Johnny Watterson: Hugo Keenan has come from modest beginnings to be a centrepiece of this Ireland team

Prior to Ireland’s win over Italy, Hugo Keenan was nominated to do press interviews at the Irish team’s high performance base at Sports Campus Ireland. The head of communications Peter Breen asked if it was okay if Keenan did his segment earlier than arranged because he had appointments. The word that filtered back was that Keenan wanted to get away to work on analysis during lunch.

Either way, it fitted with Keenan’s mien, his approach to the game and in keeping with the understated stardom, his everyday appeal as one of Ireland’s outstanding players over the last few years. Keenan is also the first player to say that his place at the heart of the Irish team comes down to ordinary things. It’s been more hard work from the get-go, less a sprinkling of gold dust at birth.

“Yeah, I definitely think so,” he said. “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.”

Less a late bloomer than a player who discovered what he was good at and who could rise to challenges, at the beginning Keenan was an average school rugby player, but a good athlete who loved soccer. Chelsea, not Leinster was his first blue shirt; Frank Lampard, not Brian O’Driscoll his childhood hero.

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Having drifted among the lower teams in Blackrock College, his early teens were spent pottering around the U14 C and D teams and soccer with Dublin club Merrion Boys. In fifth and sixth year, things began to move and he played as a winger on the senior team. He had also played at outhalf but was kept out of the school position by Joey Carbery.

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“I was just a competitive young lad by nature… yeah, sometimes it not being handed to you easily makes you have that chip on your shoulder, some people call it, or that extra bit of drive to push on,” said Keenan.

He made his Leinster senior debut in November 2016, although he was still playing Sevens and would do the next season too. He wouldn’t feature for Leinster again that season and won just one further cap in 2017. A little better, three starts at fullback followed in 2018, before he blossomed in 2019, when Leinster played him 13 times across wing and fullback. The following year he was rooted as Ireland’s starting fullback.

“It’s been some experience, thrown into the deep end a bit and you sorta sink or swim and a lot of the times it’s those mistakes, you get punished at this level, for just small things. You have to be on everything,” he said.

Keenan’s rise in just over three years has been hard work nourishing natural talent. He’s a poster boy for building on innate ability and pushing it towards its full potential. The prosaic side of it – running, lifting, eating healthy – might be nuts and bolts issues but they have made Keenan a centrepiece player of Andy Farrell’s team.

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Against Italy his influence on what happens was on show from the sixth minute and lasted for around 90 seconds. Italy had the ball and were looking for entry into Ireland’s half. Gloucester scrumhalf Stephen Varney box-kicked high from behind the Italian scrum and Keenan stared the ball down and into his arms, immediately calling for a mark just inside the Irish 22.

At that point there were nine players around him, five in blue shirts. He shaped to kick the ball long but instead tapped and galloped through the crowd, glided past Monty Ioane and blindside flanker Alessandro Izekor, who cannot tackle because they are too close to the mark. He does not slow but is tackled on the halfway line having made 30 metres.

Seconds later Keenan in the Irish attack is standing at first receiver for Craig Casy. The scrumhalf gives and Keenan delivers to centre Stuart McCloskey, who is tackled with Keenan diving headlong into the ruck. The sequence ends with Jack Crowley delightfully running in for the first Irish try.

The score came from a simple box kick into the Irish 22. Like Keenan himself, from modest beginnings.