“These boys don’t have a clue what’s coming now.”
Sean O’Brien can still remember the joke, or attempt of one, that he got from a schools player when he was up for training with the Ireland U18s Schools team. O’Brien was up for the session representing Ireland Clubs after he had been spotted lining out for Tullow RFC.
“The fella, who is now a professional player with Munster, came over to me and said, in this Dublin accent, ‘Where are you from?'”
O’Brien told the Dubliner he was from Tullow, in Carlow, and replied “Down the country” when he was asked where that was.
Player: “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My friend was down there a couple of weeks ago and he said he saw a shoop.”
O’Brien: “What? A sheep?”
Player: “No, no, there was more than one of them.”
That was enough to light O’Brien’s fuse. Speaking at the One-Zero conference, at Croke Park, the Ireland star did not reveal whether current Munster Dubs Ian Keatley or Felix Jones made the remark but he certainly has not forgotten it.
During a wide-ranging discussion involving himself, Tadhg Furlong and MC Joe Molloy, O’Brien spoke about the point he felt he needed to prove when representing Ireland’s club players, rather than the schools players whom he felt had so much handed to them.
“There was a lot of argy-bargy with me, back then, in terms of meeting up with those guys,” he said. “Back then, they didn’t respect you enough and that was definitely a chip on your shoulder. After a few scrapes, and stuff, they definitely knew you meant business then.”
Furlong was nodding along for most of what O’Brien had to say. Coming from New Ross RFC, in Wexford, the young prop is another who took the road less travelled.
Furlong spoke about the standard of coaching not being as high in country teams, at underage level, as there would be in Dublin’s big rugby schools. Coming out of school, Furlong was far from conditioned but possessed that ‘pure, fat farmer strength’. He was exposed to a whole new level of coaching and training standards and immediately took to it.
Like O’Brien, Furlong was determined to show he belonged. He commented:
“Coming from the non-traditional route, I had a massive chip on my shoulder. I had something to prove.
“I remember, and I hope they don’t mind me saying it, these posh, private school lads from Dublin. I was competing against these. You put that chip on your shoulder to drive on and help you make something of yourself.”
O’Brien notes that there are six Ireland Youths [club players] in the Leinster Academy, with five that came into the system last season. “They’re looking outside the box a little more,” he says.
“The likes of the clubs, and the younger ones there, they do have a different attitude, I suppose, in terms of work-rate. The majority of them would be from a farming or working class background so they’re used to working hard.”
With hard-hewn men like O’Brien and Furlong successes of a net thrown wider, it is no surprise that Leinster have embraced the concept and accommodated country and schools talent.
