{"id":302659,"date":"2025-07-30T01:31:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T01:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/302659\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T01:31:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T01:31:15","slug":"hugo-keenan-couldnt-make-school-c-team-now-he-is-a-lions-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/302659\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Keenan couldn\u2019t make school C team \u2014 now he is a Lions legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s under-14 C team.<\/p>\n

The Dubliner\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Someone dredged up a photo of that Blackrock College team sheet and posted it on social media.<\/p>\n

\"Hugo<\/p>\n

Keenan in 2014<\/p>\n

STEPHEN MCCARTHY\/SPORTSFILE<\/p>\n

\"Blackrock<\/p>\n

Keenan was previously on the Blackrock College bench for the C team<\/p>\n

The same snap resurfaced last weekend after the 29-year-old produced some wonderful footwork and acceleration to glide outside Australia\u2019s Len Ikitau and seal a series win for the touring side.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Keenan was a scrap of a 13-year-old whose primary sporting interests were in round balls \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cRock boys\u201d played for Ireland in the season just gone, with four of them \u2014 Garry Ringrose, Joe McCarthy, Thomas Clarkson and Keenan \u2014 featuring for the Lions.<\/p>\n

\"Wallabies<\/p>\n

Keenan scores the 80th-minute, series-clinching try in Melbourne<\/p>\n

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n

\"Australia<\/p>\n

Mack Hansen and Jamie George with the match-winning Dubliner<\/p>\n

DAVID ROGERS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Not all of those were stars all the way up, either. Consider that before being part of Ireland\u2019s Six Nations triumph last year, McCarthy\u2019s only winner\u2019s medal was for Blackrock\u2019s under-15 Ds. Evidently, rugby still has room for late developers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Rugby<\/p>\n

Keenan, in 2014, with his Blackrock College team-mates after Leinster Senior Cup victory<\/p>\n

STEPHEN MCCARTHY\/SPORTSFILE<\/p>\n

\u201cRob set the standard in training,\u201d Keenan told me. \u201cHe 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 \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s trajectory has been consistently upward \u2014 Ireland Under-20s, Ireland Sevens, Leinster, Ireland, Lions \u2014 until the beginning of the present tour, when he was struck down by a virulent tummy bug. \u201cGetting off the jacks [toilet] was an issue,\u201d as he put it.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 including kids struggling to make it into the school third XV. <\/p>\n

What a lovely legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is hope for us all. Hugo Keenan, scorer of an already legendary try for the British &…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-302659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114939605042343386","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}