Paul O’Connell talks childhood, career and importance of the environment on Limerick podcast

TEAM Limerick Clean-Up (TLC) - one of Ireland’s largest one-day clean-ups -has launched the final episode of its podcast series Team Limerick Clean-Up Talks To... with TLC co-founder and rugby legend Paul O’Connell.

The mini podcast series has been created in conjunction with TLC’s media partner Limerick’s Live95 and is hosted by Nigel Dugdale.

In this final episode, Paul discusses the importance of initiatives like TLC.

"Litter is a massive problem," he says and describes the decision to get involved in Team Limerick Clean-Up as being "the right thing to do".

"The city and the county get a clean-up in one day but also on top of that I hope kids learn some good habits as well. That’s the big thing.

"You want pride of place – that’s what we have to teach our kids. We have to teach them to be proud of where they come from. So that they look after it, so that they make the right decisions as they go through life," said the former Ireland and British and Irish Lions captain.

Speaking on his own childhood and pride of place in his home of Drombanna, Paul reminisces on how he, along with his brothers, "argued for the Commodore 64 but we never got it" and for that, he’s now thankful. He realises the importance of being out and about in your local community and that also gave him the space to focus on sport.

Now a Grand Slam winning coach, Paul also delves into the "nice sense of fulfilment" he gets from being on the coaching side of things, which is undeniably different from the "euphoric" sense of playing on the field.

When talking about his time playing for Munster, he describes the "unbelievable sense of purpose" he had and felt that he knew exactly what he was "put on earth for".

Touching on Ireland’s recent Grand Slam win, Paul says "we have the players capable of beating any team in the world".

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Other guests in the podcast series include Limerick All-Star hurler Cian Lynch, TV and radio broadcaster, Louise Cantillon and 39th Macra na Feirme president Elaine Houlihan. The Team Limerick Clean-Up Podcast series is available to stream on Acast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the Live95 website.

Team Limerick Clean-Up is an initiative sponsored by the JP McManus Benevolent Fund and supported by Limerick City and County Council.

To listen on Live 95 click here or on Spotify click here