BRIAN GLEESON HAS played for Munster 32 times so far. He won back-to-back Grand Slams with the Ireland U20s, has played for Ireland A, and trained with Andy Farrell’s senior Ireland squad the week of their Triple Crown decider against Scotland in March.
The powerful number eight only turned 22 in February.
He is a young man who has already achieved plenty, but he is also a young man who is impatient to accelerate things further.
Tipperary native Gleeson looks at some of his team-mates from the Ireland U20s side that reached the World Cup final in 2023 and feels he has ground to make up.
Sam Prendergast, Gus McCarthy, Paddy McCarthy, and Hugh Gavin have gone on to become senior Ireland internationals. Gleeson is keen to follow as soon as possible.
“If I’m being hypercritical of myself, I probably haven’t progressed as much or as fast as I would have liked to,” says Gleeson, sitting in the boardroom at Munster’s high performance centre in the University of Limerick.
“A good lot of that 20s team have been involved in Irish camps and have caps and stuff, so I’m still chasing that.”
Gleeson is an ambitious man with strong self-belief. He knows that injuries haven’t been kind to him. But he has high hopes for his career. He appreciates there is great back row quality in Irish rugby, but you can sense his determination to get rolling with Ireland.
“It’s up to me now to put the work in to get up there and get a cap because I suppose the position I’m in, if you look at the back row, it’s fairly stacked, isn’t it, so it’s obviously going to be difficult.
“But every challenge is there to be undertaken and I know it’d be a great reward if I was able to get a cap.”
There is lots of excitement in Munster about Gleeson’s talent. He made his senior debut when he was still 19 and he was tied down to a new two-year contract this season. Ireland and Farrell are clearly interested in the 6ft 4ins number eight too.
Gleeson started this season in red-hot form for his province, having been determined to make a big first impression on new Munster head coach Clayton McMillan.
Gleeson played for the Ireland U20s in 2023 and 2024. Darren Stewart / INPHO
Darren Stewart / INPHO / INPHO
That form earned him a phone call from Farrell in October. The Ireland boss invited Gleeson to join the Ireland squad for their November trip to Chicago to face the All Blacks at Soldier Field.
Gleeson, naturally, was buzzing. A few days later in Croke Park, Gleeson scored a try for Munster against Leinster but then his excitement and his excellent form were cut short by a broken elbow.
“I got a bang and I thought, ‘Jesus, a dead arm,’ and then I knew when I got up, I could feel it kind of moving inside, and I was like, ‘Yeah, this ain’t good,’” he recalls.
“It was a freak injury, a strange one. I’ve carried like that how many times in my career, and it’s been grand. Just whatever way it came off Max Deegan’s head, it just obviously caught the wrong part of it and, yeah, it broke, just freak.”
It was difficult sitting in the stand at Croke Park, knowing that his chance to go to Chicago with Ireland was gone too.
He was thankful that he had surgery the next day, allowing him to get straight into a spell of rehabilitation that lasted two-and-a-half months.
With all of that in mind, Gleeson was delighted to finally get his chance to go into Ireland camp in March when Farrell called him in to train with the squad ahead of their final Six Nations game against Scotland.
“It’s nice to get up there and see what’s going on and just even being part of it,” says Gleeson. “I know it’s only a week, but it just gives you the mindset that they’re still interested in you.
“They tell you what they want to see in the last few games of the season, so that gives me something to strive towards if I want to stay in there and get in there for a whole campaign.”
Whatever about trying to get past Caelan Doris and Jack Conan to win caps for Ireland, Gleeson knows that competing with Gavin Coombes for Munster’s number eight jersey is the job at hand.
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Gleeson, who is on the bench for Munster against Ulster this evening, enjoys the competition, but he obviously wants a long run as the starter at the back of the scrum.
As he looks to broaden his repertoire and make himself easier to pick in the starting XV, Gleeson has been working hard on his lineout skills.
“Growing up, I would never have jumped because I was too big,” says Gleeson.
“No one would want to lift me. Even with the 20s, I didn’t really jump that much. It was probably once I came into the academy that I started learning it, because I didn’t really have much knowledge of it.
Gleeson loves carrying the ball. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
“But yeah, in the last game there, I had to go into the five-man lineouts and I did well when I went in there, so it’s nice to know you’re able to do it.”
But the focal part of Gleeson’s game remains his ball-carrying.
He enjoys this confrontational element of the game and always has. The fact that he was too big to lift in lineouts is one hint as to the size and power of the man. Gleeson just loves to carry.
“That is what I pride myself on. And what coaches say to you is, ‘Never lose what you’re best at.’
“So I’ll keep working on that as much as I can because that’s what I want to bring to teams I’m playing with, go-forward ball and big moments in my carry.”
Gleeson is evidently someone who likes to play rugby with an uncluttered mind. There have been times in the last few years when he has realised he’s overthinking stuff.
When he first came into the professional game, Gleeson would listen to the older players repeatedly talking about the importance of preparation and knowing the detail of the game plan.
All of that detail might have seemed a little overwhelming at first but Gleeson realised that by getting it nailed down, he could then play with a greater freedom and flow in his game.
Take ball-carrying, for instance. It’s certainly something that can be overthought.
“I’ve been guilty of that myself,” says Gleeson. “I’m just thinking about carrying square and having options, and that is good and you need to have that as well, but there is a certain extent of when you get the ball, just try to run over someone.”
He wants to maintain a certain instinctiveness in his game, as shown by his snappy close-range finish against Benetton last weekend as he impacted off the bench.
Gleeson has missed chances from similar positions this season, but he doesn’t want to be deterred by fear of making an error.
“When I’m in the moment there, I’m not thinking about getting held up at all,” he says.
“I think if you do start thinking about mistakes that you’ve had in the past, you won’t be able to play freely.
“At the weekend, I just saw there was only one fella there. I was probably supposed to go in towards the post and stuff, but when you see one fella there and he was quite high, I just saw it and took it. You have to be able to do that as a player as well.”
Gleeson is an ambitious young man. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
Gleeson was six when he first played rugby at Thurles RFC, not far from the family farm near the tiny village of Loughmore in County Tipperary.
It was a dairy farm when he was growing up and he enjoyed the lifestyle. Gleeson was milking cows from as early as he can remember, while he came to love the tractor work in the years that followed.
“I wouldn’t have gymed until I was older, but all that farm work would be as good as gymming,” he says with a smile.
Gleeson comes from a GAA family but his parents, Pat and Fionnuala, are big Munster supporters, and his dad played for Thurles when he was younger.
“He was a winger though, so he wouldn’t give me many tips,” says Brian. “He likes to claim he’s 6ft! He used to do athletics back in the day, so he was pretty fast and they stuck him on the wing, but he was more of a GAA man himself.”
Pat and Fionnuala Gleeson used to go to Munster’s big Heineken Cup games back in the day. Pat was in Cardiff with some friends the day the Holy Grail was finally reached in 2006, when Brian was only two-years-old.
That means Gleeson has no memories of the good old glory days in Munster. His role models are far more recently retired.
“I suppose CJ Stander was the number eight when I was big into it,” says Gleeson.
“I would have looked up to him. I kind of play similar enough to him as well.
“And obviously Pete [O'Mahony] would have been there, so it was cool enough then to get to play with him in the end.”
Despite starting early and loving Munster, Gleeson veered away from rugby when he was around 10. He was seriously into his hurling as well and was dealing with growing pains in his heels at the time, so something had to give.
Gleeson was a fine hurler and footballer, representing Tipperary in both and playing up until U15 level.
But by then, rugby had well and truly started taking over. As soon as he got into secondary school in Rockwell College and took it back up, it became clear that Gleeson was handy with the oval ball.
In second year, he made the Junior Cup panel, despite being a year younger than his class-mates, so technically still a first year. He was central as Rockwell won the Junior Cup in 2019, scoring an early try in their final win over St Munchin’s.
Such was his size and skill, he skipped the Munster U16s and went straight into the U17s squad. He never looked back and it wasn’t long before he was impressing on a bigger stage for the Ireland U20s in 2023 despite being a year younger than nearly everyone else.
Gleeson playing for Rockwell College in 2022. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
The decision to go with rugby has worked out well for Gleeson, who still has great grá for Gaelic games and keeps in touch with friends from underage teams. Tipperary hurler Peter McGarry was the out-half on Gleeson’s Senior Cup team in Rockwell.
Gleeson is sorry to report that he and fellow Tipp man Diarmuid Barron are “heavily outnumbered” in the Munster squad, but they give as good as they get when there are big inter-county matches against Cork or Limerick on.
As well as being talented at rugby, hurling, and football, Gleeson is a keen golfer and had his handicap down to 10 at one stage. The elbow injury means he hasn’t played for a while but with summer looming, he will soon join lots of his Munster team-mates in making better use of membership at Ballyneety Golf Club in County Limerick.
Gleeson’s girlfriend, Renee, is an Irish University champion in the 800 metres, representing UCD, so sport really is central to life.
On the rugby front, the big focus for Gleeson right now is helping Munster to end this challenging season on a high and trying to catch Ireland’s eye again.
He has enjoyed working with McMillan, whose appointment he welcomed.
“It was kind of a reset for me because I was out of the team last year, and it was probably a tough period for me,” he says. “It was a real driving factor to come in and make a good impression.
“He has been fair. He’s straight up, and he’ll tell you what he wants. That’s all you want as a player, someone who’ll tell it to you straight and be fair with you. And if you’re playing well, you’ll be selected, and if you’re not, you’ll be told and told why.”
That approach suits the direct Gleeson down to the ground.
So it’s on with the mission of becoming a core player in a Munster squad that includes other young talents like Edwin Edogbo.
“There is a good young crew of us,” says Gleeson, “and even Jack [Crowley] and Craig [Casey] still have plenty of years left. So it’ll be exciting.”
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Tipp man Gleeson plots path from Munster to an Ireland jersey
BRIAN GLEESON HAS played for Munster 32 times so far. He won back-to-back Grand Slams with the Ireland U20s, has played for Ireland A, and trained with Andy Farrell’s senior Ireland squad the week of their Triple Crown decider against Scotland in March.
The powerful number eight only turned 22 in February.
He is a young man who has already achieved plenty, but he is also a young man who is impatient to accelerate things further.
Tipperary native Gleeson looks at some of his team-mates from the Ireland U20s side that reached the World Cup final in 2023 and feels he has ground to make up.
Sam Prendergast, Gus McCarthy, Paddy McCarthy, and Hugh Gavin have gone on to become senior Ireland internationals. Gleeson is keen to follow as soon as possible.
“If I’m being hypercritical of myself, I probably haven’t progressed as much or as fast as I would have liked to,” says Gleeson, sitting in the boardroom at Munster’s high performance centre in the University of Limerick.
“A good lot of that 20s team have been involved in Irish camps and have caps and stuff, so I’m still chasing that.”
Gleeson is an ambitious man with strong self-belief. He knows that injuries haven’t been kind to him. But he has high hopes for his career. He appreciates there is great back row quality in Irish rugby, but you can sense his determination to get rolling with Ireland.
“It’s up to me now to put the work in to get up there and get a cap because I suppose the position I’m in, if you look at the back row, it’s fairly stacked, isn’t it, so it’s obviously going to be difficult.
“But every challenge is there to be undertaken and I know it’d be a great reward if I was able to get a cap.”
There is lots of excitement in Munster about Gleeson’s talent. He made his senior debut when he was still 19 and he was tied down to a new two-year contract this season. Ireland and Farrell are clearly interested in the 6ft 4ins number eight too.
Gleeson started this season in red-hot form for his province, having been determined to make a big first impression on new Munster head coach Clayton McMillan.
That form earned him a phone call from Farrell in October. The Ireland boss invited Gleeson to join the Ireland squad for their November trip to Chicago to face the All Blacks at Soldier Field.
Gleeson, naturally, was buzzing. A few days later in Croke Park, Gleeson scored a try for Munster against Leinster but then his excitement and his excellent form were cut short by a broken elbow.
“I got a bang and I thought, ‘Jesus, a dead arm,’ and then I knew when I got up, I could feel it kind of moving inside, and I was like, ‘Yeah, this ain’t good,’” he recalls.
“It was a freak injury, a strange one. I’ve carried like that how many times in my career, and it’s been grand. Just whatever way it came off Max Deegan’s head, it just obviously caught the wrong part of it and, yeah, it broke, just freak.”
It was difficult sitting in the stand at Croke Park, knowing that his chance to go to Chicago with Ireland was gone too.
He was thankful that he had surgery the next day, allowing him to get straight into a spell of rehabilitation that lasted two-and-a-half months.
With all of that in mind, Gleeson was delighted to finally get his chance to go into Ireland camp in March when Farrell called him in to train with the squad ahead of their final Six Nations game against Scotland.
“It’s nice to get up there and see what’s going on and just even being part of it,” says Gleeson. “I know it’s only a week, but it just gives you the mindset that they’re still interested in you.
“They tell you what they want to see in the last few games of the season, so that gives me something to strive towards if I want to stay in there and get in there for a whole campaign.”
Whatever about trying to get past Caelan Doris and Jack Conan to win caps for Ireland, Gleeson knows that competing with Gavin Coombes for Munster’s number eight jersey is the job at hand.
Gleeson, who is on the bench for Munster against Ulster this evening, enjoys the competition, but he obviously wants a long run as the starter at the back of the scrum.
As he looks to broaden his repertoire and make himself easier to pick in the starting XV, Gleeson has been working hard on his lineout skills.
“Growing up, I would never have jumped because I was too big,” says Gleeson.
“No one would want to lift me. Even with the 20s, I didn’t really jump that much. It was probably once I came into the academy that I started learning it, because I didn’t really have much knowledge of it.
“But yeah, in the last game there, I had to go into the five-man lineouts and I did well when I went in there, so it’s nice to know you’re able to do it.”
But the focal part of Gleeson’s game remains his ball-carrying.
He enjoys this confrontational element of the game and always has. The fact that he was too big to lift in lineouts is one hint as to the size and power of the man. Gleeson just loves to carry.
“That is what I pride myself on. And what coaches say to you is, ‘Never lose what you’re best at.’
“So I’ll keep working on that as much as I can because that’s what I want to bring to teams I’m playing with, go-forward ball and big moments in my carry.”
Gleeson is evidently someone who likes to play rugby with an uncluttered mind. There have been times in the last few years when he has realised he’s overthinking stuff.
When he first came into the professional game, Gleeson would listen to the older players repeatedly talking about the importance of preparation and knowing the detail of the game plan.
All of that detail might have seemed a little overwhelming at first but Gleeson realised that by getting it nailed down, he could then play with a greater freedom and flow in his game.
Take ball-carrying, for instance. It’s certainly something that can be overthought.
“I’ve been guilty of that myself,” says Gleeson. “I’m just thinking about carrying square and having options, and that is good and you need to have that as well, but there is a certain extent of when you get the ball, just try to run over someone.”
He wants to maintain a certain instinctiveness in his game, as shown by his snappy close-range finish against Benetton last weekend as he impacted off the bench.
Gleeson has missed chances from similar positions this season, but he doesn’t want to be deterred by fear of making an error.
“When I’m in the moment there, I’m not thinking about getting held up at all,” he says.
“I think if you do start thinking about mistakes that you’ve had in the past, you won’t be able to play freely.
“At the weekend, I just saw there was only one fella there. I was probably supposed to go in towards the post and stuff, but when you see one fella there and he was quite high, I just saw it and took it. You have to be able to do that as a player as well.”
Gleeson was six when he first played rugby at Thurles RFC, not far from the family farm near the tiny village of Loughmore in County Tipperary.
It was a dairy farm when he was growing up and he enjoyed the lifestyle. Gleeson was milking cows from as early as he can remember, while he came to love the tractor work in the years that followed.
“I wouldn’t have gymed until I was older, but all that farm work would be as good as gymming,” he says with a smile.
Gleeson comes from a GAA family but his parents, Pat and Fionnuala, are big Munster supporters, and his dad played for Thurles when he was younger.
“He was a winger though, so he wouldn’t give me many tips,” says Brian. “He likes to claim he’s 6ft! He used to do athletics back in the day, so he was pretty fast and they stuck him on the wing, but he was more of a GAA man himself.”
Pat and Fionnuala Gleeson used to go to Munster’s big Heineken Cup games back in the day. Pat was in Cardiff with some friends the day the Holy Grail was finally reached in 2006, when Brian was only two-years-old.
That means Gleeson has no memories of the good old glory days in Munster. His role models are far more recently retired.
“I suppose CJ Stander was the number eight when I was big into it,” says Gleeson.
“I would have looked up to him. I kind of play similar enough to him as well.
“And obviously Pete [O'Mahony] would have been there, so it was cool enough then to get to play with him in the end.”
Despite starting early and loving Munster, Gleeson veered away from rugby when he was around 10. He was seriously into his hurling as well and was dealing with growing pains in his heels at the time, so something had to give.
Gleeson was a fine hurler and footballer, representing Tipperary in both and playing up until U15 level.
But by then, rugby had well and truly started taking over. As soon as he got into secondary school in Rockwell College and took it back up, it became clear that Gleeson was handy with the oval ball.
In second year, he made the Junior Cup panel, despite being a year younger than his class-mates, so technically still a first year. He was central as Rockwell won the Junior Cup in 2019, scoring an early try in their final win over St Munchin’s.
Such was his size and skill, he skipped the Munster U16s and went straight into the U17s squad. He never looked back and it wasn’t long before he was impressing on a bigger stage for the Ireland U20s in 2023 despite being a year younger than nearly everyone else.
The decision to go with rugby has worked out well for Gleeson, who still has great grá for Gaelic games and keeps in touch with friends from underage teams. Tipperary hurler Peter McGarry was the out-half on Gleeson’s Senior Cup team in Rockwell.
Gleeson is sorry to report that he and fellow Tipp man Diarmuid Barron are “heavily outnumbered” in the Munster squad, but they give as good as they get when there are big inter-county matches against Cork or Limerick on.
As well as being talented at rugby, hurling, and football, Gleeson is a keen golfer and had his handicap down to 10 at one stage. The elbow injury means he hasn’t played for a while but with summer looming, he will soon join lots of his Munster team-mates in making better use of membership at Ballyneety Golf Club in County Limerick.
Gleeson’s girlfriend, Renee, is an Irish University champion in the 800 metres, representing UCD, so sport really is central to life.
On the rugby front, the big focus for Gleeson right now is helping Munster to end this challenging season on a high and trying to catch Ireland’s eye again.
He has enjoyed working with McMillan, whose appointment he welcomed.
“It was kind of a reset for me because I was out of the team last year, and it was probably a tough period for me,” he says. “It was a real driving factor to come in and make a good impression.
“He has been fair. He’s straight up, and he’ll tell you what he wants. That’s all you want as a player, someone who’ll tell it to you straight and be fair with you. And if you’re playing well, you’ll be selected, and if you’re not, you’ll be told and told why.”
That approach suits the direct Gleeson down to the ground.
So it’s on with the mission of becoming a core player in a Munster squad that includes other young talents like Edwin Edogbo.
“There is a good young crew of us,” says Gleeson, “and even Jack [Crowley] and Craig [Casey] still have plenty of years left. So it’ll be exciting.”
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Brían Gleeson Munster number eight Rockwell Talent Tipperary