Nash smashes on!

A BREAKTHROUGH STAR IN THE SIX NATIONS, MUNSTER WINGER CALVIN NASH HAS DONE IT THE HARD WAY

- TOM ENGLISH

RECORA IS a little village south of the centre of Limerick with a church, a pub, a graveyard, a petrol station and a local population who are delighted to live in the splendid countryside while remaining a relative stone’s throw from the city.

Cathal O’Neill, the double All Ireland winning hurler, hails from Crecora. At the other end of the scale, John Scanlan, an infamous 19th-century murderer, rests in the local cemetery. There is another famous son of Crecora to talk about now and his name is Calvin Nash of Munster and Ireland. An overnight sensation in the 2024 Six Nations, not that he would see it that way.

Nash is so self-deprecating, he makes you laugh. He recounts the story of his championship with a humour and an honesty that’s incredibly refreshing in a day and age where too many players from too many sports trot out things they feel they should be saying rather than things they are actually feeling.

Going into the Six Nations he had one cap to his name, from a World Cup warm-up Test against Italy. Then, luckily for him, the skittles started to fall. Mack Hansen: out injured. Jimmy O’Brien: out injured. Nash: in. And anxious.

He started against France in Marseille, scored a try and looked the picture of composure all night. The truth is he was, in his own words, “bricking it”. He’d like to say that he took everything in his stride, that he wasn’t uptight or alarmed at the prospect of facing a French team seeking redemption after failing at their own World Cup, but it wasn’t like that.