Shannon’s giant Buckley can be the new Hayes

THE renowned Shannon front-row factory is alive and well.

For the past number of years, John Hayes has been a mainstay of the Ireland and Munster teams at tight head prop while Marcus Horan has been holding up the other side of the scrum and establishing himself as a key man in the national side.

Now Tony Buckley, a 6ft 5 inch, 21 stone giant from Newmarket, Co Cork, is developing nicely and by the time the 2007 World Cup comes round, he may well be challenging for Hayes’ jersey.

Buckley made his point once again over the weekend when he came into the Connacht team for the final twenty minutes of their Celtic League game against Llanelli in Galway on Friday and produced another seventy the following day for Shannon in their 52-8 AIB League rout of hapless Dungannon at Thomond Park.

Shannon ran in seven tries to cruise into pole position in Division One with Buckley completely at ease in the set pieces while also remarkably active for such a big man in the loose.

Nobody is more delighted with Buckley’s progress than the Shannon coach Mick Galwey.

“Don’t be writing him up or somebody will come along and steal him from us,” said the coach with the kind of reconciled smile that tells you Tony’s days as an active AIB League player are rapidly nearing an end.

His contract with Connacht is up at the end of the current season and it will be a major surprise should Munster not pounce for a man who bears many similarities to John Hayes.

Both came from non-rugby playing areas, Hayes in Cappamore, Co Limerick, Buckley in Newmarket. They started as second-rows before the conversion to the front-row of the scrum. As they did so, they came in contact with international female rugby players. Big John married international Fiona Steed; Elaine Collins, another international, is Buckley’s girlfriend.

Buckley first came into contact with the game as a student at Newbridge College where he represented Leinster and went to New Zealand on a rugby scholarship. Hayes had made that same journey a few years previously. Both were second-rows at the time but have since been painstakingly transformed into tight head props. Hayes has made it to the top, many good judges insist it won’t be long before Buckley is also pulling on the green jersey.

“Tony isn’t the finished article as a scrummager and it would be silly to suggest otherwise“, acknowledges Galway. “But remember John Hayes when he first came on the scene. At a game down in Perpignan, the referee told us to take him off for his own safety. Look at him today and think of where Ireland would be without him. Of course, Tony has a distance to travel before reaching that level but he’s going in the right direction, he has a very good attitude and can go a very long way and he’s only 23.”

Nobody watched Buckley more closely on Saturday than Elaine Collins. She videotaped every scrum which the pair would subsequently study so that faults could be identified and eradicated and the good points worked on further. Elaine describes Tony (his shoe size is 17 and finding a pair of socks to fit is almost impossible!) as “very quiet and very shy”, which, of course, just another similarity between himself and Hayes!

Fionn McLoughlin, David O’Donovan, Andrew Thompson, Colm McMahon, Tom Hayes and John O’Connor were the try scorers while out-half David Delaney converted them all and also dropped a goal. Jeremy Davidson, Galwey’s former Ireland second-row partner and now his counterpart as coach of Dungannon, just stood there squirming in embarrassment at this dreadfully one-sided affair. They had a first half penalty by Mark Bradley and a try at the death by Seamus Mallon.