“What’s the plan to beat the Dubs?”
Hugh O’Sullivan is always badgering older brother Cillian when he lands up home after his time up in the capital with Leinster Rugby.
The young scrum-half is GAA-mad but he looks, for all money, to be set for a decent career in professional rugby. That is the dream anyway, and he’s going about it the right way.
O’Sullivan played inter-county hurling and football for Meath, at underage levels, but his time at Belvedere College has shot him on a path, he hopes, towards the Leinster senior squad.
O’Sullivan’s older brothers, Cillian and Mark, respectively play football and hurling for Meath and the younger of that trio excelled for local club Kiltale. He had a tough choice to make, recently, but is seeking to make his way in the world as a rugby pro.
In a wide-ranging interview in the Leinster Rugby match programme [for the Munster Guinness PRO14 clash], O’Sullivan speaks about learning a heap under Kiwi schools coach Massey Tuhakaraina and his switch from fullback to scrum-half.
Tuhakaraina has likened O’Sullivan to a No.9 that Irish rugby fans may get excited about – Conor Murray. “He is tall,” notes the Kiwi. “Rangy.”
Currently combining his time honing rugby skills with the Leinster Academy and a PPES degree at Trinity College, O’Sullivan always finds time to keep track on Meath’s successes, and travails.
“I just have an interest in knowing what [the footballers] are up to,” he says. “Like, ‘What’s the plan to beat the Dubs?'”
His older brother is a talented footballer and Meath have made some decent improvements of late, but no-one appears to have figured the answer to that one.
If The Royal County are to turn over the Dubs, they’ll have to do it without O’Sullivan. For now.
