Stuart McCloskey
Club: Ulster
Position: Centre
Age: 31
Height: 6′4″
Is the gap widening between Leinster and the other provinces?
Denis Walsh: Irish sport’s underdog mentality has been replaced with an unabashed hunger to be the best
Was 2024 a successful year for Irish rugby?
Irish women’s rugby: ‘there are loads of structural issues that are really difficult to address’
Weight: 112kg (17st 7lb)
Ireland caps: 15
Points: 20
Why he is so important? Injuries are commonplace in professional sport and for teams to be able to continue to thrive it’s important that players are able to step up when circumstances dictate. The Ulster centre performed that role admirably when playing 57 minutes against Scotland in the World Cup. This is another opportunity. He’s made incremental improvements in his game, his passing especially, and the challenge is to continue to do what he’s good at and get better in other areas. He’ll hopefully get a chance to showcase his strengths. Running a trail-line off him invariably has material benefits for team-mates.
Trivia: He played off a three handicap in golf as a teenager, his sport of preference and it wasn’t until he went to Bangor Grammar School and enjoyed a growth spurt that rugby came on his sporting radar. He recalled: “I was quite small. I played nine [scrumhalf] in my first year of the senior rugby [cycle] and I played 10 [outhalf] pushing towards centre for the last two years of senior rugby.” He is a big NBA and Lakers fan.
Tommaso Menoncello
Club: Benetton Treviso
Position: Centre
Age: 21
Height: 6ft2in
Weight: 101 kg (15st 12lb)
Italy caps: 13
Points: 25
Why he is so important? Quite apart from that which is apparent to the naked eye in terms of his talent, in the 2023 Six Nations he was just one of five players to play a minimum of 240 minutes who managed gain-line success and dominant carry rates of more than 50 per cent. His team-mate Juan Ignacio Brex and midfield partners Huw Jones (Scotland), Yoram Moefana (France) and George North (Wales) were the others. He has all the qualities to be a generational player for Italy.
Trivia: Menoncello became the youngest try-scorer in the history of the Six Nations when he dotted down against France on his debut in 2022. The young Treviso centre was 19 years and 170 days at the time, eclipsing the previous record held by Scotland fullback Stuart Hogg (19 years, 251 days). There were a couple of other teenagers on the list, Wales wing George North (19 years, 302 days) and France centre Gael Fickou (19 years, 317 days). The record in the Five Nations belongs to Wales fullback Keith Jarrett who was 18 when he scored his first try at Test level.
