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Published 17:23 21 Jul 2017 BST
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"The starting salary was £7,500 a year. After that, it went to £16,000 and then £25,000 and then you might get a national contract. "Before all that, though, it was the pride involved. You can't stress that enough. "It wasn't training during the day, at that stage. You could get your weights done between 7am and 9am, then go to college and train again after 4pm. And that's a fella being fairly ambitious."
O'Gara was studying at UCC with his Munster salary ensuring he was one of the more flush students. As soon as he felt there was a good chance at making a living from rugby, he was away.
By the time he had firmly established himself as a star for Munster and Ireland, his annual salary was comfortably into six figures. As he told The Hard Yards, earlier this year, he developed a handy tactic for negotiating IRFU deals. He commented:
"I would have, in fairness, talked to Brian O'Driscoll a lot about that. He was my confidante on that and we shared a lot of things. "I knew what he was getting so I'd put a figure in my head. I'd do the negotiating myself and say, 'This is it'... I only ever did four deals with the union in my time and, in fairness to them, I got well looked after."It was a lot, lot more than £7,500 but one thing never changed - that sense of pride in representing himself, his family, town, parish, province and country.
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