In Tullamore RFC they have a picture of Cormac Izuchukwu on their wall from his days playing with the Ireland Sevens team, along with Jordan Conroy.
There are also photos of their women’s 15s internationals Aoife Dalton, Nicola Fryday, Shannon Touhey, Alisa Hughes and Leah Tarpey, as well as women’s Seven international Megan Burns, women’s Under-20s international Caoimhe Guinan and men’s Under-20 international Ronan Foxe.
Well, they can add a new one now.
Izuchukwu’s debut for Ireland against Fiji means Tullamore RFC can complete the set with the club’s first men’s 15s international.
“It’s a huge thing for Tullamore,” says Izuchukwu’s former coach at the club Kieran Egan. A sizeable contingent will be in the Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon and the club house, like the town itself, is buzzing in anticipation.
Izuchukwu will also become the first men’s 15-a-side international from the county of Offaly. Peter Bracken, also from Tullamore and a Champions Cup winner with Wasps, was called up for the three-match tour of 2006 to New Zealand and Australia, and the club’s hierarchy used some of the proceeds from a bet on Tullamore winning the Provincial Towns Cup that season to fly out Bracken’s mother to Australia. But despite being one of only four props in the squad Bracken was never named in a match day 23.
Izuchukwu was born in London to an Irish mother and Nigerian father before being reared in Offaly from the age of seven, along with his older brother Chinnie and sister Ciara, first in their mother’s hometown of Kilcormac and then Tullamore.
Offaly is, of course, fertile GAA country, and Izuchukwu’s mother Catriona is a cousin of the famed county hurlers Joe, Johnny and Billy Dooley. Izuchukwu thus played plenty of Gaelic football and hurling in his formative years and, according to John Burns, who also coached Izuchukwu rugby in Tullamore RFC – where he is now president – and Cistercian College Roscrea as an assistant to head coach Pieter Swanepoel, he was also an exceptional athlete with Tullamore Harriers.
“He was tall and quick, and liked to play on the wing, and also played secondrow and backrow, but when I had him in Roscrea he played centre,” recalls Burns. “He had the talent to play almost anywhere and some days with Roscrea he was unplayable; he’d score two or three tries, and was just so imposing.
“He had a sort of casual attitude but he always had such an abundance of talent that you were waiting for the fire to light. He’s a fantastic young man. I was only talking to him on Tuesday and he’s so humble and such a nice guy.”
Egan was Izuchukwu’s coach at both Tullamore RFC and Tullamore GAA club circa the under-13s, 14s and 15s, and was involved in the former’s mini section when Izuchukwu first trucked up at about 10.
“He was a gangly fellah, a super athlete, a real nice fella, with great values and a good work ethic. If you gave him a ticking off or said it’s time to stop the messing he’d knuckle down straight away. He’d like to have a bit of craic as well, like any young fellah. You’ve got to enjoy it.
“He always wanted to play in the backs but we moved him to the backrow because we needed a chap to win lineout ball for us. He really didn’t like it. He was a little bit too nice. We had to put that aggression into him because we were playing some big lads in Kildare and Naas and Gorey. In training we upped the ante and it toughened him up. But I think no matter what sport he put his hand to he would have been very good.”
There was no TV or wifi in the family home and Izuchukwu once said: “My biggest misconception when I was younger was thinking we were quite poor because we didn’t have that stuff, but my mother never valued it.
“She valued education and put all that money into me playing the piano or into fixing up the car so we could go to training, things like that. I didn’t have a phone until I was 15 or 16 but that’s all I knew and the area I lived in wasn’t the most affluent area so lots of the kids around me were the same.”
Egan recalls giving Izuchukwu lifts to and from games and training sessions with his own boys.
“He was a bit of a ‘doddler’. He’d turn up with a big smile on his face and we’d be waiting 10 minutes, so I said to myself: ‘Kieran, you’re better off picking him up’. My lads are pretty pally with him, and we only live up the road.”
On those car journeys to Gorey and elsewhere, Egan recalls listening to Izuchukwu and his boys discussing what books they were reading. “He is very well read and a very intelligent fellah,” says Egan of Izuchukwu, and also says he is “being harsh on himself when he said he wasn’t achieving the grades”.
His sister Ciara played some camogie and was very strong academically. She is now a senior actuarial consultant based in Bermuda but is home and will attend Saturday’s game, as will his brother and mother. His brother Chinnie earned an athletics scholarship to UCD. He has produced music under the moniker Chinnie Izzie and was a big influence on his younger brother.
“Growing up without a dad, he obviously had to stand in, walk me to school, pick me up if I got in trouble, help me with my homework. It’s a special bond and I respect him hugely.”
All the while Catriona has been the rock.
“That woman is a powerhouse,” says Egan. “The way she reared the three kids is just unbelievable. Cormac is a credit to her.
“Sometimes people might think they have to be affluent or have huge advantages to play for Ireland. This man has come from a different environment, and I think he’s going to be a very good player, and I hope he represents himself very well, because that’s the most important thing, and then the club and the people who helped him get there. He hasn’t forgotten where he’s come from and was down here on Wednesday night.”
It was his mum who moved Izuchukwu from Coláiste Choilm to boarding school in Roscrea after his Junior Cert, although a Leinster Branch ruling meant he couldn’t play rugby for his new school’s first team for 20 months.
A 62kg winger when he first attended Roscrea, he began filling out (he is now 118kg) and moved to centre. Roscrea reached the quarter-finals but a twisted ankle put paid to a trial with the Connacht Under-19s. Then, working in a local bar in Tullamore, he had the idea of using rugby as a passport to travel.
He saw Kelso needed a secondrow but the move to the Scottish borders did not work out quite as he envisaged, and he had to supplement his income with a part-time job in Sainsbury’s. His Kiwi coach at Kelso, Gary Stevens, helped Izuchukwu put together some clips to bombard clubs around and sent one to Wayne Mitchell, the IRFU’s then national talent co-ordinator. He alerted David Nucifora, who contacted Izuchukwu, and the union’s director of Sevens rugby, Anthony Eddy, offered him a Sevens contract.
Izuchukwu played in the Paris Sevens and trained with the Irish Under-20s, but he is nothing if not determined. He linked up with Arthur Gleeson Sports Management to represent him, which led to a trial with Ulster and then an academy contract for the 2020-21 season.
After five appearances that season, Izuckukwu was given an upgraded two-year contract, but though picked on the Emerging Ireland tour at the start of the 2022-23 season it wasn’t until Richie Murphy’s arrival that he became an Ulster regular.
Izuchukwu had only made five Ulster starts, all in the secondrow, but Murphy converted him into a blindside flanker, initially off the bench and then starting him there for their last four games.
“Part of it was that we had to play him, and moving him to six was a big part of it,” explains Murphy. “We came in, had a look around, played a couple of games in France, and didn’t have the ball carriers we needed in the pack, so we moved him to six.
“He was a back in a previous life, so we stuck him in the backline and we got him to carry off five-man and six-man lineouts, and he’s done that reasonably well. But still his most effective stuff is carrying through traffic because he’s very strong and powerful. So, we’ve used him in both ways.”
When Izuchukwu went on his second Emerging Ireland tour this season, he was a player transformed.
“The difference between the first [Emerging Ireland] tour and the second tour was chalk and cheese,” said Andy Farrell this week. “His ability, point of difference, his potential with that maturity, he deserves a shot to show what he’s got.”
Yet Izuchukwu is still a relatively inexperienced player for a 24-year-old. Of 32 games for Ulster, just 11 have been starts, and Murphy preaches patience.
“At international level he’s going to be very raw. He’s going to make mistakes, but there should be an excitement about the type of ball carrier he is. He has a lot of growth still in him as a player, understanding the game and what’s the right thing to do in situations.
“People will be excited when they see his frame and his size. He is what you see, a big body, very athletic, pretty quick and very strong through contact. But he’s still going to need time. There’s lots more in him.”
Egan has watched Izuchukwu’s growth over the years, figuratively and literally, with fascination.
“He’s filled out into a big man and I see the way he’s able to draw a player in and just flick it out the back door. And he’s not afraid of the physical challenges, which is a huge thing. He was a little bit shy when he was young, but you know the way some people set out their stall in life, I think he always wanted to be a professional.
“Once he found what he wanted to do he’d cross any bridge to get there. He was driven from day one. I know people mightn’t think rugby down in Tullamore is huge, but it is. All the people around town are talking about him, and I think it’s great for rugby that Cormac is getting his first cap.
“It’s great for the midlands, it’s spreading the whole blanket of rugby around and it’s shown other kids they can achieve it too if they follow the right process and they work hard enough, and that has to be a great thing for the game.”
Egan recalls one Gaelic football game when Izuchukwu was 15 or 16.
“He scored three goals and four points. We played him full forward and just hit the ball into him, and he’d catch it and bury it.”
“We’re playing Cuala in the Leinster semi-final on Saturday evening up in Parnell Park,” says Egan, laughing. “If he’d stayed with the GAA Cormac could have been playing in Dublin this Saturday on a different pitch.”
It’s a road less travelled for sure, but it is Ireland’s gain.
