Four Ireland U20 internationals part of 2024-25 Munster Academy squad
MUNSTER ACADEMY SQUAD: Four Ireland Under-20 internationals will be among this six-player intake to the 2024-25 Munster Academy squad this summer, the province announced on Friday.
Munster’s search for its latest intake of local talent to their academy for next season represents the culmination of three-year process of a “Munsterised” Talent Identification system, according to Ian Costello.
Costello, appointed last summer as Munster’s first head of rugby operations, began his quest to improve the pathway in which young players were first identified and then brought into its elite development programme while he was head of academy. Now he believes Munster have a Talent ID system to be proud of.
The province on Friday announced the names of six players it will bring in as first-year players in an extended academy squad for 2024-25 later this summer. Four of them, back-rowers Seán Edogbo and Luke Murphy, hooker Danny Sheahan and scrum-half Jake O’Riordan will first travel to South Africa with Ireland for the World Rugby Under-20 Championship in Cape Town before joining centre centre Gene O’Leary Kareem and lock Michael Foy in the Munster programme headed by academy and pathway manager Gar Prendergast.
As that sextet signs on, academy graduates Tony Butler, Ethan Coughlan, Mark Donnelly, Edwin Edogbo, and Brian Gleeson will move up to Graham Rowntree’s senior squad for next season, with the new recruits taking the number of academy players from 14 to 18.
As Prendergast explained: “That’s not to say the quality is diluted in any way, in fact if anything it’s gone up and I suppose that’s a reflection on the pathway as well in that we’re now producing that high-quality player in greater numbers.” The reason for that is further explained by Costello, who told the Munster Rugby website: “Talent ID is very, very complex and over the last couple of years, and we’ve taken our time to get this right, we’ve got a Talent ID system that we’re really happy with now. It doesn’t mean it’s perfect but we’re happy that it’s definitely increasing our chances of getting the right players into the system.
“And system is the key word. We have a framework now, we know exactly what we’re looking for and that’s based on other sports around the world and it’s Munsterised to make sure it’s the type of player that we’re looking for: technical, tactical, physical and probably the top end is psychological and social traits. We think they’re the key differentiators.
“What we have now is a one-page framework and this is the type of player we’re looking for, purely from a quantity and a quality point of view first of all. You know, three years ago our NTS would have a dozen players and our academy would have been 11 or 12 as well, so we would have had 23 players within our elite programme and that’s grown exponentially based on quality, the quality of player and the quality of our systems.
“Our NTS now is in and around 25, 26 players with fluctuations and our academy is at 18. So instead of 23 players in our elite programme, we now have a holistic, support service and a quality, development programme for 45 players and the quality, I can’t put a percentage on it but it’s increasing year on year.
“What that’s doing is it’s increasing competition and standards throughout our whole pathway and we’re very, very excited about that. It’s taken an awful lot of work on the quality or our systems and the quality of our system is based on getting really, really good people into the building, and I mean staff first of all. There’s an excellent academy team that has grown over the last couple of years and is so passionate about what they do, so we know we’ve got the right people working with the right people, the players we’re bringing in.
“So it’s about the people, it’s about the processes that underpin it and it’s about the quality of our environment and when you put those together we think we’ve a far more advanced talent system than we had maybe a number of years ago.” Seán Edogbo, 20, is following in his big brother Edwin’s footsteps having also come up through Cobh Pirates, and made his Ireland U20 debut in this year’s U20 Six Nations alongside 19-year-old Shannon and former Ardscoil Ris back-rower Murphy.
Sheahan was part of the 2023 Six Nations Grand Slam-winning side and last summer’s run to the World Rugby U20 final. The 20-year-old, a nephew of former Munster and Ireland hooker Frankie Sheahan, will be joined in the academy by fellow former PBC Cork team-mate O’Leary Kareem, 19, who captained Pres to Munster Schools Senior Cup success this year.
Bruff native and former Munchin’s student O’Riordan,19, was also a Six Nations squad member and is heading to South Africa with Willie Faloon’s squad while Foy, from Carrigaline, is the youngest of the intake at 18 but has played in back-to-back Schools Senior Cup finals for CBC Cork and has represented Ireland at Under-19 level.
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