WILL CONNORS’ MUM recently sent him an old photo of himself and Paul Mescal – now the star of ‘Normal People’ – togged out in North Kildare RFC colours before a game for one of the club’s underage teams.
While Mescal went on to show promise in Gaelic football before moving on to acting, Connors rose through the rugby ranks and has just enjoyed a breakthrough season with Leinster, earning a call-up to Ireland’s Six Nations squad this year.
“It’s mad how things kick on,” says Connors, whose excellent campaign was put on hold at the end of February.
Connors at Ireland training during the Six Nations. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
Some of their Leinster team-mates are horsing through Netflix series and putting in serious hours on the PlayStation at the moment, but Connors and his housemate, centre Jimmy O’Brien, have had their heads down studying hard during the lockdown.
Openside flanker Connors starts his final Computer Science exams today, with another one on Wednesday, and then just has a thesis to submit two weeks later before he hopes to be finished with his four-year UCD degree.
To be fair, Connors and O’Brien have been taking plenty of study breaks – pulling off an elaborate ping pong trick shot and also dying their hair blonde, then briefly pink, as part of the Leinster players’ fundraising drive.
Leinster centre Conor O’Brien is the other housemate in their Dublin apartment but he’s been back in Mullingar, leaving Connors and Jimmy O’Brien to get into their lockdown routine – up early when they need to get Leinster running sessions done, home to study, a lunchtime stroll for a coffee, more study, weights in the evening.
Connors – whose thesis focuses on identifying athletes at risk of injury in training for marathons, “so machine learning and computer science stuff” – is as eager as anyone to get back to rugby whenever possible.
The Kildare man made nine starts for Leinster in the Pro14 this season, racking up a total of 616 minutes, and doing enough for that Ireland call-up.
Initially named as a ‘development player’ for Ireland’s pre-Six Nations training camp in Portugal, Connors ended up earning a full spot in Andy Farrell’s squad during the championship.
Having essentially missed the entirety of the 2018/19 season with an ACL injury, Connors was impossible to ignore in Leinster’s unbeaten campaign – making a string of dominant performances in which he marked himself out as a smart footballer and one of the best defensive players in the country.
Connors has been superb for Leinster this season. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Heading to Portugal, Connors was determined to make his mark after a chat with Leinster senior coach Stuart Lancaster.
“I was speaking to Stuart before I went over, asking him for advice,” explains Connors, who turned 24 last month.
“Stuart said, ‘The most important thing is that you go over there and put your best foot forward – don’t be going into your shell.’
“It would have been easy to go over there and see all these lads like Peter O’Mahony, lads I’ve grown up watching and nearly been in awe of them. I could have sat back and taken it in but Stuart said, ‘I want to hear after that you put your best foot forward out there.’
“I went to Portugal with the intention of making an impression and trying to get involved in the group, and I felt like that worked for me. Thankfully, I got kept on into the main squad, it was very rewarding.
“I loved the experience and as I went on, I did feel I was getting better week-on-week. I’d love to have seen how the last two weeks of the Six Nations played out.
“I felt I was getting more confident, definitely starting to understand the system a lot better. I’d like to have put my hand up and to have seen what might have happened.”
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Connors says it was educational to work with players from other provinces – like Munster’s Jack O’Donoghue – learning from their different perspective on technical details.
The UCD clubman found Farrell’s Ireland camp a “really inclusive” environment and says the coaching team were very approachable, particularly Simon Easterby.
“I did video stuff with him, even looking at training to pick out little bits that they’d noticed. You’re constantly improving in there. There was a lot of interaction with the coaches, which was cool.”
Connors is hungry for his first Ireland cap. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
The Ireland coaching team certainly didn’t miss Connors’ spectacular tackling abilities over the course of the season with Leinster. He completed 149 tackles – many of them dominate – for a tackle success rate of just over 94%.
Connors is part of the Sam Underhill school of tackling – low and swift, chopping ball-carriers to the ground, winning the gainline, forcing errors, and often allowing team-mates into position to win turnovers.
Nicknamed ‘Porridge’ since his school days due to his appetite for packets of microwavable oats, Connors has always loved making tackles but says Leinster contact skills coach Hugh Hogan has been influential in refining his skills.
“Hugh has been extremely helpful in improving my tackling and making it less wreckless because when I was younger, I probably put myself in vulnerable positions.
“Myself and Hugh have worked hard on foot patterns, that drop, really making it a safer tackle and putting more impact into it.
“It’s like muscle memory, getting my head in the right position, and as I’ve developed, I’ve tried to use momentum to give myself an opportunity to get back up and have that split-second to make a decision – if I’m going to get on the ball [for a turnover] or get back into the line.”
Interestingly, Connors says he doesn’t focus on tackle completion as a statistic for measuring his defensive performances. He never wants to miss a tackle, of course, but he underlines that being part of an effective system is the most important thing.
“You could have made 100% of your tackles but they could have been tackles where you fell off to the side or didn’t make an impact,” explains Connors.
“I’d nearly measure myself off the system defence, maybe where me getting off the line has helped someone else coming off and as a defensive line, you have put pressure on.
Connors is a superb tackler. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
“As a seven, you end up in the middle of the pitch a lot, where you’re leading the line. I’d measure myself on how quick I can get off the line, how quick I can get to ‘first hands,’ whether that’s their 10 or whoever.
“If I then see our 13 getting off the line too and actually making the tackle, I’d be happy.”
Hogan has also been helping Connors develop his ability at the defensive breakdown, particularly in that decision-making around when to go for the ball or not.
Leinster have a ‘poach group’ made up of their opensides, hookers and “other lads who back themselves” to win turnovers. They usually meet on Thursdays, studying video clips and talking about the art of the breakdown. Players will sometimes deliver presentations and lead the discussions about things like Super Rugby breakdown trends and “prime poachers” from around the world.
“You might be looking at someone ‘fishing,’ where they keep sticking their head in but not putting any real pressure on, we’d identify that,” says Connors.
“If lads are getting good turnovers, we’re chatting about that and trying to learn from each other, identifying any patterns – like ball-carriers falling awkwardly to give you a chance to go for the ball.”
Connors made one jackal turnover this season and will look to keep growing this side of his game, but he points out that being over-eager for eye-catching breakdown steals can be costly.
“At this level, if you dip your head in and don’t put pressure on, you expose the whole defensive line. Teams are able to really identify when the defensive line is shortened up and get to the edges, so if you’re not putting pressure on, you learn the hard way.
“You learn from mistakes where you might have dipped the head in and put the team under stress. It’s a really fine balance. Josh is really good at it – in the split second, he can see if it’s on or not. You’re always trying to put the team first.”
With ball in hand, Connors has learned to get the most from his skillset. He says himself that he’s “not the heaviest back row player” at just over 100kg but he’s finding his own way to make an impact.
Connors training with Ireland against Ulster during the Six Nations. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
“I try to use footwork and my skills to try to impose my game,” he says. “That’s definitely something I’ve improved over the season.
“Stuart is always saying to run onto the ball, don’t catch it static. With more game time, you get more confident in pushing the boundaries, trying to take the ball on a bit flatter to the line, especially for people like me. Even if you only get a metre going forward – if I was taking it static, I could be 20 metres back!”
Connors comes from a family who love horseriding, in which his two sisters have represented Ireland. He first played rugby with North Kildare – a club that has “a special place in the heart” and where he was coached by his father, who has never missed one of his son’s Leinster games.
Connors moved on to Clongowes, where missing out on the Junior Cup squad in second year stung and put plenty of fire in his belly. Connors was a standout player for the rest of his days in schools rugby and praises the influence of coach Noel McNamara, now in charge of the Ireland U20s and the Leinster academy.
Connors played for the Ireland U20s in 2016 as he advanced through Leinster’s sub-academy, then spent much of the 2017/18 season with the Ireland 7s. He earned his first three senior caps for Leinster in a run of games in February 2018 that was ended by a frustrating hamstring injury.
Shortly after, and with so much depth in Leinster’s back row, Connors was offered the chance to move west to Connacht, but he was determined to make it with his home province.
“Naturally, I did think about it. With decisions like that, you have to weigh up the pros and cons. But at the end of the day, I wanted to give myself every chance with Leinster.
“Even when I was away with the 7s, I still had that urge to play in the blue jersey and be here for as long as I could.”
Connors playing for Clongowes against Blackrock in the 2014 Leinster Schools Senior Cup final. Colm O'Neill / INPHO
Colm O'Neill / INPHO / INPHO
Having committed to Leinster, it was deeply disappointing to then rupture his ACL in the final pre-season game that summer – basically ending his 2018/19 campaign before it started.
Connors counts himself fortunate to have had supportive team-mates like Ed Byrne – who previously spent over two years out of the game with knee injuries – around, helping him to rise from the initial bout of wallowing in self-pity.
“Ed was incredible during the whole thing,” explains Connors. “I remember he sat me down and said, ‘It’s times like these, when you’re at such a low, that you realise how much you want something.’ It made sense to me.
“Even at that low point where it’s hard to look to the future, he stressed how much more worthwhile it would be when you’d come back and put on the jersey. He said it would mean more after that individual battle – because that’s what the long periods of rehab are.
“You’re battling against yourself, trying to get the best out of yourself. Ed is an incredible person and a lot of people would say the say the same.”
This season, Connors has made up for lost time. His Ireland call-up was deserved but, remarkably, he has yet to make his Champions Cup debut for Leinster. Whenever rugby is back, Connors will be in the thick of competition for back row places, with Leinster’s impressive depth chart set to be boosted by the returning Dan Leavy and Jack Conan.
Connors lives in the same estate as Leavy and they have been having regular socially-distanced chats across the balconies, with the Kildare man saying that they’ll leave any head-to-heads for the training ground.
“I’m very close to all these guys, they’re great friends of mine,” says Connors. “We’re battling for the same positions but that’s part of the job description.”
You get the sense that Connors won’t be backing down from any challenge.
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'I'd love to have seen how the last two weeks of the Six Nations played out'
WILL CONNORS’ MUM recently sent him an old photo of himself and Paul Mescal – now the star of ‘Normal People’ – togged out in North Kildare RFC colours before a game for one of the club’s underage teams.
While Mescal went on to show promise in Gaelic football before moving on to acting, Connors rose through the rugby ranks and has just enjoyed a breakthrough season with Leinster, earning a call-up to Ireland’s Six Nations squad this year.
“It’s mad how things kick on,” says Connors, whose excellent campaign was put on hold at the end of February.
Some of their Leinster team-mates are horsing through Netflix series and putting in serious hours on the PlayStation at the moment, but Connors and his housemate, centre Jimmy O’Brien, have had their heads down studying hard during the lockdown.
Openside flanker Connors starts his final Computer Science exams today, with another one on Wednesday, and then just has a thesis to submit two weeks later before he hopes to be finished with his four-year UCD degree.
To be fair, Connors and O’Brien have been taking plenty of study breaks – pulling off an elaborate ping pong trick shot and also dying their hair blonde, then briefly pink, as part of the Leinster players’ fundraising drive.
Leinster centre Conor O’Brien is the other housemate in their Dublin apartment but he’s been back in Mullingar, leaving Connors and Jimmy O’Brien to get into their lockdown routine – up early when they need to get Leinster running sessions done, home to study, a lunchtime stroll for a coffee, more study, weights in the evening.
Connors – whose thesis focuses on identifying athletes at risk of injury in training for marathons, “so machine learning and computer science stuff” – is as eager as anyone to get back to rugby whenever possible.
The Kildare man made nine starts for Leinster in the Pro14 this season, racking up a total of 616 minutes, and doing enough for that Ireland call-up.
Initially named as a ‘development player’ for Ireland’s pre-Six Nations training camp in Portugal, Connors ended up earning a full spot in Andy Farrell’s squad during the championship.
Having essentially missed the entirety of the 2018/19 season with an ACL injury, Connors was impossible to ignore in Leinster’s unbeaten campaign – making a string of dominant performances in which he marked himself out as a smart footballer and one of the best defensive players in the country.
Heading to Portugal, Connors was determined to make his mark after a chat with Leinster senior coach Stuart Lancaster.
“I was speaking to Stuart before I went over, asking him for advice,” explains Connors, who turned 24 last month.
“Stuart said, ‘The most important thing is that you go over there and put your best foot forward – don’t be going into your shell.’
“It would have been easy to go over there and see all these lads like Peter O’Mahony, lads I’ve grown up watching and nearly been in awe of them. I could have sat back and taken it in but Stuart said, ‘I want to hear after that you put your best foot forward out there.’
“I went to Portugal with the intention of making an impression and trying to get involved in the group, and I felt like that worked for me. Thankfully, I got kept on into the main squad, it was very rewarding.
“I loved the experience and as I went on, I did feel I was getting better week-on-week. I’d love to have seen how the last two weeks of the Six Nations played out.
“I felt I was getting more confident, definitely starting to understand the system a lot better. I’d like to have put my hand up and to have seen what might have happened.”
Connors says it was educational to work with players from other provinces – like Munster’s Jack O’Donoghue – learning from their different perspective on technical details.
The UCD clubman found Farrell’s Ireland camp a “really inclusive” environment and says the coaching team were very approachable, particularly Simon Easterby.
“I did video stuff with him, even looking at training to pick out little bits that they’d noticed. You’re constantly improving in there. There was a lot of interaction with the coaches, which was cool.”
The Ireland coaching team certainly didn’t miss Connors’ spectacular tackling abilities over the course of the season with Leinster. He completed 149 tackles – many of them dominate – for a tackle success rate of just over 94%.
Connors is part of the Sam Underhill school of tackling – low and swift, chopping ball-carriers to the ground, winning the gainline, forcing errors, and often allowing team-mates into position to win turnovers.
Nicknamed ‘Porridge’ since his school days due to his appetite for packets of microwavable oats, Connors has always loved making tackles but says Leinster contact skills coach Hugh Hogan has been influential in refining his skills.
“Hugh has been extremely helpful in improving my tackling and making it less wreckless because when I was younger, I probably put myself in vulnerable positions.
“Myself and Hugh have worked hard on foot patterns, that drop, really making it a safer tackle and putting more impact into it.
“It’s like muscle memory, getting my head in the right position, and as I’ve developed, I’ve tried to use momentum to give myself an opportunity to get back up and have that split-second to make a decision – if I’m going to get on the ball [for a turnover] or get back into the line.”
Interestingly, Connors says he doesn’t focus on tackle completion as a statistic for measuring his defensive performances. He never wants to miss a tackle, of course, but he underlines that being part of an effective system is the most important thing.
“You could have made 100% of your tackles but they could have been tackles where you fell off to the side or didn’t make an impact,” explains Connors.
“I’d nearly measure myself off the system defence, maybe where me getting off the line has helped someone else coming off and as a defensive line, you have put pressure on.
“As a seven, you end up in the middle of the pitch a lot, where you’re leading the line. I’d measure myself on how quick I can get off the line, how quick I can get to ‘first hands,’ whether that’s their 10 or whoever.
“If I then see our 13 getting off the line too and actually making the tackle, I’d be happy.”
Hogan has also been helping Connors develop his ability at the defensive breakdown, particularly in that decision-making around when to go for the ball or not.
Leinster have a ‘poach group’ made up of their opensides, hookers and “other lads who back themselves” to win turnovers. They usually meet on Thursdays, studying video clips and talking about the art of the breakdown. Players will sometimes deliver presentations and lead the discussions about things like Super Rugby breakdown trends and “prime poachers” from around the world.
“You might be looking at someone ‘fishing,’ where they keep sticking their head in but not putting any real pressure on, we’d identify that,” says Connors.
“If lads are getting good turnovers, we’re chatting about that and trying to learn from each other, identifying any patterns – like ball-carriers falling awkwardly to give you a chance to go for the ball.”
Connors made one jackal turnover this season and will look to keep growing this side of his game, but he points out that being over-eager for eye-catching breakdown steals can be costly.
“At this level, if you dip your head in and don’t put pressure on, you expose the whole defensive line. Teams are able to really identify when the defensive line is shortened up and get to the edges, so if you’re not putting pressure on, you learn the hard way.
“You learn from mistakes where you might have dipped the head in and put the team under stress. It’s a really fine balance. Josh is really good at it – in the split second, he can see if it’s on or not. You’re always trying to put the team first.”
With ball in hand, Connors has learned to get the most from his skillset. He says himself that he’s “not the heaviest back row player” at just over 100kg but he’s finding his own way to make an impact.
“I try to use footwork and my skills to try to impose my game,” he says. “That’s definitely something I’ve improved over the season.
“Stuart is always saying to run onto the ball, don’t catch it static. With more game time, you get more confident in pushing the boundaries, trying to take the ball on a bit flatter to the line, especially for people like me. Even if you only get a metre going forward – if I was taking it static, I could be 20 metres back!”
Connors comes from a family who love horseriding, in which his two sisters have represented Ireland. He first played rugby with North Kildare – a club that has “a special place in the heart” and where he was coached by his father, who has never missed one of his son’s Leinster games.
Connors moved on to Clongowes, where missing out on the Junior Cup squad in second year stung and put plenty of fire in his belly. Connors was a standout player for the rest of his days in schools rugby and praises the influence of coach Noel McNamara, now in charge of the Ireland U20s and the Leinster academy.
Connors played for the Ireland U20s in 2016 as he advanced through Leinster’s sub-academy, then spent much of the 2017/18 season with the Ireland 7s. He earned his first three senior caps for Leinster in a run of games in February 2018 that was ended by a frustrating hamstring injury.
Shortly after, and with so much depth in Leinster’s back row, Connors was offered the chance to move west to Connacht, but he was determined to make it with his home province.
“Naturally, I did think about it. With decisions like that, you have to weigh up the pros and cons. But at the end of the day, I wanted to give myself every chance with Leinster.
“Even when I was away with the 7s, I still had that urge to play in the blue jersey and be here for as long as I could.”
Having committed to Leinster, it was deeply disappointing to then rupture his ACL in the final pre-season game that summer – basically ending his 2018/19 campaign before it started.
Connors counts himself fortunate to have had supportive team-mates like Ed Byrne – who previously spent over two years out of the game with knee injuries – around, helping him to rise from the initial bout of wallowing in self-pity.
“Ed was incredible during the whole thing,” explains Connors. “I remember he sat me down and said, ‘It’s times like these, when you’re at such a low, that you realise how much you want something.’ It made sense to me.
“Even at that low point where it’s hard to look to the future, he stressed how much more worthwhile it would be when you’d come back and put on the jersey. He said it would mean more after that individual battle – because that’s what the long periods of rehab are.
“You’re battling against yourself, trying to get the best out of yourself. Ed is an incredible person and a lot of people would say the say the same.”
This season, Connors has made up for lost time. His Ireland call-up was deserved but, remarkably, he has yet to make his Champions Cup debut for Leinster. Whenever rugby is back, Connors will be in the thick of competition for back row places, with Leinster’s impressive depth chart set to be boosted by the returning Dan Leavy and Jack Conan.
Connors lives in the same estate as Leavy and they have been having regular socially-distanced chats across the balconies, with the Kildare man saying that they’ll leave any head-to-heads for the training ground.
“I’m very close to all these guys, they’re great friends of mine,” says Connors. “We’re battling for the same positions but that’s part of the job description.”
You get the sense that Connors won’t be backing down from any challenge.
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Chop connors Leinster North Kildare openside Pail Mescal Porridge Will Connors