McNally honoured for outstanding month

JOSH McNALLY has been named London Irish player of the month for October.

Director of rugby Nick Kennedy rotated his squad as the Premiership took a break and European action took over, but the forward featured in all four matches.

And he suitably impressed the coaches, who selected him for the award sponsored by Walton Jewellers and with it he receives a new Citizen watch.

“Josh has been outstanding for us this year,” Kennedy told The Wokingham Paper.

“He started on the bench and then ended up starting a game and hasn’t looked back since that start.

“We got him from London Welsh halfway through last year and he was injured so had a slightly slow start with us.

“But he’s just a player that is getting better and better every week.”

He added: “His defence has come on leaps and bounds.

“His mauling has been excellent and he’s a really good carrier for us.

“He’s a big, powerful man and he’s been playing some great rugby.

“I watched him play for Henley and London Welsh. We’ve been tracking him for a while.

“He’s just stepped up a level each time and taken it in his stride.”

Second-row forward McNally, 27, who is a serving member of the Royal Air Force, admits the step up to the Premiership has been tough.

But he feels the last few months of the 2016/17 campaign helped him to battle his way into the starting XV.

“When I joined in January I was injured at the time so I was battling two scenarios of coming back from injury and at a new club, so it was really tough,” McNally told The Wokingham Paper.

“I did struggle near the end of the season, but it gave me a stepping stone to hit the ground running at the start of this pre-season.

“I wasn’t a new player at the start of this season and I could really push on and I feel like I’m playing rugby at a good level in the Premiership.

“I’m just trying to improve every week.

“I’ve been playing in two different positions and it’s been great that the coaches have put their trust in me to do that.

“I’ll play every game I can. I don’t feel like I need rest, I want to play in every game, whatever competition it is.”

The Exiles sit second-bottom of the Premiership with just one win, which came way back on September 2.

But with back-to-back home games to come against Bath and Wasps before a trip to mid-table Gloucester, McNally says now is the time to get some points on the board.

“We’re getting into a group of games now that we’ve really targeted to get some things out of,” he said.

“I feel like with the performances we have shown in the last five weeks, we can put something together.

“Now we’re back into a block of Premiership games that we need to get something out of to really stake a claim in this league.”

When it was confirmed that London Welsh would be going out of business last year, McNally could have been left in limbo.

Carrying an injury and without a club, the 6ft 7in forward was facing up to having to return to his national duty, until a timely phone-call changed everything.

“The Air Force released me from duties to play professional rugby, which is extremely nice of them,” explained McNally.

“It’s my fourth season now of being a professional rugby player. They’ve been fantastic.

“I was really staring down the barrel in terms of potentially having to go back into the Air Force when the news that Welsh had gone bust came out.

“I was still injured and just thinking this is going to be a really tough sell to get me to go somewhere else.

“But when the news did break that London Welsh was going under, Nick Kennedy rang me and said we’d be delighted to have you over at London Irish and it’s been going on from there really.

“I obviously owe a lot to Kendo and I’m learning a lot from the coaching team at Irish.”