Chai Brady
Devout defender Joey O’Brien tells Chai Brady about his faith, football and Christmas traditions
Christmas is a time for faith and family and in difficult circumstances such as the current coronavirus pandemic the world is facing, God will always be there, according to Shamrock Rovers defender Joey O’Brien.
Joey started off playing for Bolton Wanderers aged 15 and continued with them into his senior career. He went on to play for Sheffield Wednesday and West Ham United before joining the Shamrock Rovers squad in 2018. He has also been called up for Irish international matches.
With almost two decades of experience, the professional footballer said it was his faith that led him through some of the more difficult and darker parts of his life.
Joey explains that he gets “great comfort” from his faith in God and how he was brought up”
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Joey says his parents instilled a strong Catholic faith in him from a young age, which helped him when he left for England in his teens and through a serious knee injury that put the future of his footballing career in question. Practising his religion is never something he shied away from talking about. It has regularly come up in media interviews when asked about rituals before matches or how he dealt with his injury.
Before the cup final last November, when a journalist asked him what his day would consist of, he responded that it wouldn’t be too different than most, he would get up and go to Mass and then go home to get ready for the match. “Obviously to them it was out of the ordinary maybe,” Joey says, explaining that the journalist seemed surprised.
“Someone asked me then ‘do you pray for a win?’ before the AC Milan game and I said no, I say my prayers all the time but I don’t pray for wins. I just pray that everything goes well in the match for me if possible whatever the result is going to be and hope that I come off the pitch in one piece.
“It’s a huge part of my life, when I’m speaking to journalists it just sort of comes up. Throughout the years if I was talking about injuries, and how you get through injuries, it’s always been something I talked about because they were really difficult times. Being in England I missed years with my injuries and stuff like that.”
Faith is one of the things that “sticks with you” if you’re brought up that way, Joey says”
Joey explains that he gets “great comfort” from his faith in God and how he was brought up. During his injury, which saw him unable to play football professionally for years, he says: “At times I probably was praying for a miracle because I went two and a half years without playing a match and I had multiple operations on my knee.
“So at that stage for me I needed a miracle so I was praying for that but I was also praying for the strength to know that if it didn’t work out and I wasn’t going to get through the injury that I would always have God with me to help me.”
Faith is one of the things that “sticks with you” if you’re brought up that way, Joey says. His mother was a daily Massgoer and his family would all go together on weekends. When he went over to join the Bolton Wanderers academy in England in his teens, which was the start of his footballing career, one of the first things he did was to locate the local Catholic church.
Great strength
“Through that it gave me great comfort, great strength, great help through obviously not being around my family and friends and for me I found it was sort of like a connection I had still with my family, I knew they were going to Mass, I was going to Mass, I knew they would be praying for me and I was praying for them. I found a great connection through it and that over there definitely helped me,” he says.
Regardless of where Joey ended up in the world, whether it was to do with football, in foreign countries for training camps or not, he would always find a church.
Asked what his experience has been, during his football career and outside of that being an openly practicing Catholic and looking for the nearest churches, Joey says, “I think people were very respectful of it if they knew that’s what I do sort of thing, that’s where I go”.
“So they would always be helpful in a sense of whether it was finding out where it was or organising a lift. At the start, when I was a kid, you probably needed a lift down to the church and the phone internet wasn’t as handy as what it is now.
“Nowadays when you’re going into a foreign country to play football obviously just with your phone you can find out where the local Catholic church is and what the Mass times are, so it’s a lot easier now.”
West Ham United
During his five-year career playing for West Ham United he said he was lucky to have a church right on his doorstep. The club have since moved from the Upton Park stadium after he left in 2016 and now are based at London Stadium.
“There was a Catholic church 20 yards away from the stadium, so it was really convenient in that sense, that was my local church. The two priests were fans of the football club, so I was able to get a connection with them through that,” he says.
“The stadium was so big it was literally in the carpark, you could kick a ball from the church onto the football pitch it was that close like. The two priests were Westham fans so I suppose listen, one of the things of me going in there was I suppose a few free tickets I was able to give them to go and watch the matches.”
He adds: “There was some funny stories that I’ve had in regard to going to church on a Sunday morning and playing a football match in an afternoon.”
Church
In one particular case when West Ham were to play Newcastle he found a church to attend Mass, the priest there was Irish. Joey was sitting in a pew with his West Ham tracksuit on before the game among a host of Newcastle fans. He says the priest was “having a bit of banter on the altar regarding me”, describing it as a “funny moment”.
With a huge number of aspiring footballers unable to play matches and train as the normally would during the pandemic, Joey says practicing on your own is always very beneficial and can help people stay sharp.
“Whether you’re in the garden or in your house… you need to keep doing it, that’s where you can get enjoyment,” he advises.
Joey’s Christmas tradition, since he moved back home to Crumlin in Dublin, is to get up first thing in the morning to go to Mass”
“You can create a little world of your own, on your own, with football and that’s what I done as a kid. You wanted to be the best player in the world, taking a shot or scoring a goal or kicking the ball off your back garden. You can still do all that sort of thing, that’s the most important thing, those moments when you’re practicing but you’re still enjoying it and you’re waiting for the next time you’ll be able to get back out onto the pitch playing.”
Watching and playing football can help people “switch off” during the pandemic and help them through it, Joey says but at the end of the day it’s “only a sport”.
“There’s a lot of things way more important especially at this time with the situation, people losing their jobs, people in hospitals, people losing loved ones and stuff like that,” he says.
“But from my point of view we’re obviously a professional sport in this country so we’re still playing. I suppose the games are on TV and people are able to watch them and for that little period of time you’re able to maybe switch off your reality for that little hour and a half and whatnot you know and try and get carried away in the match, in the emotions of what a football match means and if that can help people in any way I think it’s a good thing especially at this time.”
Christmas traditions
Joey’s Christmas tradition, since he moved back home to Crumlin in Dublin, is to get up first thing in the morning to go to Mass. “I have two young children and they get up early so it’ll be an early Mass for us and then down to my mam and see her with the kids obviously and then get ready for Christmas dinner,” he says. (Before having children he used to go to the midnight Mass but says it’s just not possible now.)
He explains that’s been the case for the last couple of years since being back in Ireland, but that may change due to the Covid-19 pandemic, “I was going to say it won’t change this year but you never know with the way things are, the way the world is now”.
Family
Christmas would also be a big time for his family, they would also remember his father who passed away. “I’d always be around the house with my Mam and with my brothers and nieces and nephews, so yeah it would be a big, big thing for us as a family.”
He adds: “Those are the two most important things in my life, my faith and my family.
Joey says that although football is an important part of his life, it can never trump his faith”
“I have my own children now, so for me I’m trying to start passing the faith on to them, what my mam and dad done for me.”
Asked whether it’s been difficult for him during Ireland’s two lockdowns leading to churches being closed for public Mass during the pandemic, Joey says: “Definitely, I know there’s people especially like my mother, she would go every day. I suppose there’s a lot of people out there who would miss it. I definitely miss it, again you get great comfort. For me personally you need to go to Mass, you need to hear the message, you need to be there. It’s OK saying you say a few prayers but for me you need to be practicing, you need to be going to Mass.”
After the first national lockdown when churches reopened for public Mass on June 29, Joey says when he returned he was impressed by the level of precautions that were taken to ensure people’s safety from the virus, describing them as “very, very good”.
He adds: “For me I find it a bit strange that they were closed down, because in these times I think people, there’s so much going on, to have that spiritual sort of side of things with you I think it could be really, really important to people.
“Everyone is hoping to get over this period of time and for everybody to get back together for Christmas, for me as I said, that’s the two things that defines Christmas, going to Mass, going to church and being with your family.”
Faith
Joey says that although football is an important part of his life, it can never trump his faith. He says: “Regardless of football, I suppose I’m known as a footballer, I went to England when I was 15-16 I’m still doing it now, so I’ve been really, really fortunate to be able to do that as a job for so long.
“But I know it’s going to come to an end sooner or later, but my faith is not going to leave me it’s going to be there until the day I die and after that as well.”