelle in January. He admits to sometimes being nervous before training but less so before games, including this one.
He met Smeeth for a coffee in the run-up to that European debut.
“I said to him, ‘if I can just get one shot on (Levani) Botia, one shot on (Will) Skelton, I’ll be happy’. I don’t know if they were hurting, but I certainly got a shot on Skelton and I was vibrating for about 10 minutes after hitting him.
“But it was a great day. Any day you play professionally, you’re very happy, but that was one of the good ones.”
The following week he played away to Bayonne.
“One of my best mates, Ronan Loughnane, is playing in Aurillac. He’s been telling me about French rugby culture and how it’s like football. I wouldn’t say it’s better, but it’s so different. I like the drums, the songs, it feels real tribal, but you get some of that in the Dexcom now as well, which is great.”
It was at his hometown club in Roscrea that Cahir began playing mini rugby at the age of five.
“Hurling is a bit of a religion where I’m from, but I was never any use at it. The old hand-eye coordination isn’t what it should be. So, I stuck to the rugby.”
Cistercian College Roscrea brought him to another level. A small school, only 16 of the 23 in Cahir’s year played rugby, but it has a remarkably high conveyor belt of professional players.
Diarmuid Kilgallen and Loughnane, a hooker, were in the same class, while Michael Milne, Josh Wycherley and Cormac Izuchukwu were also teammates.
“When I was in fifth year, we had four props playing in our starting pack in the senior cup team. As well as myself, we had Josh Wycherley, Michael Milne and Ryan Lomas, who played Irish 20s. So, a lot of big, fat boys in Roscrea. There’s more skilful lads coming out of there now.”
“Hard work” is the key to the school’s production line, and the framed Irish jerseys.
“Especially the earlier ones, like Gavin Duffy. Roscrea always feels like an underdog story. Chatting to lads from Clongowes, they’d give out about the state of the dressing rooms, how grey the building is and why there were so many crows hanging around. The school has changed but there’s something about the siege mentality, and the chip on the shoulder, not in a negative way.
“Great staff, great coaches too and the school has a strong connection with the Nenagh Ormond summer programme.”
His older brother, Kyle, played on the schools’ side which won the Leinster Schools Senior Cup in 2015.
“He played fetch with me in the garden, kicking the ball for me to chase or catch. He took me to the gym when I was a young fella and said, ‘all right, you need to work harder here’.
“My grandfather on my mom’s side always liked rugby, but he never really understood it. My mom (Julie Fogarty) was always there. She was always giving me lifts.”
Cahir played for the Connacht U19s and pushed for the province’s sub-academy.
“I just wasn’t good enough at the time, but I always felt like I had the potential, so I wanted to make sure I worked hard.”
He combined club rugby with studying business in DCU and international management in Trinity, before entering the real world. This time last year Cahir was working in the sales department of Vodafone as part of a team under Simon Crawford, a former Leinster player.
“They gave me as much support as possible. In fact, up until Christmas I was still technically available to them before they let me go.”
By then Cahir’s short-term contract at Leinster had been extended to the end of the season.
Strong, uncompromising and a dog around the field, he loves to scrum, as he showed when starting the URC final against the Bulls.
His 16 matches for Leinster also included a Champions Cup semi-final before his agent, Jordi Murphy, sounded out his options and Connacht reached out.
Cahir is living in Knocknacarra in Galway with Sean O’Brien and Ben Murphy, more influential figures in his new life as a professional, which he “absolutely loves” although the transition has been tough.
“The training here is very high-tempo. It’s a little bit more compressed, but it’s quality work. There’s less time on feet, but probably more done on feet, if you know what I mean.”
But that was also the attraction – a coaching staff to make him a better player. And there’s no questioning his determination.
“It’s probably not like an inner drive to make this happen, it’s more I know I have it in me. I get nervous before training. That’s a tough aspect of the sport. But I love playing so much. And I know when I’m playing, there’s another individual, it’s within me to play well. It’s within my control. I just need to put it out there.”
It’s been a road less travelled all right, but it has a good few more miles left to run.
