JACKSON FACES UNCERTAINTY
A career that has frustrated may need a fresh start
ON Monday, October 31, 2016, the first ripples of what would become a horrific period in the life of Paddy Jackson became public.
Buried in the third sentence of an IRFU press release ahead of Ireland’s trip to face New Zealand in the United States, after mentioning the ‘bumps and bruises’ sustained by some players on provincial duty that weekend and a short list of those returning to full fitness, it was stated that the injured Peter O’Mahony ‘along with Paddy Jackson, unavailable due to personal reasons, will not make the trip to Chicago.’
Later that evening we knew the severity of the situation.
Jackson, along with Ulster teammate Stuart Olding and another friend, had been arrested after a woman claimed she was sexually assaulted at Jackson’s south Belfast home earlier that summer, shortly after the two Ireland internationals had flown home from representing their country in South Africa.
However, that was not the last we saw of Jackson in an Ireland jersey.
The out-half returned to the squad for the first game after the Chicago win, starting and scoring six conversions in a 52-21 defeat of Canada at Lansdowne Road.
Before the game Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt insisted he had no issues with selecting Jackson.
‘It’s not for us to be thinking about things externally,’ explained Schmidt, ‘because, at this stage, Paddy has not been charged and he’s involved.’
‘Paddy is dealing with things outside our environment, which we will leave him to get on with,’ said Ireland’s assistant coach, Simon Easterby.
He won eight further caps for his country, featuring in the remaining international Tests that November, along with four of the 2017 Six Nations fixtures and starting the two summer clashes with Japan last June. The allegations meant that he was again unable to travel to the US for the opening fixture of that summer tour.
To date, Jackson has lined out 25 times for Ireland, but even after yesterday’s decision to find all four defendants not guilty, it is difficult to see any way back to the international fold for a player that has both excited and frustrated in equal measure.
Born in Lisburn, Co Antrim, in 1992, Jackson first tried his hand at rugby with Veseyans RFC in Birmingham, where the family had moved after his father took a job in the city.
The Jacksons returned to the Northern Ireland in 2000, with Paddy attending Methodist College grammar school in Belfast, rated one of the top 100 of its kind in the UK. He soon found himself joining the Ulster Rugby Academy, where he first met Olding.
After impressing through the age grades, Jackson was handed a surprise senior debut for Ulster against Scarlets in February 2011. He was just 19 at the time.
He steadily began to find his feet with the senior team, and by May of 2012 he was Ulster’s starting out-half in a Heineken Cup final defeat to provincial rivals Leinster in Twickenham.
International honours soon followed, and Jackson made his Ireland debut in the 2013 Six Nations against Scotland after a huge vote of confidence from head coach Declan Kidney, who opted for the Ulster man ahead of a 35-year-old Ronan O’Gara as Johnny Sexton was laid up with injury.
Jackson’s first touch was a knock-on and his evening didn’t get any better after that, missing eight points from the tee before being hauled ashore for O’Gara with the game still in the balance.
It would not be the only time Jackson cut a frustrated figure in the green jersey.
He became the established firstchoice out-half at Ulster with the retirement of Ian Humphreys in 2016, and although that should have presented the perfect opportunity to kick on, consistency has long been the obstacle holding Jackson back.
A clearly talented individual, too often Jackson has been viewed as an unreliable option, a far cry from Sexton, the standard-bearer for Irish out-halves.
While he was involved in the 2015 World Cup, he slipped to thirdchoice out-half as Schmidt placed his trust in Sexton’s Leinster team-mate, Ian Madigan.
With Sexton one of a number of Ireland players stuck down by injury in that tournament, it was Madigan who stepped in after 25 minutes against France to steer his team into the quarter-finals.
Despite some superb displays with Ulster in the months that followed, Schmidt kept faith with Madigan for the Six Nations, with Jackson released from the squad ahead of the opening fixture against Wales and not getting another look in until that summer’s tour of South Africa.
With Sexton sidelined, that tour presented Jackson with a chance to re-establish himself with the international team.
The opening Test on June 11 could hardly have gone better.
Jackson was instrumental as Ireland recorded a hard-fought 26-20 win over the Springboks in Cape Town, their first victory on South African soil and one that, pre-Chicago, was regarded as their biggest win on the road.
Selected ahead of Madigan, Jackson looked assured throughout, kicking 16 points to lead Ireland over the line.
However, he again failed to back up a big display as Ireland fell to defeats in the second and third Tests, with his kicking and decision-making problematic on both occasions. That final test, a 19-13 defeat in Port Elizabeth on June 25, 2016, was Jackson’s last appearance before his arrest.
When asked about that game in court, Jackson said, ‘I felt a lot of pressure going into it. This was my chance. I saw it as my chance to put my name on the big stage.’
Now, the road back to that stage is littered with complications.
At 26, Jackson should be entering the peak years of his career, but he hasn’t laced up his boots in over nine months.
While not one of the IRFU’s centrally-contracted players, he signed a two-year deal with Ulster in March 2017, four months after details of his arrest went public.
At the time, former Ulster director of rugby Les Kiss expressed his delight at securing Jackson’s signature in a deal believed to worth in the region of £400,000 a year, stating there had been ‘a lot of interest in him from other big European clubs’.
Given the events that have unfolded since, the clamour to see Jackson back on the pitch is notably hushed.
He will no doubt find plenty of backing among supporters of an Ulster team that have dragged their feet through another mediocre season, but the Ireland squad looks a more tricky task given the fact that Schmidt simply doesn’t need Jackson any more, not to mention the likely outcry if he were to be named in any future squad.
We won’t know Jackson’s next step until the findings of the review committee set up by the IRFU and Ulster Rugby, but with clubs in England and France believed to be monitoring the situation, a fresh start may be the best option for all involved.