In 1985, Nîmes Olympique signed a Dublin-born defender who would become the only Irish player ever to wear the club's shirt. Jack "Jacko" McDonagh, who had already won two League of Ireland titles with Shamrock Rovers and three caps for the Republic of Ireland before crossing to France, died on September 21, 2026, at the age of 64, according to RTÉ Sport and the Nîmes-area paper Objectif Sud, which had followed his story for years.

Publicly he was always Jacko, and in match programmes he was usually Jack, but he was born James McDonagh in Donnybrook, Dublin, in April 1962. He came through the Shelbourne youth ranks before signing for Bohemians in 1979, and made 60 appearances across three seasons there, winning the PFAI Young Player of the Year award for 1981-82. He then crossed Dublin to Shamrock Rovers, a side entering the most dominant spell in the club's history at Glenmalure Park, their Milltown home. Rovers won the League of Ireland title four seasons running from 1983-84, and McDonagh was part of the team for the first two championships, the second of which, in 1984-85, was paired with the FAI Cup. Glenmalure Park itself would not survive much longer: the club left the ground for good within two years of that double.

That form took him into Eoin Hand's Republic of Ireland squad. McDonagh won three senior caps in 1983 and 1984, debuting as a substitute in Ireland's 8-0 win over Malta at Dalymount Park on November 16, 1983, still the national team's biggest victory. His caps ended almost as soon as they began: once he left for continental Europe, only Ireland or England-based players were eligible for the squad under the selection rules of the time, Objectif Sud reported.

Nîmes recruited him for the 1985-86 season to help push the club back toward France's top division. He spent two seasons in French second-division football, making 48 appearances and scoring five goals in the red and blue of a club nicknamed the Crocodiles, a stretch of his career that Objectif Sud would still be writing about more than four decades later. "I remember when he arrived. He played in a very Irish way, he was afraid of no one," recalled Patrick Champ, an assistant coach at Nîmes when McDonagh signed and later president of the club's former players' association, adding that "even after signing for Nîmes, he kept fighting as if he still had to convince us to sign him."

His career kept moving after Nîmes: a spell back in Ireland with Derry City, a stint in England, and a final professional posting at KSV Waregem in Belgium, where he made more than forty appearances before his playing career wound down. But it was Nîmes he kept returning to. He played on for local clubs in Bagnols-sur-Cèze and Uzès, then coached at Laudun-l'Ardoise, and eventually settled permanently in the Gard region of southern France. His wife Maryse and their two sons, Edward and Jean-Baptiste, were all born in Nîmes.

The football communities on both sides of his life kept faith with him in his later years. From April 2023, former teammates ran a series of fundraising activities on his behalf; Shamrock Rovers, the club with whom he had twice been champion, staged a golf tournament that August, and former Manchester City and Arsenal forward Niall Quinn hosted a fundraising evening in his support. The following year, in May 2024, Bray Wanderers Legends played Shamrock Rovers Legends in a testimonial match for him at the Carlisle Grounds in Bray. "Jacko McDonagh is a League of Ireland legend whose abilities on the pitch are reflected by his popularity off it," said Mick Byrne, one of the Shamrock Rovers Legends who played that day, according to Shamrock Rovers FC. In Nîmes, his son Jean-Baptiste stayed close to the club's alumni association and told Objectif Sud that his father "loved talking about his career" and "kept very fond memories of the Stade Jean-Bouin," adding that "he fell in love with Nîmes Olympique" and its famous orange BIC-sponsored jersey, and "left the club with regret" when his contract ended. On news of his death, the FAI said in a statement that he "was a popular figure in Irish football who enjoyed success in the League of Ireland," and added that the association was saddened by his death.

McDonagh's name stays attached to specific, countable things: two Shamrock Rovers league titles and the 1985 FAI Cup, a PFAI Young Player of the Year award won as a teenager at Bohemians, a scoreline against Malta that Ireland has never bettered, and the 48 appearances that make him, still, the only Irishman to have played for Nîmes Olympique. It stays attached to Laudun-l'Ardoise, the Gard club he once coached, to a League of Ireland community that filled the Carlisle Grounds in Bray on his behalf, and to a family in Nîmes that carried his name forward in a city he chose to call home.