Madigan hopes patience is about to pay off

RUGBY INTERNATIONAL:

As the Leinster man eases into his seat at the Ireland team hotel to face a few questions from the media ahead of tonight’s start at out-half against the US Eagles, all the ghosts of those green clad number 10s pull up a chair too.

Never mind the fact that rugby’s focus is elsewhere in the world today — the expectations he has for himself should be as overbearing as the June heat of Houston and the Lone Star State, where the quarterback is king.

Madigan will be the sort of focal point playmaker they relish around these parts when summer turns to autumn and he accepts everything that comes with it gracefully. If it all goes horribly wrong tonight, it will come crashing down on his still young shoulders and he’s okay with that.

“If we’re off our game here we could lose our reputations,” he says matter-of-factly. But obviously it’s a “dream come true” as well.

“It’s the position I want to be playing in, starting for my country. I hope I live up to my expectations.”

He turned 24 in March and although his promotion to back-up role during the Six Nations might have launched a thousand debates, there can be no doubt Jonny Sexton’s departure from the Leinster set-up has given the Madigan game plan sudden impetus.

“Obviously I’ve had to be patient at times,” he admits when asked about the measured rise through the ranks which he has been forced to embrace. “If an opportunity had come to play in the Six Nations two or three years ago, I don’t know if I would have been ready. I could have had my chance and fallen by the wayside. Whereas (instead) I’ve been managed very well by Leinster and so far I’ve been managed really well by Ireland… In professional sports, steady progress is not something you see too often.”

Nor did Madigan ever have much of an option about which role model out-half he would look to as a young aspiring player.

“Jonny’s been brilliant the last few years, but I never looked up to Jonny because I was competing with him as such. For me growing up it was always, for eight, 10 years, Ronan (O’Gara). the way he controls games, the way he conducts himself on the pitch, he’s like the orchestrator of a big choir. He’s so calm when the pressure comes on and I always admired that about him.”

You get the sense from him that he has endured some long conversations about how to best utilise his talents in what will always be an increasingly precarious occupation. With competition for places at Test level starting to really hot up, he has no intentions of tossing it all away this evening.

“The thing with Test match rugby is that your mistakes are going to be magnified,” he says. “I do have a slight tendency to pull the trigger a little early at times. I wouldn’t quite have the patience that Jonny has — Jonny could wait until there’s a definite four-on-two for example and then he’ll pull the trigger and he’ll be gone. Whereas I might have only waited for one or two phases.”

His former and future boss, incoming Ireland coach Joe Schmidt, would be chief among those voices appealing to Madigan use a little more discretion while pulling the strings.

“Joe wouldn’t think that I’m overly patient. He’s said it to me before that sometimes i want things to have happened yesterday… I know that to improve your game, it’s not going to happen in one session or two sessions. I’d like to think I’m pretty diligent with that. It was tough with selection during the Six Nations with Paddy (Jackson) getting the starts ahead of me. But at the same time I just decided to focus on myself and just improving myself. That’s something that has really stood to me since I left school.”

And now that his career is pointing in the right direction on so many fronts, he says it was the draw for next season’s Heineken Cup that really sparked the nervous energy. “It’s really exciting, I’m 24 and I’ll hopefully be starting for my home province which is one of the best clubs in Europe. The season hasn’t even finished yet and I’m already thinking about what I can improve on next year in pre-season.”

IRELAND v USA Eagles: R Henshaw (Connacht); F McFadden (Leinster), D Cave (Ulster), S Olding (Ulster), S Zebo (Munster); I Madigan (Leinster), I Boss (Leinster); D Kilcoyne (Munster), R Strauss (Leinster), M Ross (Leinster); M McCarthy (Leinster), D Toner (Leinster); I Henderson (Ulster), C Henry (Ulster), P O’Mahony (capt, Munster).

Replacements: M Sherry (Munster), J Hagan (London Irish), T Court (Ulster), D Tuohy (Ulster), T O’Donnell (Munster), P Marshall (Ulster), P Jackson (Ulster), F Jones (Munster).