Desire to win…
Donnacha Ryan badly injured his left shoulder only 11 minutes into Racing 92’s Champions Cup final against Leinster.
In going for a lineout steal, Ryan was tackled in the air and landed heavily on his left shoulder.
Reports from France suggest that he may have dislocated his shoulder in the fall, but he was never going to let an injury drag him from the pitch in such an important game.
Following the game, Ryan spoke with The Hard Yards about his side’s 15-12 loss to Leinster [from 11:00 below] and his response to questioning on the injury is proof of his incredible toughness.
In case you don’t have time to listen now, here’s a quick rundown of what he said, brushing off the injury as if it was nothing.
“Yeah, I got a bit of a bang in the first half,” Ryan said.
“I fell from a lineout but, sure, that’s it. That’s all part of it anyway. That’s rugby.
“There’s not many times you get to play in a final, you know? So you just suck it up and get on with it. That’s basically it.”
“It was disappointing, having put a lot of pressure on Leinster who are an excellent side and, obviously, champions now. In the last 10 minutes, we gave away the advantage with a few silly penalties that we really didn’t need to do. Just pretty unfortunate because our defence was pretty solid. When they made a few line breaks, we scrambled well.”
“[In the closing stages] we put up a box-kick and it was a silly tip-tackle by one of the lads [Virimi Vakawata] on Rob Kearney,” added Ryan. “He’d be disappointed with that. It put the pressure back on and it was a case of making tackles and putting the pressure back on Leinster; force them to make a move.
“Unfortunately, then, we made the move for them and that was just disappointing. Disappointing discipline to let ourselves down.”
