Dan Sheehan

IRELAND ARE FIGHTING THE TIDE OF AN AGEING SQUAD BUT ARE WELL STOCKED WITH THIS WORLD-CLASS, TRY-HUNGRY HOOKER

- PAT McCARRY

I AM ON the phone with Mike Ruddock when a message pings on my phone. Dan Sheehan is free to chat now. It feels rude to interrupt a legend of Welsh and Irish rugby but Ruddock is understanding.

“Give Dan my best,” says Ruddock. “He’s another one of my old boys from Lansdowne.” Promising to call back, I ask if there is any message he wants me to run by Sheehan. “Tell Dan that I love him but, don’t take it personally, I love the scrum even more. He’ll get a laugh out of that.”

Ruddock is proved right as I pass on his message. “Mike pointed out to the pitches at Lansdowne,” Sheehan recalls, “and asked, ‘What do you see?’ I replied, ‘A pitch’, then, ‘A river’, and Mike said, ‘No, there’s a scrum machine!’”

Ruddock embellishes the tale later. “Son,’ I said, ‘all you should be looking at is that scrum machine because that’s where you’re going to spend the rest of your season!’

“Dan had that X-factor and could score tries,” Ruddock adds. “He was big, strong and very powerful, particularly close to the line – you’d always back him to come away with a try. I loved that he was comfortable in those wider channels. I hadn’t coached many hookers who could jump and take a cross-field kick, then land, do a sidestep and offload or score himself. He had the confidence to stay in the wider channels and not just be a typical hooker working off nine or ten. He was happy to test himself out wide.”

Sheehan’s sporting journey began at Bective Rangers at the age of five, and a minis setup that had future teammates Johnny Sexton and Rónan Kelleher on the books. Around that time, due to an aunt that worked in marketing, he was rolled out with a spiky Jonah Lomu haircut beside Jonah Lomu himself for publicity photos. The All Blacks legend posed for snaps with a young Sheehan perched on his left shoulder.