Ian Madigan happy to have followed his own star after a career less ordinary

Ian Madigan arrives. Beanie pulled down. Casual clothes. He has come from The Nova in UCD, a hub of innovative companies housed in an old building just a few punts of a ball across the Stillorgan dual carriageway in the university’s sprawling campus. He’s back in the city, working his new life with the start-up compliance company Dataships.

“No,” he says he’s not going back up North. Not tonight. A coaching session is scheduled with Blackrock rugby club later. The former Ireland outhalf takes some of the backs’ attack and defence work. ‘Technical adviser’ describes his role with coaches James Blaney and Stan McDowell.

“A European Cup winner with Ulster way back,” he says of McDowell.

Then there is the media work, rugby analysis in studio with Virgin Media. Madigan is not “not busy”.

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“Yeah, hands on. Whistle in the mouth,” he says of the coaching.

Back to the hinterland where he started after professional rugby’s sinuous path took him to France, England, then Belfast. Now home is not Blackrock or Monkstown, where he used to live in the bosom of South Dublin. Home is minutes down the motorway from Kingspan Stadium, sleepy Hillsborough in Co Down.

Madigan retired from rugby last September, but his home has been north of the border since he arrived four years ago from Bristol. He embraced the vibe in Belfast. Striking up friendships was not difficult.

“It was the first time in 10 years Anna and I didn’t have to move because of a rugby playing contract,” he says. “We’ve two labradors that love the open space. We get on well with the people. In time, will we move back to Dublin? Yeah, we probably will.”

It has been barely a year since he held the conversation with himself. Waking up in the mornings, he’d wonder about getting through the training day. The enjoyment was beginning to wane. In his last two seasons he made just 10 or 15 appearances with Ulster. There were many weeks outside the 23. That focused his thoughts.

“It’s daunting,” he says. “It has been difficult. You go into the changing room at the start of the week as a player and you’re seeing 30 or 40 close friends. It’s lighthearted and exciting. You change that for office life. The conversations on a Monday morning are different. Yeah, there are some things I do miss. Going out in the winter and training in the middle of the day in sunlight. Now it’s walking the dogs in the dark, the morning and evening.”

Madigan’s was a career less ordinary. It is easy to forget that, during a seven-year stretch from the 2007-08 season, when he made his debut, until 2016, he had eight seasons playing with Leinster (147 caps) and seven playing outside of Leinster (116 apps) with Bordeaux, Bristol Bears and Ulster. A World Cup in 2015, Heineken Cup finals in 2011 and 2012 and 31 Irish caps decorated the years. With Bristol, he was the English Championship’s 2018 top points scorer.

He has no regrets. None. Even leaving Leinster, the club he had dreamed about in school. Departing Ireland was difficult. But he had to keep his dream alive. He knew the rules, but thought the fresh challenge, a new canvas would be more stimulation than exile.

Knowing Johnny Sexton was the only player to buck the trend of being picked for Ireland while playing abroad, deep down Madigan believed that had he played well enough, had he squeezed enough out of his game, Joe Schmidt would not have turned away.

“In Leinster, I was happy to be the jack-of-all-trades,” he says. “Fill in at outhalf, or centre, or fullback when there were injuries, get your opportunities when internationals were away in autumn or during the Six Nations. As a 21-, 22-, 23-year-old you were delighted to do that.

“Brian O’Driscoll, Shane Horgan, Leo Cullen . . . to be sharing a dressingroom with those guys and even the young crop that had come through before, the likes of Luke Fitz, Rob Kearney, Eoin O’Malley, Fergus McFadden. It was a very special crop of players. In my own age grade, the likes of John Cooney, Dominic Ryan, Jack McGrath . . .

“But as you taste the starting spot and get opportunities your desires change. Your expectations go up. The way things were unfolding in Leinster was that Johnny [Sexton] had been away for two seasons at Racing. It gave me far more opportunities to play at outhalf or in the centre. I was still a key guy who was guaranteed to start, who was then out of the picture.

“I had one season of Johnny coming back and it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy that season, I did. But the complexion for me had changed. There were other good young players coming through, the likes of Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw had signed from Connacht. Rob Kearney was a stalwart at fullback, so you are looking at it at the start of the season and thinking: ‘Am I making this starting 15 if everybody is fit’. The honest answer was no.

“It didn’t mean you weren’t going to push hard. I did that and tried to challenge Johnny for that 10 spot. Ultimately, I wanted to be that guy who was starting week in week out, having a big say in the game plan. I wanted to challenge myself. Moving away at the time, I thought was the right decision. There wasn’t one individual moment. There was frustration at times, when I thought I was going backwards. That would have accumulated. Ultimately, I knew that I wanted to challenge myself.”

In Leinster, Madigan played under Michael Cheika, Matt O’Connor, Joe Schmidt and Leo Cullen and when he left he fell out of the Irish selection sight line, although he was still performing.

He kicked last-minute winning points against Saracens, Gloucester and Northampton the first year Bristol were back in the Premiership. There were also two crucial kicks to send Ulster into the United Rugby Championship final against Leinster in 2020.

Ultimately, the return to Ireland and Belfast was because ambition was still burning. The desire to position himself for a shot at a green shirt had not died arriving on Ravenhill Road.

“Whether it was blind optimism or not, I felt if I didn’t give it a go it was going to be something I knew I would regret. As it transpired, I never got particularly close,” he says.

“I’d a good first season with Ulster, but then didn’t get the opportunities to back it up in my second season. Ultimately, that Irish dream petered out quite quickly.”

John Cooney, Jordi Murphy, Jack McGrath, Cillian Willis and Greg Jones were among others from Leinster that had gone to Belfast before him. Far from the cold North, Madigan arrived to find it was a place of welcome and warmth. He can’t recall ever having a bad experience. Rugby was the all-consuming common ground. Supporters and players rowed in.

“As a player I was one who would talk a lot at meetings and never once felt that I was a Holy Ghost Catholic. It never once crossed my mind. I think as time goes on and the Troubles are more in the past, you find the next generation coming through, the guys who are 18 to 25, didn’t necessarily grow up with the past. We were obviously very aware of what went on and would be respectful of that.

“As a team we did the Black Cab tour. We stayed in the Crumlin Road jail. It was something Dan McFarland was really good at, making sure you connected with the history of the club.

“We stayed the night in Crumlin Jail. That was our reward for putting in a huge effort in preseason. Usually, the team would go to Portugal or Spain for a few days. Ours was the Crumlin Road Jail! It was a great experience. Stayed in the actual cells on blow-up mattresses.

“Nathan Doak and Ethan McIlroy I think were [my cell mates] and a couple of others. We had a boom box in and some beers as an end to preseason. They got a storyteller in to talk about the history of the jail. It was a great experience.”

Like any career, ups and downs were part of the challenge. In 2006, a burst appendix cost him a schools cup with Blackrock. A year later, in a seismic upset, his own missed kick saw them to lose to Kilkenny in the quarter-final. When he came through in Leinster and began to realise ambitions for Ireland, there were two icons in the outhalf position, Ronan O’Gara and Sexton.

Still, he scored over 800 points in fewer than 150 games for Leinster, won two European titles, two Pro12 championships, a Challenge Cup and picked up a few individuals accolades. In the 2013 and 2015 seasons, Madigan won the Pro12 Golden Boot.

Internationally, he debuted in the 2013 Six Nations and played in all five matches at the 2015 World Cup, notably guiding Ireland to victory over France in the final pool match after replacing Sexton after 26 minutes before facing Argentina in the ill-fated quarter-final.

“The outhalves at the time were Johnny Sexton and Ronan O’Gara,” he says. “Paddy Jackson, myself and Ian Keatley were pushing to get in for selection. Paddy was younger than me and had passed me out and I was keen to show I was good enough to compete with him and the others. Then when Joe took over it was great because Joe knew me as a player.

“Having coached me in Leinster, he knew my strengths, knew my weaknesses. He was prescriptive, but he was such a good coach he could formulate a game plan that worked to my strengths, a kicking game that suited me, a passing game that suited me, how he set up the forwards around me, a clear calling system.

“He was dynamic enough as a coach to be able to do that. That’s why I loved working under him. I used to joke and say you played with Joe on your shoulder because he knew exactly what he wanted and what he didn’t want. I could do my own review after a game and then go in and do it with Joe and they would be pretty similar.”

Injuries finally took their toll. In his last season with Ulster, Madigan hyper extended his knee against Ospreys and fractured below it. It repaired. He got back playing but never fully, not to pre-injury level. At 33-years-old, he wasn’t able to push as hard in the gym. He’d wake up in the mornings, look at the day ahead and question whether he could get through to the other end.

“Before I left Leinster, I spoke to some of the players and got their honest opinion,” he says. “There were definitely conversations with Johnny [Sexton] and his experiences in France. It would have been more after I signed that he would have given me advice . . . ‘you can’t focus on changing everything, focus on the things that really matter’ was one of the best pieces of advice I got off him.

“There was definitely a purity playing in Leinster with guys I’d played with through the school system. Representing your own team and your country, I was far more emotional. When you move away from your home club and play for a club in France or the UK, there is the realisation that this is a business and there’s business decisions to be made. That does filter down to the player.”

Originally he lived on the same road in Belfast as recent Ulster coach Dan McFarland, not far from Queen’s University playing fields, where the river Lagan sweeps under Shaw’s Bridge. But Hillsborough, just outside Lisburn, with the house, the two dogs, the 90-minute sling shot drive to Dublin works fine now.

The one-time poster boy outhalf says he is ready to come back to Dublin, where it began and where much of his current business is based, from the TV to coaching and Nova. But his time across the Border has given him good years as he negotiates life after rugby. Not “not busy”, a move back, Madigan says, will come at some stage. Just not now.

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