THE ENGLISH CHAMPIONSHIP campaign concludes this afternoon and Irish wing Seán French is the favourite to claim the top try-scorer honour after a prolific first season with Bedford.
Cork man French, who joined the Blues from Munster last summer, is the joint top scorer heading into today, level on 15 tries with Ealing flanker Carlo Tizzano, who won’t feature for the Trailfinders after heading home to Australia.
So one more score against Coventry [KO 3pm] might do it for 23-year-old French to stand out on his own. You wouldn’t bet against him after the season he has had. Add in his tries from other Bedford games and he has bagged 20 in all.
It’s been a great campaign for the Blues collectively and they’ll finish fourth regardless of today’s results. The frustrating thing is that there are no play-offs and no promotion from the Championship these days. But for French, the move to England has worked out better than he could have hoped for. It’s been a match made in heaven.
“We have the license to play from our own goal-line to the other goal-line,” says French, who can also play in the centre or at fullback.
“It’s our style of rugby, to entertain, get the ball from width to width. I’m finding myself in the right positions and I’m getting my confidence back. I’m playing rugby regularly and it’s a lot easier to play well when you have five or six games in a row.”
He never got a run of games in Munster, where big things had been predicted for him after he broke through with PBC in Cork. French scored all 11 points from outside centre in their 2017 Munster Schools Senior Cup final success against Ben Healy’s Glenstal.
Having joined the Munster academy in 2018, French went on to win a Grand Slam with the Ireland U20s in 2019, playing at inside centre, although his World Cup that summer was cut short by three fractures to his face in the opening game.
He had helped Cork Con to the AIL Division 1A title in 2019 too and would have loved to take his youthful confidence straight into a Munster jersey. Instead, he had to bide his time until November 2020 to make a try-scoring debut against Zebre. Over a year later, he made his second and final appearance for the province against Ulster in January 2022.
“I felt like I had to mould myself into a player I probably wasn’t, if that makes sense,” says French when asked how he reflects on his time with Munster.
“I left school as someone who loved playing heads-up rugby with a smile on my face and I felt I showed that in my early academy days playing with Cork Con.
“That was in and around the time I felt I had a hot hand and eye for the tryline. I would have loved to be thrown in for a chance with the first team in Munster.”
The competition for places in the back three was fierce. He had Ireland internationals like Andrew Conway, Keith Earls, Simon Zebo, Mike Haley, and Shane Daly to contend with, as well as fellow emerging players Calvin Nash and Liam Coombes.
French would have loved more than the 109 minutes he played for Munster to show what he could do.
“I believe that my time in Munster was right place, wrong time,” he says. “It’s the club I dreamed of playing for and I take pride in the fact that I played for and represented Munster. But there’s that lack of feeling that I fully got to live my dream.
“I have nothing against anyone back home and I do believe that coming over here has been the best thing for my career.”
Things are different in Bedford, which is a 35-minute train ride north of London.
The biggest is that the Blues are part-time. They train three days a week, with their schedule beginning in the gym at 4pm, followed by the pitch session. French was used to being in Munster’s high performance centre in Limerick from roughly 7am until 5pm every day, training and hanging out with his team-mates in between.
French moved over with the intention of training full-time in Bedford too but quickly realised that all the other players had day jobs. So he has got one too. French works with a team-mate’s landscaping company.
“When the season started, there was no one around to do anything with so I had to do something,” he says.
“We’re out in the fresh air every day, it’s class. My parents probably laugh at me because they wouldn’t have seen me doing those things. Anything from grass cutting to making sheds, we’re your guys!”
He still plans to use his Economics degree from UCC at some stage in the future, but French has loved the work. He says it’s one things that has helped him to be much more relaxed than he was in Munster.
“Back home, I was falling into that category of the in-between player whereby I was constantly trying to copy the older lads.
“You feel a bit robotic in the mind of having to be intense 24/7 whereas over here, the English lads are quite laidback, love the craic, and doing that day job before the rugby, it means it’s not rugby in your mind 24/7. You have something else to focus on and it’s opened my eyes since I got here.”
French lives with Belfast man Corrie Barrett, who played for Munster A, in the village of Oakley, about 10 minutes from Bedford. There’s another Irishman in the squad in Joey Conway, who was previously in the Munster academy.
And French has a family connection to the club. Ex-Ireland wing Darragh O’Mahony is his mother’s first cousin. O’Mahony played for Bedford in the late 1990s, enjoying a prolific try-scoring campaign in the First Division.
O’Mahony and his family now live in the nearby Harpenden, and French spoke to him before signing with the Blues.
“Bedford has a really special rugby community,” says French.
“It’s probably one of the only towns in the UK where you’ll find that rugby is the number one sport. There’s no pro or semi-pro soccer team in the town, so rugby is the buzz. Bedford consistently have the biggest support in Championship rugby.”
He speaks highly of director of rugby Mike Rayer, a club legend who was there back when O’Mahony played, and of the quality of rugby in the Championship. Before moving over, he hadn’t realised how many good players pop up in the second tier.
The Championship clubs are all connected to a Premiership side and Bedford’s partnership with Northampton meant French did pre-season with the Saints when he first moved over to England. These connections mean lots of excellent players feature in the Championship when coming back from injuries or just looking for game time.
Whether French is with Bedford again next season remains to be seen but he’s loving life there and would happily play on if that’s the best option for all parties. He has no interest in going somewhere else to be way down the pecking order again.
But he would love another shot in Irish rugby at some stage.
“I do believe I’m a good enough player to play in the Irish system,” says French.
“I have no shame in saying I still have a dream of returning to play in Ireland at some stage but where that fits in, I don’t know. I’m in no better place now to showcase my skills.
“I feel like I’ve matured here and what I’ve realised is that wherever you are, you just want to feel valued. Thankfully, I do feel valued here.”
