Former Connacht player is now the Leader of a new American dream
He walked away from professional rugby in 2014 but now Tadhg Leader is ploughing a furrow in Canada as a football kicker and he has his sights on the NFL
On the day Connacht won their one and only senior title, Tadhg Leader couldn’t have been more tuned out.
Ear-marked for a pro career from his school days, he’d been fast-tracked into the province’s academy. Yet, having secured an early release from his contract in 2014 after becoming disillusioned due to injury, he was blissfully unaware as the squad secured the PRO12 under Pat Lam in Murrayfield.
“I was in the wilderness of Alaska,” Leader smiles. “Camping and fishing, and there was no phone connection, no signal, no nothing.
“We had some sort of satellite phone, the people I was with. So, I was happy.
“Darragh (his brother, the former Connacht full-back) was injured. I’m still mates with some of the lads, but I wasn’t even thinking about it that much. As I said, I couldn’t have been more disconnected from it at that point, but it was phenomenal to see.”
Fast-forward six years and there are no trips to the great beyond for Leader this summer. Having walked away from professional sport all those years ago, he finds himself ploughing a furrow in the ranks of the Canadian Football League where he kicks for the Hamilton Tiger Cats.
At 30, he’s discovered a new dream and, having re-invented himself as an American football kicker, he’s determined to go as far as he can with it.
His conversion came almost by accident. After quitting Connacht, he’d had a short stint in Italy curtailed by injury before playing some amateur rugby in the States and picking up contracts in the Major League with the San Diego Legion.
Rediscovering his enjoyment of the game resulted in improved performances and, after qualifying on residency, he won two caps for the US Eagles in 2019 and was on standby for that year’s World Cup.
When the pandemic hit, he was still part of the set-up and had transferred to the New England Free Jacks. One of his players coached high school football and Leader suggested they kick a few balls before practice one evening.
So, they began kicking and before long Leader had an audience.
“It turned out I was striking pretty well,” he recalls. “Typically, there’s a running track around the pitch in the States. And, as I was kicking, people that are walking around it started stopping and coming over and just watching me kick.
“They were asking: ‘Who are you? Who do you play for? And I didn’t know if my level was good or bad. But then on the back of that and this guy who’s a high school coach said: ‘No, that’s actually pretty good in terms of the distances and hang time and things of that nature.”
Still, Leader wasn’t about to jack in the day job but he got in touch with a kicking coach who recommended he link up with Super Bowl winner and renowned coach John Carney and, after some soul-searching, he travelled to California at his own expense to join his training group.
“My first day I’m with Super Bowl winners and I had no clue who they were,” he says. “I just kind of jumped in alongside them. I was a little bit unorthodox in how I kicked, but I kicked really well. And the feedback from them was that the odds of getting success professionally are pretty low considering you’re 28, turn 29. You’ve never played in college, never played in high school, but you can kick a ball well.
“‘The hardest bit is kicking and you seem to have a pretty decent level with no training, and it’s kind of up to you what you want to do.’
“So, at that point I made the decision and let my rugby team know that I was going to try it. They were surprised. My family was surprised. Everyone was surprised that I was kind of going to leave all that for something that I knew nothing about.
“But at bare minimum I’m going to learn a lot and experience a new sport.
“I’ll learn a lot around the art of kicking. The odds of success here, of getting to the NFL, is pretty small, but someone from Ireland is going to do it eventually. Someone’s going to do it. Why not me? I’ve been kicking all my life, and my biggest passion is kicking, and I’m talented.
“So that was the mindset around that.”
Indeed, his story has attracted the attention of a number of Gaelic football and rugby players at home who are watching his progress with interest.
He’s developing his coaching business and has had numerous expressions of interest.
“On social media a lot of people have reached out and rightly so,” he says. “We’re talented kickers, we can kick on the move. Footballers, rugby players, soccer players . . . there’s around 100 Australians in college, about 10 in the NFL, why not us?
“It was ‘why not me?’ at the outset, but it’s ‘why not us?’ now. There’s no reason why it can’t be us, I’m sure I’ll play a role there with my experience.”
That experience was built playing with the Aviators in the Spring League.
Sharing a locker-room with players desperate for NFL contracts was an eye-opener as he turned out at the 67,000-capacity Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts.
“I’d never played the sport, I couldn’t provide game-tape but I sold them on my story and showed them good training-tape. Thankfully, I got in.
“It was a cool stage to be playing my first game on. It was a class experience, but the first game was on national TV with half-a-million people tuning in, I was trying to learn.
“Thankfully it went pretty well, that confirmed to me I’m on the right track and then I played in the European Leagues (with Wroclaw Panthers in Poland) which was the next step.”
Leader describes the experience of that first kick as “like blacking out” and says the process of striking the smaller, harder ball after the snap is more challenging.
Another adjustment is the change from rugby dressing-room to the atmosphere of an American football locker-room.
“There’s a lot more people and, as a result, there’s probably less relationships,” he explains.
“Rugby is great for lads having good connections and bonds. Football is much harder. At first I just wasn’t sure. I was wondering, ‘Jesus, do the lads like me or what’s the craic here?’
“But you realise quickly you can’t be mates with everyone. There’s just too many people. It’s very segmented between special teams, defence and offence. It’s actually much more ruthless than rugby as a business. You get shopped and traded all the time.
Tadhg Leader in action for Connacht's U-20s in September 2011 against Leinster at Donnybrook Stadium. Photo: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
“Every day, guys were getting traded or cut so you don’t build those same connections as a result because your mate could be gone by breakfast the next morning. It’s quite tough. Although the relationship side of things maybe wasn’t as strong as those used to be in rugby, it’s still cool to experience something new or just meeting people that are very different to rugby.”
When the European season came to an end, Leader decided that his next step needed to be up to the Canadian Football League (CFL) or the NFL or he’d bring his football journey to a close. Some clubs got in touch, but their interest was tentative. He had an offer to return to Major League Rugby, so he decided to send a “straightforward text” to the two teams that had shown the strongest interest.
“Thankfully, Hamilton Tiger Cats said, ‘look, let’s have a few calls’ and after a minute or two they said, ‘we’re going to sign you’,” he says.
“I wasn’t expecting that, it was just kind of a sense of relief. This is the next opportunity and a really good stepping stone to kind of keep building this.”
The Castlegar man returned to Galway and trained through the winter, before linking up with his new team-mates ahead of the season which kicked off last week.
Although he wasn’t involved in the first CFL game, he made a strong impression when introduced in pre-season; nailing a buzzer-beating winner against the Montreal Alouettes.
It was, he says, “one of the coolest moments I’ve had” and he’s determined to earn more reps as he competes with Canadian Michael Domagala and American Seth Small.
The NFL is his ultimate goal, but he’s realistic about his prospects.
“That was my goal when I first started kicking, but I had no clue how limited opportunities are,” he says.
“How many guys are trying to get one of the 32 NFL jobs or nine CFL jobs? That’s it really in terms of legit professionalism. Once I learned more I realised, ‘Oh, wow, this is going to be harder than I probably thought’.
“But, now that I’m here, I just know that if I perform for Hamilton more doors will open so I’m not going to get too tied up with being too far down the road.
“Of course, that would be amazing. It would be cool for the sport in Ireland if I could be able to be a bit of a flag-bearer. In the interim, I’m just going to enjoy Hamilton. There’s going to be some good moments and bad moments and I need to live and learn through those. Then to keep reminding myself at the end of the day, I’m kicking a ball, I love to kick. So just trying to enjoy that for what it is and where it takes me.”
