Ruadhán’s Rampage

As I sat down to write last Friday, I was torn between a couple of ideas for this week’s blog post. I started a piece on Gavin Coombes and his meteoric rise over the past two years but wasn’t getting it to a place I was happy with. Taking a break, I turned on the TV to watch the Irish U20 game, fully planning to return to my previous idea. After the final whistle blew, I booted up my laptop, deleted the document, and started over. There was no conceivable way I could make a Munster Rugby post and not talk about the performance Ruadhán Quinn put on display in Scotstoun.

The entire Irish team was firing on all cylinders last Friday, leading to the demolition of a weak Scotland side that ended in an 82-7 rout. I’d struggle to remember a unit looking as prepped and cohesive as that Irish side did on Friday, akin to a mid-2000s All Black side against a Tier 2 nation. In essence that was exactly what we witnessed, Scotland at the underage level is regarded as a Tier 2 rugby nation who have even failed to qualify for the U20 World Cup this summer, whereas Ireland is hunting for back-to-back Grand Slams, a feat that’s never been achieved in the history of the U20 Six Nations.

The stats of this game truly exhibit how lopsided of an affair it truly was. Ireland held 69% possession as opposed to Scotland’s 31%. This stat is simply mind-boggling, while it may seem understandable in a 75-point trouncing it is wholly not. In their last meeting, a 59-5 victory for the Irish there was only a four percent difference in possession. Even more impressively for the Irish outfit was their meters made. By the final whistle, they almost broke the 1000-meter mark, totalling 926, an astonishing 770 by half-time.

Quinn put up an impressive box score himself. The Crescent College man got through a mountain of work, making 17 carries, a team-high, for 108 of those 926 meters. Add to that his three tries, two broken tackles, an offload, and a try assist it is obvious why Graham Rowntree is so high on the young prospect. Quinn’s affinity with hattricks didn’t start last Friday however, less than a year ago he scored a hattrick to drag Crescent past a dogged Bandon Grammar side in the Munster Schools Senior Cup semi-final before dominating Presentation Boys College in the final, 26-5, to claim a twelfth Senior Cup title. Since then, Quinn has had a rollercoaster ride in professional rugby. Signed straight out of school to the Munster Academy, he went on to make three appearances for the senior team so far this season. In his competitive debut against Zebre, he became the youngest player to ever tog out for Munster at 18 years and 349 days old. This record would be bested within weeks by his U20s teammate Evan O’Connell.

Quinn has undoubtedly joined the conversation of promising young back-row forwards within Munster, hopefully contending against the likes of Coombes, Kendellen, and Hodnett in years to come. Perhaps this continued and exciting development from Academy players will allow Munster to match Leinster's underage factory, and aid their return to being regarded as one of Europe's elite.