A young man who clearly knew where he was going.
At 32-years-old, Rob Kearney is one of the most decorated players in the history of Irish rugby and he is far from finished.
The Louth native started this season, and a couple before that, being told his time as starting fullback for Leinster and Ireland was coming to an end. And yet here he is. Still playing, still starting, still counter-attacking and still winning.
After Leinster reached the 2018 Champions Cup final – their and his fourth time to do so – Kearney perfectly captured what keeps him so driven. He declared:
“It’s human nature, you… you get really greedy. You want more. We’re in a club where we are surrounded by so many ambitious, competitive people. The team is doing really well chasing for silverware. There’s nothing worse having to watch that from a couch somewhere else, when you’re not involved.
“We’re part of something really special and winning is such a great feeling. And the more you win, the more you want to win and the more trophies you get, the greedier you get for more. That’s what builds it – greed, in a nice way.”
For Leinster, Kearney has three European Cups, a Challenge Cup, three league titles and he won European Player of the Year in 2012. For Ireland he has four Six Nations titles, including two Grand Slams. And he is greedy for more.
Kearney is now coming to the end of his 14th season with Leinster but he can still clearly recall his first year in the senior set-up. He first came into Leinster at Under 15 level as he was studying for his Junior Cert.
“The camp was at Old Belvedere and Kurt McQuilkin was in charge,” he said in The New Breed. “Rugby was always in my family. My dad, granddad and older brother all played at Clongowes; that was something I always wanted to do.
“Up to 14 or 15, though, Gaelic football was the major sport. I trained and played three or four nights a week and would have had matches, in both sports, each weekend. When it came time to make a decision on which sport to pursue, rugby being professional swung it. I knew that you could make a much better life for yourself as a rugby professional than as an amateur GAA player.
“I was so lucky coming in as I was offered a one-year deal and within that first season, I was playing. There were very few young guys playing for their provinces at the time so the academy lads, myself included, got a chance early on. I was eighteen when I first came in and by 19 I was playing with the first team.”
Kearney was a highly-rated teenager but he was a teenager all the same. Going from Clongowes to training alongside established Leinster and Ireland stars was an eye-opener but he did not take a step back.
“I remember for my first weights session in the gym, with the senior team, I looked at the timetable and I was in with Brian O’Driscoll and Shane Horgan. Your first inclination is to be awestruck, and I was a bit as I had grown up watching them on TV, who I had admired and respected.
“I knew I was in there for a reason and vowed to myself that I would not hold back. You have to get to grips with it pretty quickly and push yourself so it becomes a level playing field. I scored a hat-trick (against Parma) in a pre-season game that summer so that helped me settle in.
“I got my chance early as Denis Hickie got injured so I was put in on the left wing for around six months. It is different now. A lot of lads go through the academy process for three seasons before taking the step up, or not, to the senior team. Lads may get a chance now but if they don’t perform they go right to the back of the queue. It might be months before they get a look-in again.”
Michael Cheika offered him a developmental contract and ‘made it seem like my natural progression’. He did not hesitate to sign up.
An Ireland call-up arrived two months after his Leinster debut, in September 2006, but Kearney wasn’t buying it.
“I got a call from Eddie O’Sullivan, who let me know I was doing well,” he recalls. “I was just nineteen at the time. I thought, 100%, that it was a piss-take.
“The following season, I got a call about coming in for training camp with the senior team. Again, my first thought was ‘Someone’s taking the piss’.”
He was good enough so he was old enough. He has been good enough ever since.
