EVEN BEFORE HE’D got his hands on the ball, Jack Crowley’s first Test start had more than a hint of destiny about it.
Just a week on from making his Ireland debut against Fiji Crowley had been named on the bench for the November 2022 closing Test against the Wallabies. Then in the moments before kick-off, things escalated for the young Corkman. After Johnny Sexton had completed the coin toss he was pulled from the starting team and Crowley was in at 10 – the change coming so late the Munster player took to the field wearing a jersey with Sexton’s name stitched on it.
This week the post-Sexton era starts properly. When Ireland emerge from the tunnel in Marseille on Friday night, Crowley will have the 10 on his back. His rise with Ireland has been a remarkable one but has also served to show that in pro sport, best laid plans often fly out the window.
When France came to Dublin last year Crowley’s role was to wear a bib and run water for his teammates on a day where Sexton started and Ross Byrne came off the bench.
Even after Crowley’s composed and confident showing again Australia, he had work to do to close the gap on those ahead of him. Sexton started four of Ireland’s Six Nations games last year (Byrne started against Italy) and the Leinster player started all five of Ireland’s fixtures at the World Cup.
Crowley watched on and soaked it all up.
He featured three times as a replacement at the World Cup and while he’d edged Byrne as Sexton’s back-up by the end of Ireland’s run, he would have been deeply frustrated not to get any minutes off the bench as Ireland were eliminated by New Zealand in the quarter-finals.
Yet it was still enough that his couple of cameos – along with his fine form in a Munster jersey and Byrne’s injury setbacks – put him in pole position to take his place as Sexton’s successor for this Six Nations, and potentially beyond.
His name is a relatively new addition to the out-half succession conversation which continued for the guts of 10 years before Sexton’s retirement.
Joey Carbery had looked the next man up when he made a memorable start to his Ireland career back in 2016 and his arrival looked timely given Sexton was already 31, yet it never really happened for a player now set to leave Ireland at the end of the season.
The cast below Carbery shuffled around without making any real progress and with Sexton now gone and Farrell deciding to move past Carbery after the 2022 November Tests, the depth chart is strikingly raw in terms of experience.
Crowley is joined by Ciarán Frawley and Harry Byrne as the three out-halves in Farrell’s Ireland squad, with Ross Byrne unavailable for the early rounds of this Six Nations. The three players have 12 Test caps between them and Crowley is the only one to have started a game at 10 for Ireland (three times).
Frawley and Byrne will have ambitions of overtaking Crowley but as it stands, they have significant ground to make up.
Frawley is highly rated by the Ireland coaches but his development has been hampered by injury and a lack of exposure at out-half, with Leinster tending use the versatile 26-year-old primarily as a fullback. Across the last four seasons, Frawley has started just four games at out-half.
Harry Byrne has faced similar disruption ever since his first call into Ireland camp back in 2021. The 24-year-old looks to be ahead of Frawley in Leinster’s planning at 10 but has struggled to piece together a consistent, injury-free run of games.
Crowley, on the other hand, has continued to develop with real promise. With Ben Healy having left Munster last summer and Carbery set to follow, the Cork man is firmly established as the province’s first-choice 10 and has been clocking up big-game experience across both the URC and Champions Cup. This season alone he’s already played 723 minutes for Munster and started nine games at 10.
While Munster boss Graham Rowntree has been quick to point out Crowley is far from the finished article, he’s shown impressive leadership and composure in a young Munster team.
“We speak about Johnny and he was learning so much from him last year,” says Tadhg Beirne.
You could see him asking him so many questions, trying to figure out how Johnny did things. He does his own things his way as well and works incredibly hard.
“You see him at the video all the time, see him staying behind in Munster til all hours, doing video work and stuff so he has a real hunger to become the best player he can possibly be and hopefully we’re going to see that from him if he’s playing over the next couple of weeks.”
Those are the same qualities which impressed the Ireland coaches when Crowley was first called in the Ireland camp in 2022. Despite being relatively inexperienced at provincial level at the time Crowley acquitted himself well in camp and was assertive and vocal during sessions – traits which struck the right chord with the Ireland coaches.
The former Bandon man isn’t lacking in confidence and has long believed he has the potential to be Ireland’s leading man at 10.
After all, this is a young man who turned down Ronan O’Gara and the lure of life in France before he had broken into the Munster team. That same confidence was evident when the uncapped Crowley decided to ring up Ireland attack coach Mike Catt to ask what he needed to do to catch the eye of the Ireland coaching staff.
From that point the Irish staff knew there was something different about this young player.
In the build-up to Friday’s opening night meeting with France, Ireland head coach Andy Farrell has been impressed by how Crowley has run the team during their training camp in Portugal.
“Well, he’s a confident kid, Jack, so being able to grab hold of the team,” says Farrell.
“It’s tough for young kids, especially with responsibilities like in his position but he feels very comfortable in being able to do that. How you run a week is pretty important and you’re making sure that the rest of your teammates feel that you’re in control. He’s obviously learned a lot from Johnny in that regard.
“Harry is pretty good at that as well and Ciarán Frawley is getting better at that, but the only thing is that matters is the performance, isn’t it? Taking that preparation, that’s been good, very good actually, in camp and transferring it to a performance that we all want to see.”
Eamonn Guinevan coached Crowley through the age grades and told The 42 last summer that he’s always carried that sense of self-belief.
“He obviously had the skills, he was a very good kicker and passer, but the big thing was that he never seemed to lose his confidence,” said Guinevan.
“Looking back on it, he was similar to Ronan O’Gara in a way. If Jack made a mistake or had a bad first half, he could turn it around. I always thought Ronan O’Gara was the best I’ve seen that way – O’Gara could have a bad first half but come out and be the best player on the pitch in the second half.
“Jack had the ability to very quickly put a mistake behind him. Even within a game, he could recover from something that might knock the confidence of another player. He had that belief in himself.”
He’ll need those reserves of confidence and belief to lead Ireland into a new era we always knew was coming, but has been postponed time and again.
In an ideal world Crowley would have clocked up more Test experience ahead his big French test but wannabe Ireland out-halves have long been used to the reality that when Sexton was around, minutes at 10 were hard to come by.
Now he’s gone, the man tasked with filling those boots will do so by starting a Six Nations game for the first time.
This time, the name stitched on Jack Crowley’s jersey will be his own.
