PRE-SEASON IS a time of opportunity. A window to impress. Sean McNulty knew this more than most when he stood on the sideline preparing to replace Bryan Byrne in a friendly against Gloucester two Augusts ago.
The hooker got on for the final 20 minutes of Leinster’s pre-season defeat of the English Premiership side, and was then involved a week later when Leo Cullen’s side geared up for the new campaign with another win over Bath at Donnybrook.
Sean McNulty during his Leinster days. Source: Oisin Keniry/INPHO
Heading into his final year in the Leinster academy, McNulty knew he couldn’t let these games pass him by. Watching his peers make the breakthrough at senior level, he had been forced to bide his time. But now it was running out.
All of this was going through his head when he came off the bench on those consecutive Friday nights in August 2017. This was his last chance saloon, and that burden weighed heavy.
“I didn’t have a great game,” McNulty recalls. “I remember I came off the pitch and told my Mum, ‘I’m gone, that’s me done.’ It was in my head that I had played poorly and that was my one opportunity blown.”
McNulty would go on to play for Leinster ‘A’ during the 2017/18 season, but his first-team chance never arrived and he was released by the province at the end of his three years in the academy system.
“I found it quite hard,” he continues. “Leinster was probably the high point of my career but then the whole third year of the academy was pretty tough. I knew from early on in third year I wasn’t getting a contract. It was pretty tough going in every day for five, six months knowing I wasn’t getting a contract.
“I met my best friends through rugby. All my closest friends are Leinster rugby players pretty much so that was very, very hard [having to leave]. Knowing they’d all still be there and I had to go and find a new club and start on my own path. I dwelled on that for a bit, yeah. I should have parked it but I didn’t and it probably didn’t help my training.”
A product of Rockwell College, McNulty earned international honours at U19 and U20 level, while representing Munster at underage level. He moved into the Leinster academy and studied Business and Sport Management in UCD, for whom the 23-year-old also played in the All-Ireland League with.
But his experience at Leinster, or specifically coming to terms with the psychological scars of being released, left McNulty low on confidence and short on motivation to get up and go again. He received offers from clubs in the English Championship, but the prospect of cutting his teeth in that environment did not appeal to him.
Instead, McNulty seriously contemplated packing it in. He had watched his friends and peers forge professional careers, while he was left without a club and without direction.
“When I was leaving Leinster, I was stuck in a place where I didn’t know if I was going to keep playing rugby,” he explains. “I was potentially retiring and was looking into other things. I kind of just fell out with rugby for a little bit.
“I was kind of just done with it because I knew coming out of Leinster, moving over to England would be a come down. I wanted something that would excite me.”
Playing for Ireland U20s alongside some familiar faces in 2015. Source: Matteo Ciambelli/INPHO
After his final season at Leinster, US-qualified McNulty went to New York on holiday with a number of his team-mates and while they were all returning home to Dublin for the start of pre-season, he remained in America.
Whilst there, McNulty — the younger brother of Ireland sevens international Harry — met up with Greg McWilliams, who coached several of the current Leinster team at St Michael’s before linking up with the Ireland women’s team and then moving to America, where he is now the US Eagles assistant coach.
McNulty’s mind was opened up to the opportunities in Major League Rugby and, further down the line, the potential of representing the Eagles by McWilliams during their lunch meeting.
“There were two days I remember very clearly,” he says. “The first being that day the other lads left New York to go home for pre-season.
“Towards the end of the holiday, they were all going home back to Dublin and I was staying on in New York. That’s when I realised I wanted that too and wanted to keep being a rugby player. I suddenly missed it.