RUGBY:The fast-improving Leinster secondrow tells GAVIN CUMMISKEYhow he targeted this season as the one in which to nail down a first-team spot
THERE IS a story about Owen Finegan and Devin Toner. Both men were locking away for Leinster in 2007. The old bull and the young pup; five inches and a sizeable amount of bulk separated the pair with Toner being the taller and notably skinnier man.
Finegan’s elder statesman privileges included the lineout. The veteran Wallaby proceeded to call everything on himself at the front, denying the beanpole a chance to showcase his God-given ability to dominate out of touch.
That aspect of Toner’s game has never been in question mainly due to his 6ft 10½ins frame.
However, many people put a line through his name after the 38-18 All Blacks defeat in Dublin in November 2010. With Anthony Boric and Sam Whitelock stampeding about the place, Toner’s upward carries into contact were giraffe-like. There was nowhere to hide that day for the 24-year-old, earning just his second cap, the first coming a week previously against Samoa, and third a week later against Argentina.
Ireland have overlooked his claims for selection ever since. He wasn’t a contender for the World Cup squad yet Connacht’s Mike McCarthy almost made it.
The 2010 Test matches may have been an opportunity missed, what with Paul O’Connell and Leo Cullen injured, but he wasn’t ready. Nor was he fully conditioned to be a Leinster starter last season despite Mal O’Kelly’s retirement leaving a blatant opening in the Leinster engine room.
Nathan Hines ably filled that void for a few seasons but he jetted off to Clermont last summer while Cullen will be 34 in January. The arrival of Damien Browne’s bulk and Steven Sykes athleticism threatened to leave the former Castleknock College student confined to the lower end of the secondrow pecking order.
In many respects, these past few months have been the make-or-break juncture in his career. “I looked at it at the start of the season that this was my season to try and nail down a spot,” he reflects.
Browne has been picked for the major away games while Sykes has been mostly injured or ill since his arrival from South Africa. Coach Joe Schmidt’s rotational policy has Toner in the team for home European games but it was his presence off the bench in Montpellier last month that began to change perceptions of this maturing, home-grown player.
Coming into an immensely physical affair on 50 minutes, it wasn’t long before Thibault Privat, the confrontational French bruiser, was hanging out of him, denying progress to the next ruck. Toner did something not seen from him before – he lashed out, forcing Privat to release his grip.
Skip to last Saturday’s destruction of Bath. Toner took possession near halfway and switched the direction of the attack, slaloming over the gainline before putting Rob Kearney in open country with an offload straight out of the Sonny Bill Williams locker.
“I suppose it wasn’t too bad,” he embarrassingly remarked when the pass was mentioned this week. “It happened very quickly so I wasn’t exactly sure what happened. It’s always nice to feature in a game I suppose.”
Toner is not interested in speaking about his own work-in-progress season (“I’ve featured in a lot of the games this year, I’m not doing too bad. I’m still building. I hope to go on from here”) so we turned to Leinster assistant coach Greg Feek for such words. Having fattened him up, there is a belief around Riverview that this long-term project is only starting to bear fruit.
“He’s put on a bit of muscle,” said Feek. “It is a big body to grow into. If he makes 10 tackles in a game, hits 20 breakdowns and does all the lineouts and scrums as well that’s a lot of effort that that body has to get through to get low and back up again. You could put him on a training regime of just doing ‘down and ups’ and that would be tough enough for him.
“He is progressively growing into that and being able to withstand the extremes for him to do all that stuff. It is a different fitness for him than a guy that is five-foot eight.”
Simon Shaw lives in the same stratosphere as Toner. The giant English man also had to wait in a long queue for most of his career behind World Cup winners like Martin Johnson, Ben Kay and Danny Grewcock before finally becoming a dominant force on the 2009 Lions tour of South Africa. He was 35.
“You look at Brad Thorn, who is 36, and playing some of his best rugby in his 30s,” Feek continued. “Chris Jack, I remember, was similar. You look at where Devin was 18 months ago and now and get excited about where he will be in another 18 months.”
His height (he is toweringly intimidating when attempting to interview) makes him unlike any other player in Ireland at the moment.
“He is abnormal,” said Feek. “And he is quite thin this way (motioning to his mid-drift), he may even start filling out that way. Look at the Polynesians, they develop very quickly and are big at 16 whereas with Devin he is 124 kilos already, who knows where he is going to be in two years’ time, you know? As long as he keeps his body in good nick.”
