IF YOU WERE Tony Butler and you happened to flick through the sports news this week, you could have been forgiven for being annoyed.
So depleted were Munster at out-half, apparently, with Joey Carbery facing wrist surgery and Jack Crowley only off the plane from France, that Graham Rowntree was going to have to consider starting Rory Scannell or Antoine Frisch in the 10 shirt for today’s visit of the Dragons to Cork.
Scannell played at out-half for a portion of his schools career with Pres, while Frisch most recently gave it a crack for the Barbarians against Samoa in a pre-World Cup friendly.
In all probability, either man could have slotted in relatively seamlessly today and produced a seven-out-of-10 in an exciting-looking Munster backline at Musgrave Park. And there was plenty of talk that one of them might have to, with Butler untested at the level and having never started a competitive game for Munster.
It would have been a different story behind the scenes in UL this week, mind. With Rowntree at the helm, it was always going to be Butler.
Munster’s head coach is hellbent on infusing his first-team squad with as much young, Munster-native talent as possible and, in reality, with Ben Healy having left for Edinburgh in the summer, he’s going to need a third out-half to deputise for Crowley and/or Carbery this season — particularly come Six Nations time.
Rowntree and his coaching ticket have already lived up to one of their mantras, that ‘if you’re good enough, you’re old enough’, and they would have backed their 21-year-old out-half to the hilt all week.
The 21-year-old Butler, who came through at Ennis RFC initially before switching to Garryowen to play senior ball in the AIL, is into his third year in the academy. These days, you don’t make it that far unless the southern province reckon you might be good enough.
And as to whether or not you’re ‘ready’, there’s only one way to find out.
Rowntree set his stall out to that effect during the early throes of his first year in charge, when he named Ruadhán Quinn in his Round 3 matchday squad to play Zebre.
Quinn, who had starred in Crescent’s Munster Schools Senior Cup title run only earlier the same year, was unleashed from the bench to become Munster’s youngest ever player to feature in a competitive game aged just 18.
His first touch in competitive, professional rugby was to collect a ball on the left edge and bounce Pierre Bruno halfway towards The Well End of Musgrave Park.
Butler will be given similar freedom today, to peacock but also to make mistakes. Munster fans will be seeing a lot more of him in the coming weeks, with Carbery set to undergo wrist surgery in a few days’ time.
Munster will have seven current academy players involved against the Dragons but it’s the inclusion of three in particular — one of whom is today’s starting out-half — which feel especially emblematic of the strides the province have made in the area of talent recruitment in recent years.
Butler was a seriously talented hurler, representing his club St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield and featuring at wing-back for the 2019 Clare minors. He was also part of the St Flannan’s side who won their first Harty Cup in 15 years back in March 2020.
On Munster’s bench, then, you have another couple of former underage inter-county hurlers. One of them is Loughmore-Castleiney man Brian Gleeson, the recent Ireland U20s star who hurled for Tipperary at U14 and U15 level and was, for all intents and purposes, a GAA man until he moved to Rockwell College and picked up the oval ball.
The other is a more recent convert: St Finbarr’s star Ben O’Connor, who’s set to make his Munster debut five months to the day since he won an U20 All-Ireland with Cork.
O’Connor, who also captained the Rebels to a minor All-Ireland in 2021, was long earmarked as a future hurling star but his exploits on the rugby pitch with Pres in the last couple of Munster Schools Senior Cups were eye-catching to the point that Munster had to intervene long before he’d even finished school.
Cork hurling has lost a centre-back who probably would have gone on to captain his county at senior level. Munster Rugby has gained a fullback who did things over his last couple of years of schools rugby which should excite fans across the province.
O’Connor was still in Fifth Year at Pres when he shrugged off the jeers of his friends from rival school Christians to slot a second touchline conversion in quick succession and send PBC into the 2022 Senior Cup final. As he went to pick up his kicking tee, he turned to the galled CBC fans behind him, laughing, and shushed them. Even they quietly appreciated his fortitude.
O’Connor was better still during Pres’ title-winning campaign earlier this year but among his many double-take-worthy moments with ball in hand was one without it: a decisive jackal turnover on his own 5′ that quelled a St Munchin’s onslaught and sent Pres to their second successive final.
Time will tell whether the recently-turned 19-year-old can flourish to the same extent at professional level but like his six fellow academy players today, he’ll be given time and, crucially, he’ll be given chances.
That’s already becoming a key element to Munster’s strategy when it comes to recruiting young sportsmen like O’Connor, whose colours were nailed to the Cork GAA mast until quite recently: they can pull up a Ruadhán Quinn YouTube clip and show that it’s not lip service when they say, ‘if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.’
The chance at a professional sports career is still the main draw, of course, but the chance to become ‘involved’ from the outset is a pretty significant sweetener for guys like O’Connor who have other career and sporting avenues open to them.
Munster have recaptured a lot of ground in a battle that they were losing, particularly in areas like the hurling-mad Limerick, until Ian Costello took the reins at academy level. The conversation around their talent-production line has entirely flipped on its head in the space of only three years.
Winning a trophy the way they did last season doesn’t hurt either, of course. Munster’s defence of their URC title continues today with seven current academy players — Tony Butler, Kieran Ryan and Edwin Edogbo from the start; Mark Donnelly, Ruadhán Quinn, Brian Gleeson and Ben O’Connor from the bench — set to feature against the Dragons. Three of them — Quinn, Gleeson and O’Connor — are still teenagers.
It was never going to be Rory Scannell or Antoine Frisch at out-half.
Munster: Shane Daly; Seán O’Brien, Alex Nankivell, Rory Scannell, Calvin Nash; Tony Butler, Craig Casey; Kieran Ryan, Diarmuid Barron, John Ryan; Edwin Edogbo, Tom Ahern; Jack O’Donoghue (C), Alex Kendellen, Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: Scott Buckley, Mark Donnelly, Stephen Archer, Ruadhán Quinn, Brian Gleeson, Paddy Patterson, Jack Crowley, Ben O’Connor.