The Galway man has the temperament and ability that marks him out as a natural 13. GERRY THORNLEYmet up with him ahead of the Toulouse clash

IT’S ALL about timing. Along with his fellow young tyros in the Connacht backline, Eoin Griffin couldn’t have picked a better season to earn a regular place with his native province. So it is that today the 21-year-old plays his second Heineken Cup game opposite Monsieur Yannick Jauzion, the 33-year-old who has played 73 times for France and who will be playing his 73rd Heineken Cup match. Griffin is moving in celebrated company these days.

No less than his 21-year-old midfield sidekick Dave McSharry, or the 19-year-old winger Tiernan O’Halloran, this is unlikely to faze him. More imposing than you’d expect, there is a pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming aspect to him when we sit down and chat in one of the Connacht Branch offices during the week, but in an appreciative way.

He makes for an equally impressive young lad off the pitch, articulate and thoughtful while also giving an insight into a temperament which rarely makes him nervous on match days. He realises he’s starting to live the dream, but as a true man of the west – born and reared in Galway, and a produce of Coláiste Iognáid and the provincial academy, who began attending the Sportsground even before he took up the game in secondary school – he wants to realise it to the full.

“It’s tough to kind of put into words. I’ve seen how much (Michael) Swifty and Gav (Duffy) and John Mul (Muldoon), Macca (Mike McCarthy) and all the lads have put into the last few years to try and get into the Heineken Cup and it’s just kind of fallen on to my lap. But I know how much people have worked for this. I know how much Eric (Elwood, coach) has worked for this, Dan (McFarland, forwards coach) and I suppose the onus on us now is not to just want to be here. The whole of Galway and the whole province really have gotten behind us this season but we don’t just want to put in a performance.

“You don’t want the patronising pats on the back just saying ‘you put in a good performance’. You don’t want that. You want ‘Jeez Connacht actually won there’. If we keep building up wins, you never know what will happen at the end of the season.”

Griffin cites, as a case in point, the one that got away against Harlequins last weekend, something reinforced by Monday’s video review. “It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, but you have to move on. You can’t dwell on it for too long.”

The young centre had always been earmarked within the Connacht structures. Two years ago on leaving school, where he won two Connacht Schools’ Senior Cup medals with Coláiste Iognáid, Galway (aka The Jes), he went straight into the Connacht Academy under the tutelage of Nigel Carolan, and even made his debut later that same summer in a pre-season friendly against Harlequins.

On foot of helping Ireland win the Under-20 Six Nations two seasons ago, Griffin made his Connacht competitive debut as a blood substitute, for Fionn Carr, against Edinburgh and started a few weeks later away to the Scarlets. With Keith Matthews sidelined, Griffin was in line for a run of starts last season only for a broken hand in pre-season and a fractured finger soon after his return when his former team-mate, Jamie Hagan, stood on him. “It was a rough oul’ time because I wanted to kick on and I’d done quite well with the under-20s the year before and then a few hamstring niggles and groin niggles for the rest of the season kind of kept me in check. This season is probably my first real run at things.”

For Griffin and other Connacht academy players, opportunity knocked in a midweek game against the touring Samoans, when Griffin was man of the match. “A lot of us were just fringe players really and we had a point to prove. I had put a lot of thought into it in the weeks coming up because I knew I was probably going to be playing.”

Playing on the wing against Leinster on New Year’s Eve, he also started the subsequent games away to the Dragons and, in the Challenge Cup against Bayonne, which Connacht won. But a groin injury toward the end of the game, and a hamstring tweak in training interrupted his momentum before he returned for the last few games of the season against Cardiff, Ulster and Munster.

There were again clear signs in those games of the talent which Connacht backs coach Billy Millard enthused about during the week, the natural ability to read the game, strength in contact and ability to beat a player on the outside which marks him out as a natural number 13.

As he followed his brother Hugh to the Jes, rugby was always likely to be his sport, although initially he followed his father, Hugh snr, into Gaelic football with Salthill Knocknacarra. His father played for Roscommon and also claims to have been the youngest player (at 18) to represent Connacht in the Railway Cup, before a masters at Imperial College in England interrupted his GAA career. Hugh snr also tried his hand as a winger with Barnhall.

The youngest Griffin also played football with Salthill Devon – he immodestly, if jokingly, describes himself as a holding midfielder who “played the passes and saw things everyone else couldn’t. I like to think I did anyway.” But at 13 years of age rugby started to hold sway, as he also followed some mates up to Corinthians, which is producing quite a conveyor belt of talented players in recent years.

Griffin played inside centre through school before Carolan began converting him into an outside centre with the Connacht underage teams. Several of his Jes team-mates who won those successive Senior Cups – Shane and Arron Connelly, Eoin McKeon, Dermot Murphy and Finn Gormley – are now in the Connacht set-up, and in Carolan they appear to be in very capable hands.

“He’s really able to pick talent,” says Griffin. “He takes punts on people, like for instance, Andrew Browne, who is Damien Browne’s brother. He’d never played rugby until he was about 17, but being Damo’s brother, Nigel took a punt and then two years later he’s playing for the Irish 19s and under-20s, and won the Grand Slam, as he (Carolan) loves to tell me. But, honestly . . . I’d never have a bad word to say about Nigel. He’s a huge influence on my career. He’s big on skills, big on offloads. He wants you to have a go. He’ll never let his team die wondering.”

Griffin also acknowledges the huge influence of Elwood and former Connacht coach Michael Bradley. As for the comments of Connacht’s Australian backs coach that if Griffin doesn’t play for Ireland he’ll have “stuffed up”, Griffin smiles and says: “He has a way with words alright but no, he puts his money where his mouth is. He’s got the best out of us in the last few weeks. I think it took us a while to kind of get used to what he’s looking for but his record with Cardiff and in Australia speaks for itself. He helped bring through Jamie Roberts, Leigh Halfpenny, all those boys, in Cardiff so hopefully he can do the same here. Obviously I want to play for Ireland, but I’ve a lot to learn, and I’m by no way the finished article.”

Needless to say, Brian O’Driscoll was an inspiration. “Probably the reason I played 13,” he admits before recalling the time last season when he was one of the young players called into an Irish training session in Limerick and, awestruck, ended up having dinner with Jamie Heaslip, Keith Earls, Luke Fitzgerald, Stephen Ferris and Jonathan Sexton. He spoke only when spoken to but thought: “A very nice bunch of lads.”

At his father’s insistence, he is now completing his final year studying commerce at NUIG, and he knows his dad was right to insist. Griffin will take a year off to focus on rugby after completing his degree, but reckons he’ll always have another outside interest. “Because if you play one bad game your whole week could be wrecked. I’m very self-critical anyway but when you have a bad game at least you have something to take your mind off it. It’s much easier,” he reasons.

Griffin is surprisingly only secured to a one-year deal, and there are rumours of Munster being interested, although word also has it Connacht are looking to offer an extended contract. Millard is adamant Griffin would be better served staying put and the player himself is a true son of the province. “This is my home province and I love playing for Connacht. All my friends from Coláiste Iognáid are up every weekend. My whole family supports me; my brother is in university in Brighton but he’s coming home for the Toulouse game. It’s big for me to be here.”

And so to the Toulouse game. He says he’s generally not afflicted by nerves before games, and rooming with Dave McSharry last week, was even less so. That was, until, he met his parents. His mum advised him to be careful, and not to tackle too much. “She was making me nervous the way she was going on,” he recalls, laughing, “and Dad was kind of going ‘ah, you’re almost playing at the level that I used to be at’. I wasn’t nervous until then and when I went back to our room I was getting texts off people I haven’t spoken to in about five years!”

We go through a possible Toulouse backline of galacticos, which turns out to be pretty much close to what Connacht will be facing today, and he says “international standard” before correcting himself. “Top international standard. But look, this is going to be different for them, and if the wind is here, as much as I don’t want the wind to be here in one way, we’ll get stuck in. But if it’s beautiful, a sunny day, I want that almost more, just to pit yourself against them and I think we can go up another few levels from last week.

“In the second half we really caused them (’Quins) problems . . . if we keep the ball, we can cause teams so much problems. I’m really looking forward to it and I think we’re going to do well,” he smiles and pauses, not daring to say what he really believes. “Yeah I think we will.”

Eoin Griffin

Position: Centre.

Date of Birth: 18/09/1990.

Place of Birth: Barna, Galway.

Height: 1.85m/ 6ft 1in.

Weight: 93Kg/14st 9lbs.

International Representation: Ireland Under-19, Ireland Under-20

Club: Corinthians.

Province: Connacht.