There is hope for us all. Hugo Keenan, scorer of an already legendary try for the British & Irish Lions in Melbourne last Saturday, could not even make it into his school’s under-14 C team.
The Dubliner’s obscure beginnings in rugby first gained public attention on the occasion of his debut international appearance, against Italy in the 2020 Six Nations, when he scored a couple of tries.
Someone dredged up a photo of that Blackrock College team sheet and posted it on social media.
Keenan in 2014
STEPHEN MCCARTHY/SPORTSFILE
Keenan was previously on the Blackrock College bench for the C team
The same snap resurfaced last weekend after the 29-year-old produced some wonderful footwork and acceleration to glide outside Australia’s Len Ikitau and seal a series win for the touring side.
How does a teenage also-ran transform into a Lions legend? Not without a lot of hard work. But there are other factors to consider too.
Keenan was a scrap of a 13-year-old whose primary sporting interests were in round balls — footballs and Gaelic footballs. In fact, it is typical of him that whenever he has a free Saturday afternoon, Keenan still goes to watch his old football team-mates hack around for Blackrock AFC.
The younger Keenan had aspirations to make the first XV in Blackrock College but he was in an especially competitive environment. No school won more Leinster Senior Cups than Blackrock. No school has produced more Ireland internationals. As many as ten “Rock boys” played for Ireland in the season just gone, with four of them — Garry Ringrose, Joe McCarthy, Thomas Clarkson and Keenan — featuring for the Lions.
Keenan scores the 80th-minute, series-clinching try in Melbourne
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Mack Hansen and Jamie George with the match-winning Dubliner
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES
Not all of those were stars all the way up, either. Consider that before being part of Ireland’s Six Nations triumph last year, McCarthy’s only winner’s medal was for Blackrock’s under-15 Ds. Evidently, rugby still has room for late developers.
Keenan benefited from good old-fashioned sibling rivalry too. At 16 he watched with a mixture of pride and envy as his older brother, Rob, broke the school 100m record. He promptly asked his dad if he would pay for some athletics coaching, with a view to getting noticed as a rugby player.
Keenan, in 2014, with his Blackrock College team-mates after Leinster Senior Cup victory
STEPHEN MCCARTHY/SPORTSFILE
“Rob set the standard in training,” Keenan told me. “He was always very diligent, good with nutrition and so on, and I followed his example. I was off doing my own thing when we were down on family holidays in Rosslare, training away — join the local gym, out running. I just wanted to get quicker, so luckily my dad linked me up with an S&C [strength and conditioning] coach, Dave Sweeney. I got a small programme for the summer so that I could come back into fifth year and have a crack at rugby.”
Keenan duly broke into a particularly talented Blackrock team, which won the Leinster Senior Cup in 2014 when Caelan Doris, Nick Timoney and Joey Carbery were all team-mates. From there, Keenan’s trajectory has been consistently upward — Ireland Under-20s, Ireland Sevens, Leinster, Ireland, Lions — until the beginning of the present tour, when he was struck down by a virulent tummy bug. “Getting off the jacks [toilet] was an issue,” as he put it.
Late last Saturday night, with a few beers on board, he was re-enacting the match-winning try, out on the MCG turf. Thousands of kids have re-enacted it since in back gardens across Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales — including kids struggling to make it into the school third XV.
What a lovely legacy.