Hugh Cooney has squeezed in quite a bit of top-level rugby since winning a Leinster Schools Senior Cup with Blackrock College almost a year ago.
He played for Ireland Under-19s against France in a couple of Test matches in Belfast and Dublin, for Leinster A and has been a semi-regular member of the Clontarf team in the Energia League Division 1A.
On Friday night he’ll be a pivotal member of Richie Murphy’s Ireland team as they bid to win a third successive game in the Under-20 Six Nations Championship when they take on a very strong Italy side at the Stadio Comunale di Monigo in Treviso.
An outside centre by inclination and preference, he’s spent most of the season on the wing with Clontarf, scoring three tries in seven matches.
He said: “I played wing back in school in about fourth year [when] on the seniors, I have a bit of experience there, so it is not too bad.
“I played one game in the centre for Clontarf. I don’t really mind [being on the wing because] playing at that level with the seniors in the club is great rather than playing on the 20s.”
Cooney is a very talented footballer with good instincts on both sides of the ball.
Ireland boast a big pack but so do Italy and there is reasonable expectation that the Irish backline may see a little more ball than they did in the victories over Wales and France.
“We don’t want to be pack-focused, forward-focused, it is just when the opportunity presents itself, we will play,” he says. “We want to play to the space, if that’s up front or out on the edges, we will play to where the space is.”
Having two team-mates from his schooldays, captain and hooker Gus McCarthy and tighthead prop Paddy McCarthy, helped him settle in the Irish 20s set-up and Cooney hasn’t looked back since.
“It’s good having lads you know especially coming into camp, it makes you a lot more comfortable.”
Ireland endured a torrid first half in their opening game against Wales in Colwyn Bay, when the hosts sliced and diced the visitors behind the scrum. At half-time they made some tweaks to the defensive set-up.
Cooney said: “The Wales game, it was more a case of the momentum just changed, we had more of the ball, so we weren’t in those scenarios as much as we were in the first half. Those small fixes that we implemented helped us in the France game.
“Defensively it is not as easy as it was at school. We stepped up from the Wales game and in the France game we were much better as a unit defending. A few little fixes and it showed.”
Ireland lost a high-scoring friendly game against Italy in Castle Avenue in December. Cooney played in that game.
“There is a lot of focus on their pack. They are big, big ball players but we have a big pack too. We definitely think that we can take them on, we have the quality.”
Murphy will confirm the Ireland team on Wednesday afternoon but there are no injury concerns and it’s likely to be the same 23 that beat France.
