A new-found love of chess one way Connacht star is keeping busy

By Oisin Langan

Connacht and Ireland Rugby Player, Ultan Dillane, spoke this week on behalf of Rugby Players Ireland, urging people to stay safe and look after each another during this period of uncertainty. Dillane offered some insight into how he is staying active and what he is doing to bond with his housemates following the outbreak of the global pandemic, Covid-19.

Rugby Players Ireland has a number of resources in place for rugby players and the general public to support mental wellbeing including the Tackle Your Feelings App, supported by Zurich and funded by the Z Zurich Foundation and is free to download through the Apple and Google Play App stores.

OL: How are you finding the last couple of weeks?

UD: Yeah, it’s been different for sure, but yeah, the provinces have done the best they can to keep all the players with gym equipment, you know, and then try and facilitate us to train as normal.

Everyone is experiencing a big change in their lives, and we’ve been no different.

We’ve been given the gym, divided up between all the players and luckily enough we’ve enough equipment in the house to get some good training under our belts.

It’s been definitely different for sure, it has taken some getting used to but, at times, it’s been quite enjoyable.

OL: Is it a different challenge? And maybe even in some ways, a bigger challenge? Because you’re trying to change how you exercise and what you do and maybe your body isn’t used to that so that in itself is the challenge, that in itself is, although you didn’t choose it, is in itself, kind of, good for you?

UD: Definitely, because you can’t get the whole gym delivered to your house, you kind of have to make do with what you have, so, there’s a lot of exercise we’re being told to do that is really, really, hard and the body definitely doesn’t like it.

But it’s a nice challenge to try and better yourself and that’s something you otherwise wouldn’t be doing much of and yeah, I think we’ve all, the three of us here, we’ve all tried to target some goals and maybe try to achieve some personal bests by the time we get back to normality you know?

OL: There is three of you in the house – you’re living with Dominic Robertson McCoy and your brother. How important is that to have other competitive people around you because that will maybe help keep you sharp, keep that edge, that competitive people and professional athletes like to have?

UD: My brother has played rugby before and he would be quite competitive. It is good to have that, kind of, everyone trying to bring each other up to get some training done, because it’s very easy to fall into a hole of laziness at times.

You’ve so many hours in the day to do stuff in but yet, it’s so easy to do little and it’s nice to kind of have everyone trying to push each other on to maybe do some conditioning or an extra weight session because it’s not as if we are going playing any games so there’s plenty of time to recover from everything.

We also find that we are giving each other nutritional tips because it’s so easy to fall into that lull of just eating whatever you want because you’ve no one to kind look over you or to check you on anything.

It’s been good, we’ve been quite positive.

OL: It sounds like this is quite a good test of your professionalism because there is no one watching you and it would be very easy to slip into bad habits?

UD: Yeah, so there is a good buzz to try and get some good clean cooking going and we’ve all taken to it quite well to be fair.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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