Their morning’s work done, they sloped around the patio area of the smart café that adjoins the Ireland rugby squad’s Portuguese training camp: Ireland’s number ten pretenders. You think to yourself that you know you’re getting older when the Ireland out-halves start looking younger.
The heir apparent, Jack Crowley, first up. Crowley has what they call ‘main character energy’, the sort of unforced charisma and self-assurance you need to march 900 kilos of hot and bothered forward meat around the pitch at the arbitrary diktat of your hand or boot.
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