Ireland rugby international Donncha O’Callaghan was inspired by his own track record of embarrassing scrapes for the plotline in his new book, Disaster Dad
Well, he may be a rugby legend – part of the Six Nations Grand Slam of 2009, with four British & Irish Lions caps and 17 seasons for Munster under his belt – but Donncha O’Callaghan is also celebrated among those who know him for disasters on the domestic front. So, when it came to a fitting subject for his new children’s novel, he had plenty of material. In fact, you could say that Disaster Dad is art imitating life.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he says. “It is more truth than fiction. That was probably the idea for it.” He is refreshingly frank about the embarrassing fails that have punctuated life off the pitch – and, he says, his kids relish that side of him. “For all of my life, I’ve managed to get into embarrassing situations. And in the adult world people tell you: ‘come on and grow up’. Since my kids have arrived, they see the absolute joy in having an embarrassing dad.
“I know it will come, the day when they turn purple and run away from it, but at the moment my own kids have probably heightened my sense that it’s OK to be a little bit silly, to get things wrong – to meet them on their level,” he says. “Embarrassing things happen and when they see it happening to you they learn it’s OK to laugh at yourself, to get things wrong, and we all do it.”
Disaster Dad distils that into a comic romp of a read. Our narrator is Finn, son of a rugby playing father who is – to put it mildly – challenged by the practical aspects of life. Mum is the capable one, so when she goes on a trip to Boston and leaves dad in charge of Finn, Emma and Carl the dog for a whole seven days, it’s not a question of what can go wrong, but how much, how often, how bad.
From the smudged and illegible master plan (that would have told them everything required to make it through the next seven days in one piece) to a wild kitchen decorating plan, it’s a comedy of fails. Then there’s Operation Birthday Surprise. While Mum intervenes by text from Boston to ask Finn to ensure his dad doesn’t build the treehouse she made the mistake of saying she wished she’d had when she was a child, she does return to a garden full of noisy chickens – something she never ever yearned for. As she says to Finn when he hugs her in the airport arrivals hall: ‘You survived!’.
While the child characters of the novel are not Donncha and Jenny O’Callaghan’s – they have two daughters and two sons – that spirit of ‘in it together’ in Disaster Dad is definitely something carried over from their home life. “We’re kind of run like a team,” he says. “Jenny and I call the shots, but we have their backs as well.”
While Donncha O’Callaghan’s rugby career gave him a place in Ireland’s hall of fame, and he has attracted more fans as an RTÉ 2fm’s breakfast show presenter and a coach on the TV show Ireland’s Fittest Family, he believes that for children, the really important heroes and role models are those closest to them. “Of course I wanted to play for Ireland, but it wasn’t an aspiration,” he says. “I wanted to be like the boy who won the Senior Cup, who was only maybe five years older. If you’d told me I’d play for Ireland I’d have said: ‘I can’t get there’, but I thought I could make the school team.”
Similarly, his own children have been just as excited about a recent Irish schools’ hurling competition as the Olympic and Paralympic Games because they are in awe of the achievements of young people. “It’s not that far away – it’s the age group up”.
“When they see it happening to you they learn it’s OK to laugh at yourself, to get things wrong, and we all do it”
Of course, as children of a rugby great, there’s sometimes the expectation that the junior O’Callaghans will be sporting standouts – but that’s never their father’s expectation or hope. “I just want them to go out and have fun and enjoy it,” he says. As to whether he’d encourage them to try for the world of elite sport, the answer is yes – but with a caveat. “Of course, if you want to make it in sport, great, but you’ve got to be a champion too at school, in your work.”
His own children are of an age where they can laugh about the things that go wrong – and now particularly enjoy setting their dad up for an embarrassing fail. That’s good – he says – it’s important for children to understand getting it wrong is nothing to worry about. “You don’t want to shield or guard them – there’s a big bad world out there as well – but there’s also the importance of making it light and making it fun and making a brilliant childhood.”
Donncha O’Callaghan is happy to be the butt of the comedy in Disaster Dad, but he also knows that humour can help children pick themselves up, and learn to try, try again. “Be resilient, always back yourself,” he says. “That’s a kind of mantra around our house. Give it a go, back yourself. If you fall short. fair enough, but we always encourage them to have a go.”
* Disaster Dad, by Donncha O’Callaghan, written with Karen Owen and illustrated by Jenny Taylor, is published by Eriu, £11.99.
Further reading: In conversation with graphic novelist Jerry Craft
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