Peter O'Mahony Opens Up on Retirement and Rugby Rage

Peter O'Mahony has spent his second year of retirement working out why competing for Munster, Ireland and the Lions used to bring out a hatred in him that he could not always control.

«It’s a natural human instinct, especially as an athlete, that you don’t want to lose,».

The former captain, now settled into life away from the pitch, told The Guardian that the feeling sometimes worked against him. "But at times it got in my way and caused despair. I honestly don't know where that deep-down hatred came from but it used to derail me at times," he said.

Asked whether the same competitive edge would have surfaced in a different pursuit entirely, such as chess or mathematics, O'Mahony pointed to rugby itself as the trigger. "Rugby definitely fuelled it for me," he said. "It's an aggressive and abrasive contact sport and it brings it out more." He added that representing the teams he grew up supporting, Cork Constitution, Munster and Ireland, carried its own weight. "They each meant a huge amount to me, and maybe my attitude was because I wanted to do well for the places I came from and which had given me so much."

In a new book, O'Mahony describes a mindset that once took hold at Munster before European Cup fixtures, when players were encouraged to treat their own families with coldness at home as proof of how seriously they were taking the game. He called it a hard culture built by tough men. "Rugby is a game of hard men," he said. "These boys were tough men, and whether it's rugby or not, you don't let your feelings get in."

That the approach came out of a Munster dressing room stands out given the players it has produced over the years, among them Keith Wood, Paul O'Connell, Ronan O'Gara and Conor Murray, all known as much for their rugby intelligence as their physicality.