Ruddock spoilt for choice with U20s

The late, great Karl Mullen once summed up Irish rugby as a combination of ‘boot, bollock and bite’ but if there is a dominant theme to sides in green these days it is the strength of their back rows.

Sean O’Brien may be out injured for Joe Schmidt’s first tilt at a Six Nations but the Kiwi is nonetheless stocked with a rake of options at the back of the scrum. So too is his U20s colleague Mike Ruddock.

The next generation kick off their own Six Nations campaign tomorrow night against Scotland and a squad rippling with talent is particularly well served in the back row where seven men must squeeze into three spots. Ruddock will start with Munster’s Jack O’Donoghue and the Leinster pair of Dan Leavy and Peadar Timmins wearing numbers six to eight, but any number of combinations could have been utilised.

Shane Delahunt and Rory Moloney provide more than solid back-up on the bench while Connacht’s Sean O’Brien’s versatility has landed him a transfer to the second row. Ulster’s Frankie Taggart misses out altogether. It’s the clichéd embarrassment of riches for the coach, even if his choice of starters comes as little surprise given Leavy skippers the side and all three appeared at last summer’s Junior World Cup. Training seems to have been, well, interesting.

“There’s a good few players here now all going for the one position so you might have a contact session so you can have an auld scalp off them,” said O’Donoghue, who graduated from Waterpark to Munster’s academy last week. “You have to, like, cos you are all fighting for the one position. It’s good that way but as soon as you come off the pitch we are all good friends again.”

Like O’Donoghue, O’Brien shared his thoughts on the scramble for slots before the team was announced but his words seem prescient now given a man who normally wears six or eight has been tossed the No 4 shirt.

“You would be worried that you might just be put on the bench because you can cover both those positions rather than being put into start, but I’m still young enough that I don’t have to make up my mind. So it is helping me at the moment in that I can get selected in either row,” said O’Brien.

“Wherever I get put I can just try my best to get into that those teams.”

Any slot is welcome on a side which boasts a plethora of men who made names for themselves in the smaller pool of schools rugby before moving on to the Ulster Bank League and British & Irish Cup.

Ruddock reacted warily when it was put to him at the initial squad announcement that this was an exceptional side on paper, pointing out essentially that games aren’t played with a pen and an A4 sheet.

That said, the team named yesterday has enough about it to merit a high degree of optimism as they face into a schedule of games identical to their senior peers over the course of the next eight weeks.

“I played with most of these guys on the way up,” said Leavy, who is one of seven UCD starters, “and I know that they are all really talented so it is just up to us ourselves as to how we perform and do this campaign.”