London Irish Assistant Forwards Coach Ross McMillan has praised the Exiles Junior Academy, after their recent U18s Premiership title triumph. Ahead of London Irish’s match against Leicester Tigers on Saturday, McMillan discussed how he has been keeping a keen eye on the next generation.
The Irish Academy ran out an impressive 27-19 victory over Northampton Saints’ Academy, in the U18s Premiership Final at on Sunday night at Saracens’ Stone X Stadium. McMillan was watching the upcoming front-rowers in the Irish Academy, as Ralph McEachran, Kepueli Tuipulotu and Brandon Vince started in the final, with hooker Tuipulotu grabbing a try. McMillan was impressed with what he saw, and is hopeful for more from the youngsters in the future.
“Firstly, I thought it was actually a great game of rugby to watch. What a great day for premiership rugby and for the Academy systems in general. But actually, I know I might be biased, but I watched that and almost tried to take the London Irish badge off, and just watched it as a game of rugby.
“And it was such a great game of rugby, in terms of attacking styles, defensive, mauls. Listen, I thought there was a number of players that stood up. But like I say, sometimes I’ll have tunnel vision and only watching my 1s, 2s, and 3s.”
“Gone are the days where you know, age is the determining factor of experience. Actually your experience and your quality and what you bring to the party, that’s all we look at now. Age is irrelevant in a way.
“We trust and we respect anybody that is in our programme, because we know that they’ll play the way that we want them to play, or ask them to play, but also they’ll bring their own flavour.”
McMillan recognised how his current senior front rowers provide valuable guidance to the shining academy stars,-looking to make their breakthrough at the G-tech Stadium.
“The pleasing thing is actually, then the growth within our guys. You take the front row for example, you’ve got Ollie Hoskins, Lovejoy (Chawatama) and Will Goodridge-Clarke just to name a few, that have been with this group since coming back up into the Premiership (2019).
“Most of those guys who are in terms of our senior front rowers, are all kind of guys that have come up from the Championship and gained that experience and now they’re helping with the young guys coming through.”
London Irish have a tough test ahead of them this weekend, as they host reigning Premiership Champions Leicester Tigers. Last time out the two sides provided a 10-try thriller at Welford Road, with Irish narrowly losing 33-31. McMillan stated how he would much rather dig in the heels to win the match, than provide the fast-flowing entertainment and lose.
“I saw somebody, I actually had a comment from a friend, a Bath fan on the weekend. And he said, ‘You’re the team that I like to watch when I’m not watching bath’. And that’s all good. I like that comment in terms of the brand of rugby in which you’re alluding to or what we play. But listen, I’ll take a six-three and a win.
“And that might be boring. But as it stands at the moment, I take a six-three and we win. Listen, we want to entertain, we want to play our brand of rugby, and we want to score tries, but ultimately as well, we want to win this game. And we will do that any means possible and then any means how.”
London Irish’s latest breakout star is winger Michael Dykes. The 21-year-old exploded onto the scene and scored a hat-trick on his debut, in last January’s West London derby against Harlequins. As a forwards coach, McMillan enjoys different aspects of the game to that of the winger, but praised Dykes’ physicality, and fearlessness to mix it up in training.
“He gets excited about different areas of the game that I get excited to. I actually try and every now and again get ‘Dyksey’ across and do a bit of breakdown work, or a little bit with the forwards and he’s actually one of the first to put his hand up and come into a live maul.”