In the 72nd minute of the Major League Rugby final back in August, Luke Carty stepped up from the bench, took to the field and played his part in claiming the nascent championship for LA Giltinis.
On a collective level, a title in the franchise’s first season was a fine achievement; on a personal level, it represented a turnaround in sporting fortunes Carty could scarcely have anticipated only 18 months earlier.
As he kicked the ball dead to make history beneath the unique peristyle of the LA Memorial Coliseum, it was impossible to avoid reflecting on a journey that began all the way back in February 2020. Because on that nondescript morning at the Sportsground in Galway, he was cut from Connacht’s academy, his ambitions left in tatters. The dream was over, or so it seemed.
He knew for a while at the time that being cut from the province was becoming more a probability than a possibility, but no amount of anticipating the reality of a situation can prepare a sportsperson for a broken dream.
Ever since he first began running with a leather ball under his arm in Athlone, the dream was to pull on the green jersey in Galway. And until that day, making his debut had been the sole focus of his tunnel vision. So, when the expected conversation with Andy Friend, the Connacht head coach, took place, Carty's life could so easily have entered a very dark chapter.
What now?
Where next for the man who finished his Connacht career without a senior appearance to his name?
“I knew it was happening before then,” Carty remembers. “I had been dreaming of playing for Connacht since I was a kid but it wasn’t the end of the world. I had my family and friends who gave me a good bit of support.”
Despite swinging the sword, Friend didn’t desert the young outhalf, putting him in contact with a club coach in Sydney. Getting a chance to play club rugby in Australia was at the very least a sliver of consolation. His life could still revolve around the oval ball and that was something.
“I felt sorry for myself for probably a week or two but the opportunity came up for the gig in Sydney and I was looking forward to that, to get out to a different part of the world to play a bit of rugby and to get back enjoying it. You cannot feel too sorry for yourself.”
Sucker punch
Resisting the urge to indulge in self-pity became vastly more difficult after his aspirations took yet another sucker punch less than a month after he received the devastating news of his departure from Connacht. The pandemic began a global concern, pulling the shutters down on his career once again.
That blow meant he began the process of returning to college while a club career with Buccaneers, his home club, began to look like the height of his ambitions in sport.
He was back where it all began, although that didn’t provide much comfort at the time.
"It didn't really sit too well with me so I got an agent to cast the net out again, to let people know I was US-qualified. Then, the same coach I was supposed to be joining up with down in Sydney, Darren Coleman, got the job with LA Giltinis and he reached back out to me again to see if I'd be interested. He had got tipped off that I was US-eligible so it all began to fall into place really.
“It went silent for a bit. With Covid and everything I was thinking this may not go ahead. They gave me some pre-season to do and myself, Sean McNulty and Harry McNulty [the other Irishmen who were offered contracts with the US franchise] were probably tipping away at it since, maybe, last October.
“We were running three or four days a week and gyming and all that craic. And we were doing that all through lockdown so no gyms were open.
“I had already signed up to do a new masters around then so I went ahead and did that anyway. I still started that in September thinking this wouldn’t go ahead.”
It wasn’t until Carty bedded in with his new team on the Hawaiian island of Maui for pre-season, following a period in Bermuda waiting for his visa to be processed, that he finally began to appreciate that his career could be resuscitated.
It only then began to sink in. He had swapped cold and soggy Galway for the balmy east coast of America, where he would be sharing a locker room with some of the most recognisable names in the sport - Matt Giteau, Adam Ashley-Cooper, DTH van der Merwe and more.
“In early 2020 with how bad everything was in America, I was questioning whether I’d be able to get a visa or if the league would be able to go ahead with all the cases there,” he says.
“I got quite excited about the whole thing then last summer but once I got over there - well, relief is probably a good word for it.
“I think we took off a bit at the start and got a headstart on teams with the pre-season camps. We got a lot of guys in, got their visas and there were fewer issues for us with Covid whereas some teams struggled at the start with that. But towards the tail end of the season, it was pretty intense.”
Despite the star-studded league growing in popularity, the former Connacht man quickly began to prove he could hold his own, earning a call-up to the US national side, for which he was eligible due to a US-born grandparent, within a few months of landing in the country.
He returned to Europe this summer and replicated the feats of his brother, Jack, the Ireland and Connacht outhalf, by earning international caps for his adopted country in Twickenham and the Aviva Stadium.
"When I had signed I got talking to Gary Gold, the US head coach, and he said: 'I know you're eligible. Just get over here and get playing and if things go well there might be a cap there for you.'
Perspective
“I suppose, when I first went over I wasn’t really thinking about that. I was thinking this will either go unbelievably well and I might get a cap out of it and, down the road, maybe a World Cup. Or, it mightn’t go too well but at least I’ll get a few months living abroad and I’ll get to experience something else.
“I try to just take a good perspective on everything. Everything’s meant to happen for a reason. I stuck with it and tried to stay positive. Even when I signed the deal and everything was uncertain with Covid, I was thinking if this doesn’t go ahead it’s not meant to go ahead. That’s just the way it is.
“From maybe holding a tackle bag at the Sportsground on a Tuesday to, 16 months later, playing a test game and winning a championship with some world class players around you, it was good going. I was playing with Buccaneers and a year later I was playing in the Coliseum and at SoFi Stadium - the Rams and the Chargers’ stadium. It was unbelievable. I was pinching myself at times trying to take it all in as best I could.”
Now, after so long waiting for the opportunity of a lifetime to inevitably fall through, the 24-year-old finally has some momentum and certainty in his life.
And with the world slowly emerging from the clutches of a pandemic, the upcoming season is loaded with promise: rugby in front of fans, hosting family and friends in his new home, building on a dream that for periods seemed shattered.
“It was different getting to FaceTime family and friends in the stadium after we won the final. And when we played against England, I was FaceTiming them after the game.
“So what I’m looking forward to most is getting to share that experience next year in person and even playing better rugby and getting more test caps.
“I just need to keep working hard and showing up. If I worry about my own self, then hopefully things will take care of themselves off the pitch.
“But it has been a pretty good year by all accounts.”
