“Making a living out of rugby was never part of our generation’s mindset.”
Ronan O’Gara first came into the Munster squad around the time of his Leaving Cert, in 1997. He was just happy to be there.
It would be a while before he got his first pay-cheque out of rugby but he couldn’t exactly go nuts when it did arrive.
The first IRFU professional contracts, for senior internationals were between £25,000 to £30,000 [Punts] and a fortunate/talented few managed to get themselves a Ford Mondeo for the year.
O’Gara could only dream of such wealth and largesse. The former Ireland outhalf sat down with Eamon Dunphy for a lengthy interview – on The Stand – and revealed how much he was first paid at Munster. He commented:
“The starting salary was £7,500 a year. After that, it went to £16,000 and then £25,000 and then you might get a national contract.
“Before all that, though, it was the pride involved. You can’t stress that enough.
“It wasn’t training during the day, at that stage. You could get your weights done between 7am and 9am, then go to college and train again after 4pm. And that’s a fella being fairly ambitious.”
O’Gara was studying at UCC with his Munster salary ensuring he was one of the more flush students. As soon as he felt there was a good chance at making a living from rugby, he was away.
By the time he had firmly established himself as a star for Munster and Ireland, his annual salary was comfortably into six figures. As he told The Hard Yards, earlier this year, he developed a handy tactic for negotiating IRFU deals. He commented:
“I would have, in fairness, talked to Brian O’Driscoll a lot about that. He was my confidante on that and we shared a lot of things.
“I knew what he was getting so I’d put a figure in my head. I’d do the negotiating myself and say, ‘This is it’… I only ever did four deals with the union in my time and, in fairness to them, I got well looked after.”
It was a lot, lot more than £7,500 but one thing never changed – that sense of pride in representing himself, his family, town, parish, province and country.
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