RUGBY/MAGNERS LEAGUE:FORMER SOUTHAMPTON football manager Graeme Souness once received a call purporting to be from footballing great George Weah saying a player called Ali Dia was his cousin, had played for French team Paris Saint-Germain and won 13 caps for Senegal. The Scot decided to sign him on a one-month contract despite never having seen him play.
Dia came on as a substitute against Leeds in a 1996 Premier League match and was described as looking like “Bambi on ice”. He finally ended up at the top of the list of worst footballers of all-time.
Desperate times mean desperate measures and when coach Joe Schmidt found himself down to the last tighthead prop standing after Stan Wright tore his Achilles tendon and was sidelined for six months, the Leinster boss was forced into doing a Souness. He didn’t have far to look.
Thankfully Simon Shawe, the 31-year-old amateur Ballymena prop, turned out to be more than the student hoax Souness fell for and as Leinster face into their third Magners League match of the season tomorrow in Italy, Shawe may have otherwise been contemplating Ballymena’s first fixture of the year next month in Towns Park against Midleton in Division Two of the All Ireland League. His remarkable re-entry into professional rugby after four years as an amateur has been pretty surreal.
“Physically everything’s okay,” he says. “Everything’s a lot faster but that will all come and strength-wise I think I’m okay. I trained all summer, took about a week off personally and then I was in the gym quite a lot.
“Even with Ballymena, I tried to be as good as I could. I did my own weights, we had three training sessions a week, so there’s a big commitment with Ballymena.
“Certainly at this level the pace of the game is much quicker, scrummaging is much harder. But I hope to adapt quite quickly as I’m working with the fitness guys.”
Shawe is big and at over 18st his bulk is there to anchor the scrum. That’s all Schmidt wants him to do, just anchor the scrum and keep it steady, when Mike Ross is not on the pitch. To do that alone, Shawe will have surpassed all expectations.
He bid the professional game adieu four years ago to complete a PhD in bio-medical engineering. The academic work earned him a career with a dental company, who continue to employ him and although he continues to commute from the North to Dublin he is certain that his commitments to his day job won’t get in the way of Leinster plans.
“It’s worked out quite well between the balance of my days off working. I’m still going to commute from Belfast where I live, and stay over the odd night if I have to. So it’s great, it’s worked out well,” he says.
It is not as though Shawe has arrived blind to the levels to which he has to climb. He has represented Ireland in the AIL international matches and has worked with the scrum wizard Roly Meates in past years.
Shawe understands the dimensions of the challenge and essentially he is still on trial. But he is not about to be vanquished. He sees the opportunity as a pleasant, opportunistic journey.
“Roly just let me do my own thing, gave me a few tips about my height and my angles and everything a tighthead should be doing. So I just took it all on board, your balance and your feet and it all helps your game.
“I’ll continue to work and also give it my all at Leinster and see where it takes me,” he adds. “I’m giving my 100 per cent commitment to Leinster.”
Unlike Dia, who disappeared from view after that first absurd run against Leeds, Shawe still lives the dream with a grateful Leinster.
