Leitrim's Donal Casey reflects on 'intense' time inside The Traitors

“I just couldn’t hold it together any longer, and all that pressure that I’ve held in for such a length of time, it kind of all came crashing out,” said Leitrim’s Donal Casey, recounting his tearful exit from The Traitors Ireland last week.

The Leitrim village man found himself on the wrong side of banishment after a three-vote saga that pitted him against Traitor Carla.

“I’ve never really been involved in something as intense as that. Just mentally taxing to a different level,” said Donal, reflecting on the experience.

His dramatic exit came after two weeks in the game, when he broke down.

Speaking to the Observer about how he came to take part in the show, Donal explained that his journey to The Traitors started last year, at a time when his life had just been flipped upside down. He was laid up with a broken neck, a career-ending injury he picked up in last year’s Leitrim Senior Football final.

“I’m after losing everything that I’ve kind of nearly lived for, for the last while. It was just sport. It took over nearly most of my life, and it was gone all of a sudden,” said Donal.

In the midst of that, he watched the first series of The Traitors. He thought he would be good at it, and some people mentioned that he should consider applying for the show, so he said Why not.

“I probably needed it in the sense of I needed something different in my life. It’s definitely given me a lot more than I ever wanted out of it,” said Donal.

Describing the dynamic between the contestants, Donal said the connection with the other players becomes very intense. He described it as a “Gaeltacht mentality”, where contestants are locked in together, analysing one another for the slightest changes in behaviour for days on end.

Donal explains that everyone eventually becomes very close to one another. For him, it was Ian, Pauric O, and Carle who he became closest with while he was there. Ironically, the latter two were the Traitors when he made his exit.

“You know everything about each person, and it was very difficult to look at them and think, this is the last time we’re all going to be, you know, in here together. It’s all over. That was really, really tough, and to know that they’re after getting it wrong was even harder,” said Donal.

Despite his exit, Donal told the Observer that he would do it all again in the morning if he got the chance.

“It was an amazing experience overall. You can’t really put into words how it actually was, but like it was, it was very intense. I don’t think people will ever understand unless you experience it yourself; you’ll never really understand how intense it actually is,” he said.

For Donal, the experience was something that was difficult to compare with anything he had previously experienced.

“You experience every single motion to the very last, but it was a brilliant experience, a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said.

The Leitrim man has played in Croke Park and helped his club, Leitrim Gaels, to their first county championship last year, but he says that none of that compares to the feelings of catching Traitors in there.

“Again, you’re in such an intense environment, and it takes a lot of balls to go with your gut in certain areas and to pin certain people,” said Donal.

Explaining the difficulty of making those judgements about people he barely knew, Donal said: “You’re stripping people that you don’t know; you’re trying to identify areas of change in a person that you don’t know. And you could be totally wrong, and you’re ripping them on television in front of all their family and friends that are at home.”

Donal, who works as a construction and woodwork teacher in Carrick-on-Shannon, has had to endure a bit of slagging from his students, but said that he is well used to it from his football days.

His students have been glued to the show to support their teacher, while Donal admitted that he also had some anxiety about watching it back.

“You have a lot of anxiety about what might be shown because, again, you’re there all day, every day, and you could have said anything, or the way they show something might not exactly depict what happened. So you have a bit of anxiety with it, but I was buzzing just to get the secret out.

“It’s awful trying to hold a secret,” said Donal.