Curtain falls on Horan’s glittering career

MARCUS Horan may have called time on his playing career, but the decorated Shannon, Munster and Ireland prop has hinted that he is likely to return to the game in a new capacity in the future.

Prop Horan said: “Today was my last game. I have a busy time with the family, I will be taking it on full-time. I will have to find a new career for myself.

“This is it for me playing rugby. That is what makes it even more disappointing, to go out like that. I will have to live with that performance. At least the boys can go out next year and get that monkey off their backs.

“Look, I am always here. This club made me. I am always here. I’m on call. I have to give something back and I think I do have a lot to give back.

“I just hope the guys in the club get things right. It is about getting strength in depth if you can.

“It is about trying to get fellas coming out of school and try and entice them to the club.

“I don’t think this is the end of Shannon by a long shot, These kind of scenarios can make a club. We have been in this situation before, not quite relegation maybe, but coming back from it will be a real test of the club.”

Horan admitted he hadn’t seen the heavy defeat against the students in Saturday’s relegation play-off coming, especially on the back of Shannon’s exciting victory over AIL champions Lansdowne in their previous outing.

”I didn’t see this coming. It was a terrible day, so disappointing,” Horan admitted.

“They deserved their win, no doubt. But we just get out of the blocks at all. We didn’t put any pressure on them. The effort the boys put in through the season, and the big win over Lansdowne, it’s so disappointing to finish like that. I don’t have the words for it. We went out without a fight, really. That is the disappointing side of it.

“Given where the boys were before Christmas, I think it is great we even had a shot at staying up. Everyone was really down in the dumps around Christmas time.

“To come to where we were, we never thought we would be in with a chance of claiming a play-off. Today was a real disappointment.

“The club needs to rebuild and try and get back. It won’t be easy. Bouncing back is a fine thing, but you want to bounce back and stay back.

“If the rebuilding of the club takes two years, it takes two years. If you get back, you want to be able to stay up there.

Thirty five-year-old Horan said the recession was biting hard in Limerick rugby with many young rugby players being forced to leave the city in order to find work.

“I think all the clubs in Limerick are suffering at the moment trying to put teams together, with people leaving the city,” Horan said.

“We don’t have this strength in depth that these Dublin teams have. That is not an excuse. That is just a fact of life that we have to get used to.

“Look, the club has good history and we just need to get the good guys back into the club.

“I think the IRFU really need to take a good luck at club rugby. It is probably easy for me to say that given that I haven’t been around the club scene for the best part of 10 or 12 years through being a professional. The last four or five years I have been here I have seen the problems at club level.

“I have seen what the club did to get me to the level I got to, if we lost club rugby, Irish rugby would be in a serous state.

“They need to address this. How they are going to police the money situation (ban on playing players from 2014/15) I don’t know. Something needs to be done. I don’t think clubs can survive if they keep doing what they are doing.”