’ROCK STARS
Late bloomers at school Hugo & Joe now main men
BY MICHAEL SCULLY &
HUGO KEENAN knows how a chip on his shoulder rocketed Joe Mccarthy from obscurity to centre stage with Ireland.
He recognises it because Keenan embarked on the same journey.
Both men attended Blackrock College and it wasn’t until their last year in the school that they made the first team.
Keenan captained the D team in second year, moved up to the Cs in third year, was a sub for the social team in fourth year and then pushed into the first team set-up.
Fast forward a few years and Mccarthy had a similar path but, aided by a growth spurt, he accelerated through the ranks into the Senior Cup team by his final year.
“I wasn’t aware of him,” said Keenan, who was five years ahead of Mccarthy in school. “It was probably when he came out of school. I think I saw him in the Senior Cup briefly and remember him as a big lad.
“He was on the lower ranked teams, a bit like myself and so he wasn’t this prodigy coming up the ranks. He had to dig deep to earn the ‘Big Joe’ title over those years. He’s a hard-working lad, he’s living in the gym, he does so many extras.”
Keenan’s route into the Ireland team took a little longer than Mccarthy’s. The full-back was 24 when he made his Test debut but has been almost ever-present in Andy Farrell’s side since.
Mccarthy’s progress has been lightning fast. He made his Leinster debut at 20 two years ago and his Ireland bow followed in the autumn series of the same year against Australia.
He featured in two games at the World Cup and has become one of the sport’s hottest properties on the back of scintillating performances for Leinster this season – as well as last Friday’s man-of-the-match display against France.
Keenan believes that having to put in the hard yards behind the scenes rather than being an outstanding prospect from the start has helped both of them.
“I definitely think so,” said the 27-year-old. “I think it grows into having a good work ethic and work rate. I always looked at it as trying to get on the next best team. I was just a competitive young lad by nature – and you can see from Joe he’s the exact same. Sometimes it not being handed to you easily makes you have that chip on your shoulder, as some people call it, or that extra bit of drive to push on. But Joe has got brilliant energy and enthusiasm as well and I think that helps.”
Meanwhile, there has been a rush to move on from the World Cup since the Six Nations loomed into view but Keenan admits Ireland are still feeding off that hurt.
The narrative heading into last week’s opener in Marseille between the two losing quarter-finalists was that the French needed to heal their pain more because they were hosts. Not so, insists Keenan.
“The hurt from the World Cup isn’t gone,” he said. “France weren’t the only ones hurting.”
But the Leinster full-back believes that returning to club rugby was of great benefit to the group.
He added: “I liked the fact it wasn’t the end of the season, that you didn’t have a couple of months to sit on it and stew.
“The France game was a bit of an opportunity to right a few wrongs and to take a step and get over that.”