For Bobby Sheehan and several others in the Ireland Clubs side who will face their Scottish counterparts at Energia Park on Friday (kick-off 6.30pm, live on IrishRugby+), this will be a very different experience from playing Portugal A in Lisbon in each of the last two years, although not in the obvious sense.
“Both times in lashing rain,” Sheehan recalls. “But no, they’ve been really good experiences. They’re kind of a highlight of the season when you look back at them and every year at the start of the season, one of the goals is to get yourself in a position to be making the team for this game.
“Getting over to Lisbon and having a bit of a weekend away with all the lads you’re usually playing against was quite enjoyable.”
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While it will again be a highlight and a rare opportunity to represent Ireland, Sheehan will be starting as opposed to being on the bench for the two Portuguese games. As well as that, it will be in front of a home crowd including family and friends.
“I think having both games in Dublin makes everyone’s life a bit easier than for the last few years,” says Sheehan, who missed his brother Dan’s Six Nations game for Ireland in Paris a week ago. He will have parents Sinead and Barry, as well as sisters Emmy and Suzie, in attendance to support him.
The family is steeped in rugby. His grandfather, Denis Shaw, played prop for Clontarf and Leinster in the 1950s while his father, Barry, was a lock for both Old Belvedere and UCD. “He claims he played for the Connacht Under-20s – I’m yet to see any evidence of it!”
Both Dan and Bobby played mini rugby in Bective Rangers before the family moved to Bucharest for three years due to their dad’s work with Heineken. When that subsequently took him on to Poland for another couple of years, the boys returned to Ireland and boarded in Clongowes, where their love of rugby took off.
“Going through school in Clongowes, everybody’s mad into the rugby, especially around this time of year with the Schools Cup. That is a big motivator for you, seeing how the older lads in the school are getting on and working towards it yourself,” says Sheehan citing the team featuring Will Connors, which reached the 2014 final when losing to a star-studded Blackrock team.
Less than two years younger than his brother, but often on the same squad, this meant plenty of bench duty. He followed Dan into the Leinster sub-academy and was in the Ireland Under-20s Six Nations squad when Covid hit.
Bobby Sheehan leads UCD onto the pitch in 2024. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho
He’s ploughed his own furrow, playing 93 times for UCD and another 12 for Lansdowne this season. Covid also hit when UCD were sitting third in the table, but the match he recalls most fondly was the Colours game in 2022.
“We came back from 19-0 down in monsoon rain and managed to win the game 23-22. Yeah, that’s probably the main memory that sticks out for me.”
At the end of last season, he decided to join Lansdowne.
“UCD is a student club, I’d done three years more playing there since leaving college, so it was probably time to move on. We’ve a lot of family in Leinster and I felt there was a strong squad there. The coaching set-up was very good, so I thought it was a good chance to start competing at the top end of the table.
“It’s been very enjoyable. Most rugby clubs, when you get into them, although they do have their differences, are pretty similar, so you can buy in pretty quickly.”
Ironically, Sheehan’s 100th AIL game in early December was against UCD, when they came to the Aviva back pitch and beat Lansdowne 43-38 in probably the game of the season. Last month, his old club completed the double with a 20-15 win in Belfield, something the students never did in his time there.
Lansdowne’s 41-24 win over Old Belvedere last Saturday, when Sheehan took his try tally for the season to six, lifted them back to sixth, two points outside the play-offs.
“We had a tough run there for the first three games of the year and especially going into the two-week break, we needed to get it back on track.”
A try-scoring hooker in the mould of his brother who also likes loitering on the edge, at 25 he wouldn’t rule out a shot at the pro game if the chance came about.
“I think you never say never. If the right opportunity came up, you’d definitely have to consider it. I think most players in the AIL would. So, we’ll see what comes.”
Ireland Club XV: Conor Rankin (Ballynahinch RFC); Sean French (Cork Constitution FC), Myles Carey (St Mary’s College RFC), Aran Egan (Terenure College RFC), Aaron Sexton (Ballynahinch RFC); Conor Kelly (Clontarf FC), Adam Maher (Cork Constitution FC); David Begley (Young Munster RFC), Bobby Sheehan (Lansdowne FC), Luke Masters (Cork Constitution FC), Sean Rigney (Terenure College RFC), Fionn Gilbert (Clontarf FC), Jack Kelleher (Cork Constitution FC)(capt), Ronan Watters (St Mary’s College RFC), Bradley Luney (Ballynahinch RFC). Replacements: Claytan Milligan (Ballynahinch RFC), Marcus Hanan (Terenure College RFC), Adam Tuite (Terenure College RFC), Bailey Faloon (Young Munster RFC), David Whitten (Instonians RFC), Sam Owens (Clontarf FC), Tadhg Bird (Clontarf FC), Adam LaGrue (Terenure College RFC)
Travelling Reserves: Tom O’Reilly (St Marys College RFC), Max Russell (Terenure College RFC), Will McDonald (Old Belvedere RFC), Jack Matthews (Lansdowne FC)
