Top Cat! The most effectual!
Top Cat! Who’s intellectual!
Close friends get to call him ‘TC,’
Providing it’s with dignity!
RM Block
Thomas Clarkson, known as TC to his team-mates and friends, gets the reference to the lyrics of the 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Top Cat. Leinster forwards coach Robin McBryde got there first when he played the theme tune for the 25-year-old tighthead prop.
He’s a good sport when the tune breaches the peace in the sweaty confines of a Portakabin at Ireland’s training ground on the outskirts of Lisbon. He occasionally mops his brow and it’s nothing to do with the questions, rather the lack of air conditioning in 30 plus degree temperatures.
Clarkson lived in Brittas Bay until he was nine, played rugby for Wicklow RFC, before his family – dad Finbarr, mum Nina, and his siblings, Catey, Freddie and Dominic – moved to Blackrock where he went to school, first in Willow Park and then in the senior school. He swam competitively, butterfly his stroke of choice, before rugby subsumed his interest.
Rugby was a good fit. “I was always the bigger kid, so I suppose it was always kind of fun just running through. I always got the ball on tap penalties and stuff,” Clarkson explains. His current Ireland team-mate Nick Timoney coached him in first year.
He won a Schools Senior Cup under Liam Turner’s captaincy, a Grand Slam with the Irish under-20s in 2019 (the first of two years on the age-grade team), and toured South Africa with Emerging Ireland in 2022. Smaller in stature relative to the behemoths he faced when playing international age-grade rugby, he quickly realised that good technique was a prerequisite.
“I was never the biggest, because coming out of school I was pretty small, only 110kg or something like that. I’m 128kg (now), or something like that. There were lads (at under-20s) that had played (in the French) Top 14 and the (English) Premiership. They were up in the 120kgs then, so I knew I had to be technically good.”
Clarkson smiles in recounting the struggle, not so much putting on size but muscle. “I was pretty chubby leaving school. I got put into fat camp with Dave Fagan (the late Leinster strength & conditioning coach).
“I was put on gym-heavy programmes, trying to put on muscle and get stronger. You see some of lads coming through now, like (Alex) Usanov and Paddy (McCarthy), putting up big numbers in the gym. I was nowhere near that. It’s something I had to work on a lot over the last few years. It’s probably why it took me a few years before I started playing in bigger games and capped and stuff.
“You can put on loads of weight, and it can be bad weight. You can’t move with it on. I think I took it a bit slower, it took me a few years to put it on. Now, I feel like I can move better than when I was lighter.”
Ireland’s interim head coach Paul O’Connell referenced Clarkson’s diligence in working to get the right body shape for a tighthead prop. “He’s been excellent for us. We had him on the Emerging Ireland tour and he’s a considerably bigger man since then. Obviously, he’s in a pushing competition there in the front row.
“He’s worked really hard, even from the Six Nations to the summer tour, he looked even in better shape again and it’s a great sign of a guy because he’s in that position where he’s trying to put on size. It can be hard work at times when you’re playing games and training.
“Players know good players. Johnny (Sexton) would have always said that (Clarkson) is a very good footballer, and paid him compliments about his all-round game. He’s very comfortable on the ball. He had a few good, tough carries (in Tbilisi), particularly early in the game. Like all these guys they just need time in the saddle.
“There’s plenty of things from the game he needs to work on, a little bit on maul defence, but he gets a chance now to go and do it again and show that he can improve.”
Clarkson made his Leinster debut five years ago and by his own admission he wasn’t ready. He isn’t patient by nature. “It was frustrating. I made my debut quite early. There were a few injuries. I probably got thrown in before I’d shown I was ready.
“The fact that I got a taste of that so early, I didn’t have to wait so long to break through. It’s been frustrating. There have been a few lows.”
He continued: “At the end of the 2023 season, I had a run of games (for Leinster) where the scrums went really badly. It was during the Six Nations (and then) we went to South Africa, I got absolutely destroyed.
“(It’s the) worst place to go if you’re low on confidence. That was probably the lowest. Since then, I’ve been building nicely.”
It taught Clarkson resilience. The lessons were occasionally painful, but the quality of the person and the player ensured he made progress.
The rehabilitation process was overseen by Cian Healy, Andrew Porter, Tadhg Furlong and Rabah Slimani in Leinster training. “You’re scrumming against (them), you must learn. When you do get to the standard it gives you confidence for the matches.”
Psychologically it allowed Clarkson to shed any doubts. The last couple of years he’s kicked on, winning his first Ireland cap against Argentina last November having originally been brought into the squad as a training panellist. Injuries within the squad provided the opportunity, but Clarkson grabbed it with both hands. In Lisbon he will win his eighth cap, a tally he’s accumulated in eight months.
He’s had to remain patient too. “Tadhg (Furlong) and Slim (Rabah Slimani) got the nod for those few European games. I was getting the matches in between and felt like I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to play well. It wasn’t happening and I was feeling a bit low about it. The Glasgow game was when I felt that was probably my best game.
“Different things are expected of you (with Ireland). I want to put my hand up here. These are probably lesser profile games for the public but it’s important for me that I can come in off the back of playing well for Leinster and translate it to playing well (for Ireland).
“You’re not just going to walk in having played well on the outside. Obviously, they have the lads that they can trust, and they’ve been in the system for years.”
He’s earning that faith and trust, game by game. And maybe one day very soon, like Top Cat, Clarkson can become “the indisputable leader of the gang”.
