Motivated Jordan will not rest on his laurels
CONOR O’SHEA was initially reluctant to jump on the Jordan Larmour bandwagon following his tour de force against the Azzurri. ‘I’ll leave Joe talk about that,’ said Italy’s head coach following his side’s 54-7 hammering at Soldier Field.
But O’Shea, a former Leinster and Ireland full-back, couldn’t help himself: ‘He can run, we all know that.
‘You would all love to be able to do that. He does remind you of a young Christian Cullen in what he can do.’
Larmour had better get used to comparisons like that.
Only 21, the Leinster wunderkind is already assembling quite the highlights reel. Type his name into YouTube and you will be greeted with some stunning contributions: that wondertry against Munster at Thomond Park last year, that one-handed pickup against the Scarlets or an outrageous finish against Ulster in Belfast. There are plenty to choose from.
No doubt, his hat-trick heroics in Chicago will garner plenty of views in the future. The Twittersphere was ablaze with Larmour-mania over the weekend.
Of course you need to take the opposition into account but Larmour’s footwork and low centre of gravity set him apart. Joe Schmidt has carefully managed his introduction to Test rugby. The Dubliner made six eye-catching cameos off the bench before getting his first Test start against Italy.
He didn’t disappoint. On a pitch where running metres were paramount, Larmour did a brilliant impression of a dashing wide receiver making 249 metres all on his own.
He pretty much had the freedom of Soldier Field in the second half, making four line breaks as well as laying on a try for Luke McGrath in the early stages of the contest. He left 12 defenders trailing in his wake, most notably during his weaving run down the left touchline as the full-time hooter rang around the stadium.
Taking a switch pass from John Cooney, Larmour sized up a wearylooking Federico Ruzza and glided past the replacement lock before dancing past Tito Tebaldi with a sharp step off his right and then beating the covering Guglielmo Palazzani with a step off his left.
‘I was wrecked,’ Larmour recalled following his man-of-the-match display on Saturday.
‘I knew there was about ten seconds left, and I had started cramping up but John Cooney was the one who was running across so I dropped under and saw a little gap and just went for it. So yeah, I was pretty tired after that one.’
The Larmour hype machine will kick into overdrive in the coming weeks but the former St Andrew’s College man cuts a cool figure.
‘Today went well, we were delighted to win,’ he said.
‘We talked during the week about how this was a special place, given what happened two years ago against the All Blacks, so we needed to turn up and play well. We ground them down eventually. The first half, we could have put the ball behind a bit more, put kick pressure on, but we broke them down in the end and started scoring tries.’
There is no doubt that Larmour is a gifted footballer but it is his application to Schmidt’s doctrine that has been most pleasing to Ireland’s head coach.
Before Schmidt became one of the premier coaches on the world scene, he was a headteacher back in his native New Zealand. Schmidt has never lost that officious element to his personality and he demands that his students do their homework.
Larmour is the archetypal Schmidt player in that regard. Always learning, he speaks of a moment in Leinster’s defeat at Toulouse last month when Springbok wing Cheslin Kolbe — very much in the same school of hot steppers — turned him inside out.
Those are the elements of his game that Schmidt will seek to fine-tune during this run-in to the World Cup in Japan next year.
The Schmidt regime has proved a hugely rewarding, if punishing, experience for this squad but Larmour, unsurprisingly, relishes this highoctane environment.
‘You see it at training, when the ball goes down, if you drop it, you are giving out to yourself,’ he explained.
‘None of your teammates give out to you but you know, you are annoyed with yourself. It is not acceptable. I like that. I like the fact that the standards we set ourselves day in and day out are what push us and make us more consistent. It drives out complacency. If you set high standards, you can’t get complacent.’
There will no danger of that with Ireland’s new whizz kid.