Tom O’Toole: I always wanted to play rugby in Ireland

Tom O’Toole training with the Irish squad last year in Dublin

It’s funny how life takes you in different directions. If the O’Toole family had not decided to up sticks from Ratoath, Co. Meath. and head for Australia, their son Tom may never have played rugby.

He was just six years old at the time, and with his father an exiled Dublin football supporter, a sporting upbringing in Gaelic games seemed to be O’Toole’s destiny yet 18 years later, the Drogheda-born, Brisbane-raised Meath man is in Ireland’s Guinness Six Nations squad and champing at the bit for a Test debut in the coming weeks.