The Ireland player who was almost killed by a training ground punch from Paul O'Connell has spoken about the traumatic incident.
Ryan Caldwell had to be resuscitated during an Ireland training session in 2007 when he was just a 22-year-old rookie trying to make an impression on the international stage.
The events of that day left many who witnessed it traumatised, not least O'Connell who has previously opened up about the horrendous moment he thought he may have killed his team-mate. The Irish legend vowed to change his brawling ways afterwards, realising the damage he was capable of.
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In his autobiography, The Battle, O'Connell wrote: “It happened at an Ireland camp before the World Cup, when Eddie (O’Sullivan) was close to naming his squad for France. We were training at the University of Limerick and Ryan Caldwell, the Ulster second-row, was trying to make an impression.
“He’d been spoiling rucks all week, making a nuisance of himself. That was all fair enough – he was like me at the same age – but when he put me on the floor with a tackle in a non-contact session my went and I got up and threw a punch.
“I didn’t think I hit him too hard, but my right hand struck the side of his face and he went down, unconscious. What I didn’t know then was that one of his teeth had burst his cheek and he was swallowing a lot of blood.
“The rest of us had to move away when the team doctor, Gary O’Driscoll, rushed over to him.
“I kept looking over, from a distance, and the situation just kept getting worse and worse. Gary was trying to resuscitate him and he had blood all over his mouth. He was roaring for an ambulance. Then he started cutting the jersey off Ryan.”
“I was shaking by the time the ambulance came to take him away. I was starting to fear the worst, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking that. The ambulance drove off and Eddie came across the pitch towards us.
“‘What’s the story?’, I asked him.
“The story is, you nearly killed him”.
“I was absolutely devastated that I’d put a fellow player in hospital with a punch, someone who was only trying to put down a marker in a training session,” admitted O’Connell.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Irish Times, Caldwell has now spoken about the horror moment, as well as the difficult path his life took after retiring at 30 in 2014 following a series of concussions and hip issues. His involvement in drugs saw him receive more than one criminal conviction and he tried to take his own life.
Speaking specifically of the O'Connell incident, he said: “That is a trauma that I never addressed. That punch. I didn’t know what had happened, I was knocked out cold, so I didn’t know the whole story until other people like Rory [Best], Stephen Ferris and people like that told me what had happened.
“I wasn’t even looking at him when the punch landed, I was completely facing the other way.
“I understand tempers rise and it’s all in the past now, but it was a complete trauma.
“I had to be resuscitated on the side of the pitch because Paulie is a massive guy. So I woke up with my shirt cut the whole way open and them giving me CPR.
“Paulie came to the hospital after, I was 22 at the time, in my first camp with Ireland rugby.
“I was obviously trying to keep myself right and saying ‘nah don’t worry about it’, even though inside I was like, ‘flipping hell, man, he nearly killed me today.’”
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