CORMAC IZUCHUKWU HAD planned a two-week holiday with his friends in Mexico for this stage of the summer before he knew Ireland would be bringing him on tour to South Africa.
‘Izzy’ would have been in the town of Tequila, where the famous spirit is produced, earlier this week but for his Ireland call-up.
“It’s not the worst thing to happen,” says the laidback Tullamore man.
So while his mates enjoy the delights of Mexico, the Ulster forward has been busy at work in Johannesburg as Andy Farrell’s men prepare for next Saturday’s opening Test against the Springboks in nearby Pretoria.
Given that this is his first time in Ireland camp, there isn’t any great expectation that Izuchukwu will be heavily involved in the Tests but his form at the end of the season for Ulster was impossible to ignore.
The 6ft 7ins lock had been playing a bit-part role for Ulster until Richie Murphy took over with a few months of the season left. Izuchukwu was repositioned as the province’s starting blindside flanker and delivered a string of rampaging performances.
“It’s less attritional because you do slightly less mauling and stuff,” he says of the move to number six.
“You get time to get your breath back. I think I’m quite an explosive player and you get that 20 seconds when you’re not mauling.
“You have the fresher legs and you can get your ball carrying and tackling, jackal, and go at 100% whereas when I was in the second row, I was finding it a little bit harder. But I had a couple of good games in the second row too, I think.”
He has been training as a second row with Ireland, who are light in that area of the squad, but his ability to also play blindside is on-trend at the top level of rugby.
Jumping straight into Test rugby would be a big leap but Izuchuwku would love a chance against the best team in the world.
“If I get a chance, I hope I’m not too nervous and get a chance to whack someone,” says the 24-year-old with a smile.
That the former Roscrea College man has made it this far is laudable. He was a centre in school and though he was invited to a Connacht U19s trial, he missed it through injury and wasn’t on the map as a big prospect in Irish rugby.
In 2018, he took off on what he thought was going to be an adventure around the world playing rugby for amateur clubs who could get him jobs on the side. He had his sights set on Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
“I wouldn’t have the money to go to them places but I thought through rugby when I left Tullamore, this is class because I can actually go places now,” he says. “I thought it was unreal and I’m going to keep doing this.”
He started out in Scotland, joining Kelso RFC in the second division of Scottish amateur club rugby and converting into the second row.
“I was playing Prem 2 in Scotland for Kelso against teams you’ve probably never heard of or ever will,” says Izuchukwu.
“I was 18, went over, got 50 quid a week in a brown envelope and I was living in a town of like 3,000, travelling all over Scotland.”
He shared accommodation with a South African front row by the name of Michael Downer. In fairness to Downer, he subsequently rose up a few rungs of the Scottish semi-pro ladder but he must be proud to see what Izuchukwu has done since.
The Tullamore man’s coach in Kelso, a Kiwi named Gary Stevens, proved to be a huge influence.
“He did a bit of New Zealand 20s and he did Crusaders so he had that professional background. He coached James Lowe at some point, small world.
“When I first moved over to the club the house wasn’t really set up properly because they had a history of players coming that were quite bad so I actually had to sleep in his sitting room until they realised I was good and then they gave me a proper house to live in.
“When I was living with him for those three days I probably learned the most I ever have in my career. He just got his laptop out and he was showing me all, like, spreadsheets and data stuff that I’d never seen before because I was obviously coming from school.
“Stuff that showed what he expects from a forward, all that stuff. I actually thought I played some good rugby there. I know it is not at a good level but the rugby with Gary was probably some of the best games I’ve ever played, the most enjoyable anyway.”
Stevens quickly realised that Izuchuwu had serious potential. He got on the phone to the IRFU and David Nucifora was soon in touch with Izuchukwu asking him to come home for an Ireland 7s contract only five months after he had left for Scotland.
He was subsequently in the wider Ireland U20s squad without getting capped but then-Ulster academy manager Kieran Campbell could see Izuchukwu’s talent and brought him north in 2020.
Izuchuwuku was part of the Emerging Ireland tour in 2022, working closely with Ireland forwards coach Paul O’Connell, but he had to be patient under Dan McFarland in Ulser.
“Dan had this specific way he wanted me to play and I think that really helped me as a player in terms of when I came here to Ireland initially I hadn’t a huge amount of experience at second-row, hadn’t that kind of detail.
“I know there were things, like ball carrying, the rucking and the mauling that he was really keen on.
“Once I got that boxed off we could think of other things and I’d come into him every six months and go, ‘I’d love to play much further out, there is so much more opportunity for linebreaks and such’ and he’d just put clips up on Hudl and say, ‘You need to get this right and this right before you can do this’ because that’s the core values of a forward for him.
“I think that did really benefit me in terms of I thought I got quite good at my ‘hack and axe’ carries in that 20/30 channel and, like, in D my hold/fold got a lot better because I was so focused on that and trying to get a whole lot better as a player so that I can express myself as a player later on, does that make sense?”
Izuchuwkuw is hoping he can impress Ireland boss Farrell even further on this tour, with his sheer athleticism marking the Ulster man out as a serious prospect.
“He is intense, even more so than Dan, like looking where you are passing, all the tiny details that you kinda forget about because as a rugby player, you have to be incredibly locked in because everything you are doing is under a microscope,” says Izuchukwu of Farrell.
“I’m enjoying it because there are things in my game that I need to get better at.”
Back home in Tullamore, they’re beaming with pride as Izzy’s upward trajectory continues.
“The whole town pretty much text me, people I haven’t heard from in years,” he says. “It was mad. It’s quite hard to reply to them all because you want to give everyone the same amount of appreciation.
“But it has been great, everyone texting me and a few phone calls. It has been class, even my second cousins have been texting me, so it has been unreal.”
