Two years after Munster door closed, Seán French is tearing it up in England
DREAM DAY: Seán French during his Munster debut against Zebre at Thomond Park. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Looking back, Seán French doesn’t know how he made it through that 2022 pre-season without picking up an injury.
A couple of months earlier, he’d been released by Munster. He wasn’t bitter about it but the taste wasn’t sweet. French wasn’t a regular cuisine on Johann van Graan’s wingers menu. Keith Earls, Andrew Conway, Simon Zebo, Shane Daly and Calvin Nash were ahead of him in the queue. There was no available spot in the senior squad. The realist in him - the Munster fan in him - knew it was the right decision to let him go.
He signed with English Championship side Bedford Blues after doing his due diligence and seeing how many players they’d put on the right track in professional rugby. The club, based an hour north of London in a town of 190,000 people, is an affiliate of Northampton Saints. French got the chance to join pre-season training with the Premiership side.
“I was nearly doing two pre-seasons in one,” he says.
“I was just really hungry. I didn't care how much I was training. I was in Saints from 7am or 8am until about three o'clock.
“Then I was going back home trying to get as much grub into me as possible, and I was back out onto the pitch with Bedford at five o'clock for another few hours.
“I was doing that three or four days a week for a good month-and- a-half close to two months.”
Rugby is in French’s genes. His grandfather, Jerry Murray, was a Cork Con icon who lined out with Munster and played for the Barbarians.
Five years before he was shown the Munster door, French scored all of Presentation Brothers College’s points as they defeated Glentstal Abbey 11-3 to win the Munster Schools Senior Cup. That was a PBC side captained by current Munster backrow Jack O’Sullivan while former Munster out-half Ben Healy, now a Scotland international, was on the Glenstal team.
After school, French joined the Munster academy. When he won an U20 Six Nations Grand Slam in 2019, his rugby career was on the right route.
He was called into the Munster head coach’s office the following year and told he was being given a shot in a Pro14 game against Zebre. The bullet left the chamber early when an injury to Matt Gallagher meant French was called into action after 20 minutes. He touched down for a debut try in the second half after Gavin Coombes and JJ Hanrahan combined to send him over in the corner. A boyhood dream had been realised.
A one-year senior player development contract for the 2021/22 season followed but French made just one appearance, a start against Ulster in the Pro14. It was his final time to pull on the red jersey.
“It was just a random week," he says.
“It was as simple as Johann and another one of the lads saying, 'We're very sorry Frenchy but there's just nothing there for you next year'.
“It is tough because as a young lad, you might have to wait for not one, not two and but nearly three people to be either injured or at Irish camp to get a shot.
“It definitely was mentally testing and draining at times. I'm a big believer in you have to go through something to make you appreciate things more, to make you mentally strong.
“Weeks later, even months later, I kind of sat down, had a look at it, and understood why I wasn't kept on. It wasn't the right place for me to develop at that time."
French’s Munster highlight reel was sparse - two appearances, one try - but he had been part of a Cork Con team which won the AIL. His agent could piece together footage for clubs on the hunt for a winger. French trawled through tape to identify a team which suited him.
“It wasn't as simple as me getting the offer and accepting it because I got an offer,” he says.
“I watched back some of Bedford’s full games. I imagined myself in that system. I could see myself excelling in this environment, and then looked at a few pathways of some players that have been there.
“Tom Farrell, the centre for Connacht, spent time in Bedford Blues. He got exposure there and then went back and signed for Connacht. It's a league that people do watch, but there's no doubt that you can't go missing in it. You have to perform consistently.”
It also helped that there’s an Irish presence at the club.
“There's three of us now,” says French.
“Bryan O'Connor came over really late in terms of signing for Bedford. We were very close in school, and then, just the way sport and life goes, we weren't in touch as often when he was down in Gloucester. One day, I received a text from him and I just knew immediately that this has to be him saying that he's coming to Bedford.
“And then there's another lad, Joey Conway from Limerick, who I would have played against when I was younger. It's very important having the lads over here.”
After struggling for game time initially in his first season, French’s vision became reality in the second half of the campaign. He finished as joint top try scorer in the league last year and tops the table this season. In 41 games for Bedford, he’s scored 34 tries.
While he’s always looked to improve the weaker aspects of his game, French has never forgotten the trait which got him in the door of professional rugby: Speed. In his own time, he works with sprint guru Noelle Morrissey, his girlfriend’s mother, who is coach to Irish 100m record holder Sarah Lavin.
👌 Don’t mind us… just another try that starts in our own 22m 🔥
— Bedford Blues (@BedfordBluesRFC) January 27, 2024
A 15th of the campaign for @seanfrench8 ☘️#BluesFamily #BedfordisBlue pic.twitter.com/hBIq9YtlGf
Last season, and up until Christmas of this campaign, French worked as a rugby coach at a private boys school in Bedford but he’s given that up to concentrate fully on his playing career.
“You'd have boys on money that they could easily live on, and get by on no problem," he says.
"There is so much spare time in the sense that they train three times a week, and it's evening times, you've a full day there from early morning until up until about four o'clock where you can fit in a full-time day job.
“Lots of these boys over here are teachers, part-time teachers. My housemate goes in and out to London to a law firm in fairness to him.
“Just with how well my season went last year, I told myself I'm going to have a real honest two-year, release-the-shackles go at it.
“This stretch until May, I'm flat out focused on the rugby and seeing where it'll take me at the end of this season.”
Like most Irish players, French would love to land at one of the four provinces.
“But for now I'm back enjoying my rugby,” he says.
“I'm playing every week. It's tough for development if you're in an environment where you're getting one cap, two caps a season. You're just there hoping that you'll train your way into the team.
“I'm glad I had the head to keep going because it's quite easy when you're released from your boyhood dream club to just give up or play for your club at home. I made the tough decision to move away, start from scratch and just see where I'm at.
“I'm keeping my options open. I'm very much in the mindset that any step that I make has to be another positive step.”
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