If Connacht have been the story of the season in many respects, then the manner in which their young players have helped the province overcome a high injury toll by seamlessly stepping into the team has been the story of Connacht's season. You couldn't have scripted it and nor, even in this hallowed year, could you have scripted James Connolly's campaign.
Part of what made last Saturday’s 33-32 Challenge Cup quarter-final performance all the more meritorious was the presence of three current members of their academy, along with two recent graduates.
Nobody typifies Connacht’s season more than Connolly, the Dublin-born, Naas-reared 22-year-old. Having played in three Challenge Cup games last season, he was only called in as a late replacement for his Guinness Pro12 debut at the end of November in their historic win over Munster at Thomond Park.
Having signed his first professional contract last December, to come into effect next season, this Saturday he will play his 13th game of the season.
“I knew my place at the start of the season. I knew that Nepia [Fox-Matamua] had come over from New Zealand and I knew that Jake [Heenan] was on the mend coming back from a shoulder injury, so I was biding my time and just constantly trying to learn off more experienced players. But the opportunities arose when Nepia got injured against Brive and I was next up. I think Pat [Lam] put his trust in me, taught me a lot of things and I learned from it, slipped in there and did the best I could.”
Kindred spirits
Connolly has been helped by Lam, Dave Ellis, Jimmy Duffy, Andre Bell and the rest of the coaching staff, and that there have been so many young contemporaries and kindred spirits has perhaps contributed to Connacht’s fearless approach this season.
“Yeah, definitely, definitely,” says Connolly. “It’s very much pushed on by the coaches, as in they put trust in the academy lads. They bring us into the senior set-up real early, so we’re not being thrown in last minute. We get an understanding of what we’re trying to achieve and our gameplan from a young age. It creates more depth in the squad and when people do get injured, Pat can rely on young lads to make the most of their opportunities.”
So it was for Connolly, albeit after a first season in the academy was disrupted by a shoulder reconstruction, but from the start of his second year (last season) he was quickly integrated into the senior set-up.
Sharing a name with one of the Easter Rising leaders and the founding father of the Irish Labour Party, it seems apt that this has been the 22-year-old’s breakthrough year.
"I'd love to be able to say they [his parents] named me after the famous, 1916 James Connolly, " he says with a laugh, "but I think it was more because it's my dad's name. He always tells people he had to give me a good start in life. But obviously a lot of people recognise the name and it's pretty cool to have the same name as an Irish legend.
“My dad has been saying it from a few years back. ‘I’m telling you, that will be your year.’ I used to always tell him to stop, that he was waffling again. But he’d insist: ‘I’m telling you; that will be your year.’ It’s kind of weird the way it’s happened.”
Rugby opportunities have always had a habit of knocking on Connolly’s door unexpectedly, right back to his first foray into the Naas under-8s. “I wasn’t really that interested in rugby. I was more interested in football, GAA and basketball. In my estate, where we had a big green, the father of my best friend was a coach with the Naas minis and he came out one day with this odd-shaped ball which I couldn’t really get my head around.
“The one thing I did have as a kid was a competitive edge, and he sent ‘garryowens’ into the air to see who could catch it. I think I might have won that day, and the next weekend I joined the Naas under-8s and didn’t look back from there really.”
But for his friend, Robin Brickell, and his father Robert, Connolly still wonders if he would have discovered rugby. Save for injury and the summer off-seasons, he has played rugby every week of his life since.
The underage head coach was a former Edinburgh player, Barrie Brown. “He was a brilliant mini rugby coach because he taught the basics so well and because of that we hardly ever lost. I think we were the first team from outside Dublin to enter the Dublin Metro Mini League and in our first year we won it. We were a good little team.”
Connolly’s own father went to Castleknock College and played both rugby and football, but suffered from cruciate ligament injuries in both knees in his teens which prevented him from taking up a football scholarship in the States. “That’s his claim to fame anyway,” jokes Connolly.
James senior runs his own property management company in Clane, while his mum is a PA in Ban Contractors. He has one younger sister, Jill, who is doing her Leaving Cert.
Connolly loved his time in Newbridge College where he played for the junior and senior cup teams. In his penultimate year, the senior team featuring James Tracey and Sam Coghlan-Murray and was coached by Phil Werahiko. “Phil was the best coach I’d come across and I learned so much from him. He was stern, and didn’t take any crap, but he kick-started my thoughts of maybe going on and doing something in rugby. Then the likes of Dave Sherlock, who coached my senior cup team, also had a big influence.”
Even so, his route into the pro game was, again, somewhat by chance. Conor McPhillips (the one-time Connacht and Irish A scrumhalf who is now the province’s assistant backs coach and head performance analyst) had previously been the sports director at Newbridge, and half-way through Connolly’s final year rang the school looking for players as the Connacht under-19s were short numbers.
“About five of us went up to Galway one Monday morning to train with them. I’d never been in Galway before and didn’t have a clue what to expect. I was in a changing room with lads I’d never met before from all parts of Connacht, and with really weird accents,” he recalls, laughing. “It was kind of intimidating.
“A few weeks later I got a letter in the post saying they’d like to have me down for the under-19s pre-season training in the summer. It’s mad, but that’s how it happened.”
BA in sports and exercise
He owes plenty to McPhillips. “Oh, big time. I’ve said it many times to him over the years. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.’”
Connolly combined playing with the Connacht under-19s in 2011-12 with a BA in sports and exercise in IT Carlow, and then a degree in strength and conditioning in Setanta College, while also playing with the Carlow under-21s.
Playing with the Connacht under-20s in 2012-13, his season was curtailed when he ruptured his ACL in training. But Nigel Carolan and Jimmy Duffy kept assuring him there’d be a place in the academy for him, which, true to their word, there was the next season.
“That really opened my eyes to what I could possibly achieve. I learned so much off Nigel and Jimmy. They’re very skills-focused, bringing it back to basics and playing heads-up rugby, and they’ve brought so much talent through the academy. Their eye for talent is very good.”
He has generally played across the backrow, mostly at blindside in school and number eight in the Connacht under-20s before, on the advice of Carolan and Duffy, concentrating more on openside in the last three seasons.
Finished fourth
Corinthians have also been a major part of his development. In the 2013-14 season, the Galway club finished fourth in Division 1B, winning 12 of 18 matches under the South African coach Phil Pretorius. In some games, half of the Corinthians pack or more were comprised of Connacht academy players, Denis Buckley, Finlay Bealham, Ultan Dillane, Eoghan Masterson and Connolly.
“There’s nothing like club rugby. There’s a thrill when you play club rugby, and a sense of real freedom and free-flowing rugby. It’s not as structured as the professional game. It’s more play what you see, and it’s very competitive. I learned a lot from club rugby, those Friday night derby games against Buccaneers and Galwegians, with academy lads on both sides.”
He lives a five-minute drive away from the Sportsground in Gort na Coiribe, a student village, where he has moved into a new apartment with Dillane and Masterson on the Headford Road.
Last November, Connolly, Masterson, Dillane, as well as Buckley, all started in the famous win over Munster, Connacht’s first at Thomond Park in 29 years, with Bealham finishing the game. “Neeps [Fox-Matamua] got injured and I got the call-up. We’d never beaten Munster in Thomond [in the league] before. There was a lot of pressure in the build-up to the game but Pat just said: ‘Be prepared, and you won’t feel any pressure if you know your stuff.’”
This time, Connacht are coming off last week’s huge anti-climax. “It was very, very disappointing, especially seeing some of the great stuff we did out there, but ultimately it came down to little mistakes that cost us the game.
“But we’ll use that disappointment. We have a ‘next job’ mentality. The focus and preparation this week has been massive. Now we have Munster again this weekend in front of a record attendance. It’s exciting.”
It’s that all right, and it could be more. These are good times to be one of the Connacht tyros.
