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Anyone with a passing interest in rugby knows plenty about the James O’Connor redemption story – the troubled and arrogant kid in his teens and early 20s who abused alcohol and drugs (party and prescription), was run out of Australian rugby and thrown briefly in a French jail.
But just how far in the hole O’Connor fell before finding his current level of maturity, still comes as a shock.
In a searingly honest interview on the RugbyPass Offload podcast this week, O’Connor confronts every ugly moment of his struggles, and the feeling that “I was drowning.”
O’Connor fessed up to having several “rock bottom experiences” including when he was playing rugby in Toulon and he twice suffered seizures on a team bus, one so scary that a teammate thought he had died.
“I was in a dark place,” he said. “I was taking everything – from prescription meds, to drugs to alcohol. I was trying get on something every day when I was in France – abusing everything.”
O’Connor said he was burning the candle at both ends.
“I was still playing rugby but I was out often and a lot. I wasn’t sleeping much because we were on road trips.
“I had a little head knock after playing, then on the team bus we just got into it.
“I ended up having a seizure on the bus. It was hectic. I can’t remember so it wasn’t hectic for me, but it was pretty hectic after. I remember Dylan Armitage was like, ‘Bro, I thought you had died.’ It was f***ed.
“That was the first wake-up call where I was like right, I need to rein it in a bit. It was just ‘a bit’ at that stage. That’s where my life was at, man.”
(Photo by Getty Images)
O’Connor had another seizure a few weeks later.
“The first one was a mixture of drinking a lot, taking a lot, the head knock. The second time I was just so fatigued.”
If the seizures weren’t bad enough, O’Connor – after a brief return to the Reds failed to win him a World Cup place in 2015 – found himself jailed along with former All Black Ali Williams in 2017 for attempting to buy drugs, which O’Connor now acknowledges to be true.
“We were out with a big group, having a really good time,” O’Connor said. “Ali went bought some, we came out and got arrested and we were in prison for three days.
“It was rough – f***ing terrifying because no one spoke English in there. It was raw, man.
“First night someone shat on their hands and rubbed it on the wall. One guy was just screaming all night – top of his lungs just screaming. I was laying in there spooned up to Ali like ‘protect me’.”
After the arrest, O’Connor found his pathways being blocked. But Sale Sharks’ then Director of Rugby Steve Diamond took O’Connor in and allowed him to work with a health guru from the organisation Saviour World as he started to turn himself around.
“The program I was doing was unheard of in rugby, he gave me the freedom,” O’Connor said.
“When I moved to Sale I stopped drinking, and when I did I bloated out. My liver starting crying ‘you abused me for a long time and now…’
“I got pretty chubby. I was injured so I couldn’t run. I remember on the scale – and I’m not a tall man – I hit the 100 kilos.
“I was working with someone who was sorting my life out and I said, ‘Bro, what are you doing to me?’
“He said, ‘you’ve been abusing yourself for six years, this is the start of the process, you have to get all the toxins out’. It was only two months I was like that but it just came on and it shocked me.
“When I met him I was like, f*** I need to sort my life out, can you help me?
“It was definitely a journey. I credit the work I did with him to getting back to Oz. It definitely kick started where I am now. I’ve done my own work since I’ve been back, seen other people who have advised my life in other ways but he helped me get started.”
O’Connor reveals he had been close to retiring after recurring ankle injuries.
“I was weak because my body was broken,” said O’Connor. “I wasn’t training, I wasn’t eating right, wasn’t sleeping right, mentally I wasn’t in a great place. I don’t know how I was playing professional footy.”
In a fascinating half hour chat, O’Connor starts by talking about his debut as a 17-year-old at Western Force, when he and mates rented a place on the beach and ate Nandos and chips for dinner most nights.
His star rose quickly and he started making headlines when he moved to Melbourne with the Rebels, being snapped out one night during a Test week at a fast-food restaurant – he says he hadn’t been drinking – and the ill-fated stint lasted just two seasons.
James O’Connor at 17. (Photo by Getty Images)
O’Connor was an early star of the social media age, and now regrets some of his posts, especially during that time when he ran with Kurtley Beale and Englishman Danny Cipriani, as well as AFL stars Buddy Franklin and Dustin Martin.
“You can’t just share what you think, you’ve got to put a filter on it,” O’Connor said.
“I got in trouble quite a few times about being outspoken. I deleted my Twitter a year and half ago and reading back some of my old stuff and going ‘oh’ I thought ‘everything that came your way you deserved’.
“One of the tweets I wish I could delete. I remember when we first got there, me, KB and Danny – and at the time the Miami Heat had the big three – and we tweeted a shot of us with our shirts off and ‘the big three’. That did not go down well. That was the start of the downfall I reckon.”
He had two seasons at the Rebels. One ruined by injury. “I had one good season – my last was pretty good. I was going to go back to the Force but ended up at London Irish and that’s another story.”
That other story? In 2013 he was banned from getting on a holiday flight to Bali at 5am due to intoxication. Reports at the time said he was escorted from the airport by police, although O’Connor now says he was allowed to fly out later the same morning.
Whatever the details of the flight plan, that furthered soured his relationship with Rugby Australia and he had to take his talents to Europe. It was, he says, a blessing in disguise.
“I needed that because I was drowning. If that didn’t happen I wouldn’t have got shown the door at Oz rugby, I wouldn’t have moved away and I would have kept drowning. Obviously it wasn’t the best circumstances and [now] I would communicate. But I didn’t know how to communicate with these men because I was still a child.
“Like a kid who hasn’t got his way he goes and sooks so then I’d just go get pissed and, whatever happened when I was pissed, I’d just be reckless.
“The airport thing was played up – it wasn’t like it was reported. But I switched my phone off – f*** who does that? Just fly to Bali, switch my phone off so no one could contact me for a week and a half. That’s the sort of thing I’d do because I was a child.
“It led to me leaving for overseas and finding myself and getting healthy. I wasn’t in a good state. I can’t even remember it, that’s how loose I was, my missus told me what happened.
“There was a muck up in seats and we weren’t sitting next to each other and I blew up. The police were walking past and escorted us to the next desk were my partner booked the next flight.
“It was reported I was kicked out of the airport and handcuffed but it wasn’t the case. They [the police] were actually really good. They looked after me. I’m not bitter about that now. Would I do it now? No I wouldn’t, but I can laugh at it because I think ‘what was I thinking?’ It was a cry for help, because I was struggling.”
O’Connor says he no longer likes to hit the town, like he did during that Lions series where being out and about the week of the game upset so many fans.
“Where I am now I just wouldn’t do what I was doing,” he reflected. “One I just don’t like doing that stuff any more. It’s very hard for the guys to get me out for a drink any more because I just don’t like the scene.
“From this point where I sit now I understand why people got upset. They see that as you not taking it seriously and not actually caring about what you’re about to do.
“Anyone would give their right arm to be in our position, to be able to play for their country ‘so why does this guy not care, why isn’t he at home at 7 o’clock drinking water and in bed early?”
He said he was never drinking when not allowed, just liked to walk the streets to settle his nerves.
“During a Lions series, now it would look very different,” O’Connor said. “But I was 22 in that series. I was a kid. I was a child until I was 27, let alone 21-22. I had no idea about life, still don’t really. But I know a lot more than I did back then.”
With his career winding down, O’Connor has named an end date for the Wallabies, should his body survive the next 16 months.
“World Cup is the goal, to be involved, and after that I’ll finish up with international rugby,” he said.
“I still want to be playing footy, I just don’t know where yet. Possibly playing Super Rugby in Oz and move into a player-coaching role as well – I’d love to do that at some stage.
“Whether I go to Japan. I’ve never played there and would love to test out their culture – I’ve heard so much about it. Or do you do the American stint? Go to LA or Texas, San Diego. That would be an incredible journey in itself.”
O’Connor could teach the west a thing or two about being wild.