Canadian man mountain Jamie Cudmore aiming to reach new heights

He started, it turns out, as he meant to go on. The Millennium Stadium roof will be closed on Ireland and Canada on Saturday afternoon. But Jamie Cudmore will still seek out the shadows. That is where the second-row enforcer does his best work, where he sees clearest, where, in the yellow of Clermont Auvergne, he has had such a devastating impact on Irish hopes in the past.

The shadows, after all, are where it all commenced for Cudmore. It was in the cloak and shade of the giant Pacific pines of North Vancouver where one phase of his life ended and another began.

“Where our training pitches are located, it’s surrounded by trees, almost like a small rainforest that the club is stuck in the middle of,” Tim Murdy, then Capilano Rugby Club coach, soon mentor and still life-long friend tells the Irish Examiner of his first sighting of a teenage Cudmore in the late 90s.