FROM A DISTANCE, Connacht back row Eoghan Masterson could easily be presented as a textbook example of how the IRFU’s development pathways are working smoothly.
Pinch the screen and spread your fingers, however, and you’ll be zooming in on a map that was less than straightforward.
Masterson arrives at Ravenhill late last year. Source: James Crombie/INPHO
Instead, Masterson is a prime example of how much attitude and, at times, the downright balls that are required to make the leap from promising youth to an elite academy.
Connacht’s up and coming number eight hails not from any of the traditional rugby-producing corners of Ireland, but from Portlaoise. He was educated at the town’s CBS “where there’s no rugby whatsoever. It’s a football and hurling school,” Masterson told The42 this week.
Even so, he kept his head down, treating his matches with Portlaoise RFC as the be all and end all. He was plucked out for representative midlands teams and represented Ireland under 18s a year early. He would captain that side 12 months later knowing the pathway was firmly beneath his feet.
And then he slipped off it again.
‘Sickener’
Injury ruined his hopes at stepping up an age grade and when it came time for 20s, the hangover still dogged him.
“The Irish under 20s was probably my least favourite season of rugby. It didn’t go quite as planned. I was up there in camp all the way up to the beginning of the Six Nations and on the last cut I was told I wouldn’t be in the squad.”
He describes his eventual inclusion during the tournament as a two-minute cameo towards the end of a game and the experience still seems to sting a little.
“Mike Ruddock was in charge at the time and it was quite a sickener. I took it pretty badly,” says the Laois man who turned to his father for advice.
Masterson, right, with Robbie Henshaw in Connacht training. Source: James Crombie/INPHO
Masterson snr is from Scotland, and in that downbeat spring of 2013 he sat down with Eoghan to weigh up the options available to him. Recruiters from the SRU had already come to ask about the availability of the powerful number eight, and Masterson wasn’t ready to pass up a chance of tasting the Junior World Championship.
“I turned it down initially because I was pretty confident I was going to get in with Ireland. I was still in the frame with Ireland, but I went back to [Scotland] saying ‘would you give us a shot before the World Cup?’”