Jacob Stockdale living the dream at World Rugby U20 Championship

It has been some year for Jacob Stockdale and the Newtownstewart native is hoping to crown it by helping Ireland win the World Rugby U20 Championship tomorrow evening.

Stockdale is one of just a handful of survivors from last year’s tournament in Italy but he made rapid progress in the Ulster academy on his return.

But a young man who is studying criminology at UUJ, it’s no mystery what his success is down to — sheer hard work.

He broke through to the senior team in January, making his debut off the bench against Treviso and then he started the first of five matches the following week against Dragons.

“It has been a pretty fantastic year, from January onwards. I had a groin injury at the start of the year but ever since then my season has gone from strength to strength and it has been exciting.”

His breakthrough meant that Ulster had first call on him for Pro12 games rather than the U20 Six Nations but he believes his career has progressed by seeing action at the higher level.

“Those games for Ulster have really helped me in this tournament as well. It has increased my understanding in rugby and I can read things faster. It has been really helpful.

“But it was a massive step-up, my first carry I went in and somebody tackled me and I got out and I could barely see. Everything is heightened, the speed, the impacts. But it is something you get used to. After my second or third cap I got into the feel of it and after that I started to enjoy it more and found it a bit easier.”

He is Ireland’s top try scorer in their march to the World Rugby U20 Championship showdown with England tomorrow (7pm) evening, scoring a brace against Wales in the opening 26-25 win, and then he repeated the feat last Monday in the semi-final victory over Argentina.

“I don’t think I have been in a team that is as prepared to work as hard for each other as this team does. There is a lot of physical players that really work hard for each other behind the scenes, like Max Deegan, Greg Jones, James Ryan. All of these guys are making 12 or 13 tackles a game. That makes a massive difference.

“You can’t really rest on your laurels in this competition. We saw that last yerar. It’s pretty constant, and that’s a good part of it. It’s exciting and when you lose a game you can forget about it and move onto the next game quite quickly. In another sense it’s terrible because your body is in bits but it’s 50-50,” added the former Wallace High School student.