Connacht legend Muldoon hangs up his boots

Connacht Rugby’s most important player of the professional era will hang up his boots at the end of this season. After 17 years of steadfast commitment to and pride in his province, captain John Muldoon, a Connacht legend, this week confirmed he will retire in the summer.

The Portumna native embodies everything that is good about Connacht Rugby, and more.

A giant of the game, he wore the green jersey with honour and pride as much now in the latter years of his career when rugby became fashionable and ‘sexy’ in the west, as when he was starting off in the early 2000s when just a handful of supporters would turn-up at the Sportsground.

Muldoon, now aged 35, was a brilliant back-row whose game progressed from a workhorse during his early years with Galwegians, to a complete thoroughbred.

As well as retaining and adding to the physicality of his game that he always possessed, Muldoon became one of Connacht’s most skilful players, particularly during the Pat Lam era, when he led Connacht to the province’s first ever silverware winning the PRO 12 title playing with a swashbuckling style.

That final against Leinster in Edinburgh in 2016 was the highlight of a career in which he represented Connacht more than 300 times.

Muldoon’s unstinting loyalty to Connacht possibly hampered his international ambitions early-on when the westerners were overlooked as the ‘poor relation’; and he was probably good enough to earn 30 caps but was desperately unlucky, twice breaking his arm while playing for Ireland.

He was capped three times for his country, including against New Zealand in 2010, a game in which he suffered a serious fracture to the forearm.

Muldoon was subsequently recalled into the Ireland squad for the 2012 November series but his international career was cut-short again when he was forced off with an arm injury during a non-cap game against Fiji.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.