Rob Kearney: ‘I did want to go on playing next season and I still do’

He's one of Ireland's most decorated players of all time. He's arguably, perhaps even inarguably, Ireland's greatest fullback ever. Yet, although he could be slipping away almost unnoticed, Rob Kearney is typically sanguine about this current state of affairs.

It’s been eight weeks since Kearney last played a game of rugby, even though he has been fully fit. Ireland’s first-choice fullback up until the World Cup quarter-final last October 19th, he has started only three games for Leinster since then along with five appearances off the bench.

There was a Heineken Cup win away to Lyon in November, a thrashing of Connacht in early January and, most recently, a 36-12 win over the Cheetahs on a horrid mid-February night at the RDS when you wouldn't have put the cat out.

Since then Hugo Keenan was preferred for the wins away to the Ospreys and at home to Glasgow as, meanwhile, Kearney was omitted from an Irish Six Nations squad for the first time since his tournament debut as a replacement against Italy in Croke Park in February 2008.

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Kearney also missed the 2011 tournament with a knee injury he sustained in the defeat by New Zealand the previous November. Yet until this year’s tournament, he had played in 48 of Ireland’s last 60 Six Nations games, starting all but three of those matches.

He's also out of contract at the end of July, David Nucifora only having sanctioned a one-season provincial contract a year ago.

“I did want to go on playing next season and I still do,” maintains Kearney, who turned 34 just over a fortnight ago. “Physically I’m still in very good shape and I still love the game. I have been looking for some other options outside of Ireland but obviously now, during this crisis, everything is off the table and it’s a massive waiting game.

“But at the same time, I’ve been blessed to have had the career that I’ve had. I’ve gotten so much from the game, it doesn’t owe me anything. So if it did have to come to a halt at the end of July, obviously it would be an unbelievably disappointing way to have to finish up, but I think I would still be very content with what the game has given me over the last 15 years.”

Always one of the game’s more thoughtful players, Kearney appreciates that his problems are relatively minuscule in the greater scheme of things.

“We’re living in such unprecedented times and there are so many people out there in worse positions. There’s companies collapsing, there’s people losing their jobs, people on the front line bursting their backsides; there’s way more to this than rugby.”

Of course, most sportsmen and women don’t get to choose their own endgame unless, of course, they’re Brian O’Driscoll. “I think he’s ruined the fairytale ending for everybody,” notes Kearney cheerily.

O’Driscoll is the leading Irishman of the half dozen to have played a century of internationals and Kearney, who is on 98 including his three Lions Tests, admits this was “a big driver for me, to try and get it into that elite club.”

On realising that he would most likely fall short, he told himself that it was just a number, albeit with one rider.

“I think I missed 30-plus international games just with injury alone,” he adds, and he regrets not having the same knowledge of his own body he’s had in recent times when he was younger.

Yet, he's also been a key contributor to virtually all of both Leinster's and Ireland's best days. Kearney has four Heineken Champions Cup winners medals and over the course of Ireland's four Six Nations titles since 2009, including two Grand Slams, he is the only man to have started all 20 games. (Rory Best is the only other players to have featured in all of them).

He also started both of the wins over the All Blacks and all of the three-Test series win in Australia.

“I put a huge amount of my career down to luck as well. Of all the really, really historic days in Irish rugby throughout the last decade or so I’m very lucky to be able to say I was on a field for them instead of in the stand watching on.”

Like all those Irish players who have taken part in World Cups, Kearney’s abiding regret is that quarter-final glass ceiling; his last Test being his third consecutive exit at that stage, this time against the All Blacks.

“It’s something that will fester with me forever, I would imagine, that my last game for Ireland is most likely going to be that heavy quarter-final defeat by the All Blacks in Japan. That’s always going to be my lasting memory of international rugby.

“A lot of the guys on the team had the opportunity to play against Scotland in that first game of the Six Nations, and then against Wales. They’ve had some closure, they’ve been able to put on a jersey and perform again, and that’s something that I’ll never have.”

Nor, as already outlined, has he had much rugby with Leinster to sink his teeth into which, he admits, has been very frustrating.

“You come back from a World Cup and you feel as if you’re first choice for your country at that time and you know you’re going to be in a real battle with the other 15s, Jordan [Larmour] in particular, when coming back into provincial rugby.

“Obviously I would have liked more opportunities to start games but for one reason or another it just has manifested itself like that,” he says, diplomatically.

Kearney is also keeping his perspective on being a professional athlete confined to home, and even admits he is enjoying it.

As he puts it: “There’s a simplicity to it all, isn’t there?”

Helpfully, with the help of equipment from Leinster, he has built a good gym in the back garden of his home in Ranelagh.

“I can also go running on the pitches up in UCD, or on the road, as it’s within the 2k. Filling in your day is, I think, the important thing, isn’t it? There are an awful lot of people who are worse off.”

The Pro14 was suspended on Thursday, March 12th, which was the day before a Leinster squad including Kearney was due to travel to South Africa for games against the Cheetahs and Kings. Instead, they were afforded a two-week holiday, and last Monday Kearney and others began a mini two-week pre-season block of training on their own.

“We’ve been given our own programme, our own GPS and we have to send the information back to the club on a daily basis.”

Hence, having the UCD pitches within 2k of his home is, as he puts it, a blessing.

“Everyone’s programmes are different, depending on their access to a pitch or what equipment what they have at home, but by and large I think everyone seems to be managing pretty well.”

Kearney’s famed professionalism has stood to him in 15 seasons at the top of the game, and hence it’s also unsurprising to hear he is “very disciplined and structured” in his daily routine.

“I’m getting up early and going to bed early. For me that’s been pretty important and to have good daily habits, because that imposter comes into your head quite a lot throughout the day, to watch a few more episodes of Netflix and go to bed later and sleep in.”

Kearney also reckons he’s never eaten more healthily.

“You’re eating the freshest of foods, you’re making it yourself at home, you’re not eating out in restaurants. Certainly my diet has been as good as it’s ever been.”

Kearney has also been chairperson of Rugby Players Ireland since September 2013 and within eight days of the rugby season effectively being suspended last month, the IRFU and RPI had reached a strikingly quick agreement on graded salary deferrals.

This followed a two-hour Zoom call between representatives of both parties, with the RPI cognisant of their role as stakeholders in Irish rugby. “It gives the Union some breathing space with their cash flow and the players take a little bit of a hit for a long-term gain.”

Nevertheless, as with everyone else, these are worryingly uncertain times for Kearney’s fellow pros.

“It is worrying but there’s no education like adversity and I think if we all embrace the uncertainty of these times it will harden our minds, and it will make us more resilient not just as rugby players but as people.”

As their recent agreement demonstrates, the Union and the players are in this together. But it wasn’t always thus.

“When I first came in to the role the relationship was nowhere nearly as strong as it is now,” admits Kearney, “and that can only be good for the Union and can only be good for the players. Ultimately, everyone has the common goal of making Ireland the best place in the world to play rugby. That’s what we as a union want too.”

Kearney also has a wedding at an unspecified date in 2021 to look forward to, having proposed to long-term girlfriend Jess Redden on New Year’s Eve in New York. He is positive about the future, whatever it may hold.

“When the time does come to hang up the boots, be it this year or next year or the year after, I’ll take a full break of three, four or five months. I might do some travelling. I’m involved in a few businesses at the moment so I might upskill in them, and slowly try and reintegrate myself into the real world. We live in such a bubble as rugby players and the transition is going to be difficult. I’m going to take my time with it.”

He part owns the Bridge Pub and the Lemon & Duke with team-mates, though doesn’t envisage pulling pints, and also Oslo, a beautician company. “And I definitely won’t be working in behind the counter doing women’s nails in there!”

Kearney also has a recruitment company which he set up with one of his best pals, Andrew Lynch, called Mason Alexander. That, he believes, may suit his direct involvement best.

Yet right now, like never before, these are nostalgic times for sport, not least as there’s only the past to go on. As Kearney has been there for virtually all the great days of the current era, so choosing one is tougher for him than anyone. Yet, he can readily do so.

“Everyone has their favourite games for their own selfish reasons I suppose. I think England in Twickenham in 2018 and that Grand Slam was probably my favourite game just because I’d started my career in 2007 and to put in a pretty good performance, I just got a huge sense of satisfaction that I was still able to perform at that level 12 years on from making my debut.”

And no matter what happens next, that’s how he’ll be best remembered too.