When Simon Easterby confirmed his Ireland squad for this week's Guinness Six Nations training week, the additions of Gavin Coombes, John Hodnett, Nick Timoney, Stuart McCloskey and Jacob Stockdale were all pretty obvious selections.
McCloskey and Stockdale would have been in the initial squad had it not been for injury, while Coombes and Timoney were the next backrow cabs off the rank following injuries to Iain Henderson and Cormac Izuchukwu. While Hodnett comes in as an uncapped player, he’s been knocking on the door for long enough that a call-up was in the post.
The inclusion of Diarmuid Mangan was the one name that jumped off the page. The 21-year-old has only played seven times for Leinster, but the Irish management have been impressed enough at the versatile forward to bring him in for a look under the bonnet.
A key member of the Ireland U20s side that won back-to-back Six Nations Grand Slams in 2022 and 2023, and also reached the World Rugby U20 Championship final, Mangan has been supplementing his gametime in the Energia All-Ireland League for UCD, and he appears to be the latest of that successful U20 crop that have been fast-tracked into the Irish Rugby high performance centre.
Sam Prendergast and Gus McCarthy have both been capped in recent months, while centre Hugh Cooney was also in with Ireland as a development player earlier in the campaign. The 29-man squad for Sunday’s Ireland 'A’ game against England ‘A’ contains 12 players who featured across the last three years of U20 rugby.
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