Paul O’Connell: Sport allows children and parents to connect, to make friends

Involved with the children’s charity for about 15 years, after its former CEO Fergus Finlay invited him to visit a Barnardos centre, O’Connell has always been “blown away” by its work.

“Imagine a child coming from a difficult background arriving at school without breakfast, no dinner the night before, and no lunch in his bag.

“The breakfast club feeds these children breakfast and gives them a lunch going off [to school].”

Recalling his own childhood in Limerick, O’Connell says: “I had a really nice childhood — two parents at home, breakfast in the morning, out the door to school, help with homework, brought to training in whatever sport we wanted, a lovely dinner, then a story and a kiss goodnight. You’re lucky if that’s your childhood — a lot don’t have it. Some parents didn’t have a good experience from childhood on how to parent.

“Barnardos tries to fill those gaps, to help children have a better life and parents do a better job. For example, for a lot of children, their home environment isn’t suitable for doing homework, so Barnardos has homework clubs.”

Now in its third year, Barnardos Big Active promotes a range of activities based on the body, mind and heart:

• Body — physical challenges that take care of the body and have knock-on benefits for mental health;
• Mind — mindfulness exercises to support positive mental health and wellbeing;
• And heart — promoting the importance of charity by helping others around you.

Pointing out that Barnardos “sends out journals and classes that teachers can do on mindfulness and coping mechanisms”, O’Connell says: “I’ve been involved in professional rugby for over 2src years.

“I couldn’t imagine players not having a sports psychologist to talk to, to give them coping m