Paul O’Connell On The Brilliant Nickname Some Of His Old Munster Teammates Gave Him
Keano.
Paul O’Connell was a guest on the Off The Ball Roadshow in Cork last night and didn’t disappoint. The former Ireland, Munster and Lions captain was in top form, recalling some excellent stories over the years.
He also revealed a old nickname some of the Munster lads gave him. Turns out the likes of Alan Quinlan, Donncha O’Callaghan and Ronan O’Gara used to call him ‘Roy Keane’ because of the heated debates he used to start and because of his need to have to argue their point.
“Roy Keane was there at the time and we all loved Roy Keane. We were almost modelling ourselves on him,” O’Connell said, adding that it became a nickname.
“That was the nickname Quinny gave to me and Quinny used. No one else really used it – maybe ROG a little bit. In fairness, Dunners actually used to use it as well and that’s because Donncha doesn’t fall out with anyone, right, so if there ever an issue, Dunners would come over to me and say, ‘Your man is doing A, B and C here, it’s not on’ and I’d go over and I’d have the big argument.”
To be fair you can see the similarity. Two former Irish captains that reached the very top of their respective sports and expected 110% every time from their teammates. No doubt both also gave a hell of a team talk.
