Stuart McCloskey quickly gets in tune with Ireland team-mates

A Test debut ending in defeat could have been bittersweet for Stuart McCloskey, particularly when the centre spent most of his 64 minutes on the Twickenham pitch defending rather than putting his attacking strengths on display.

Yet like the song he sang to the squad as his initiation into Test rugby, the 22-year-old Ulsterman felt his debut against England got better as the it progressed.

McCloskey’s version of Robbie Williams’s “Angels”, as he told it “didn’t go down terribly well but after the first 30 seconds, it went all right once I got to the chorus”. His first experience of international rugby took a similar trajectory, albeit from a higher base level.