“I didn’t think I’d be playing professional rugby until my second year with Ireland Under 20s.”
Andrew Porter likes to list out his goals at the start of each year. Back in 2015, when he was playing for Leinster U20s and in their sub-academy, he had one goal at the top of his list – Make the Leinster academy.
He made the cut and, since then, most items on his list of goals have been met. 2018 saw him play 32 times for Leinster and Ireland, win a Guinness PRO14, Champions Cup, Grand Slam and feature in his country’s first ever home win over the All Blacks.
Making goals for 2019 must have been tough, but the World Cup is eight months away and it must feature prominently.
The 23-year-old tighthead joined hosts Barry Murphy and Andrew Trimble on Baz & Andrew’s House of Rugby and looked back on his career to date before allowing himself to dream of retaining the Six Nations title and, beyond that, going to Japan with Ireland.
Porter was recognised a few years back as a frighteningly talented loosehead prop and won that all his underage coaches tipped to progress steadily through the ranks.
St Andrew’s College was not a massive rugby school, according to Porter, but it has produced himself and Jordan Larmour in recent years. Going along to the school’s gym was often a good way for Porter to get time to himself. “I almost found myself skipping school sometimes,” he says, “just to be in the gym for a couple of hours. That’s how it was for me. That’s where I wanted to be.”
He started lifting the heavier weights, in the gym, in fifth and sixth year and found it was something he enjoyed doing, and was good at. Trimble asked Porter if he should take a claim, on his Wikipedia page, that he could squat 35okgs at the age of 20.
PORTER: “Ah that’s not accurate.”
TRIMBLE: “That’s enormous, like.”
PORTER: “The Wikipedia, you can’t trust Wikipedia.”
TRIMBLE: “So, what can you squat?”
PORTER: “About 325 kgs.”
TRIMBLE: “So it’s not, not a massive stretch. I can see why Wikipedia let it go. They’re like, ‘Let’s not be sticklers. It’s close enough!’”
335 kgs, for the record, is 716lbs (just over 51 stone). As soon as Porter reached the Leinster sub-academy, that gym work ramped up.
“After my second year with Ireland Under 20s, I was about 130 kilos. I’m not that heavy now but that was just my conditioning, then, and both the [Leinster] academy and sub academy building me up that way, to be ready for senior rugby. The work Dave Fagan did for me in the sub academy was second-to-none. Almost laying the foundation for me.”
Porter played in the 2o15 World Rugby Under 20 Championship, along with James Ryan and Jacob Stockdale, and was part of an Ireland team that beat New Zealand on the way to reaching the final against eventual champions England.
He made the team of the U20 tournament, at loosehead, but Leinster approached him with a request – they wanted him to give tighthead a whirl and see how he got on.
“It was frustrating at the beginning,” he admits, “because I thought I was getting on okay at loosehead and then they came up to me and said, ‘We want to take a look at you at tighthead. We’ll slot you in there for one or two scrums in training…
“In Leinster, there was a huge queue of loosies. You had Jack McGrath, Cian Healy, Ed Byrne and Peter Dooley; a huge line. So that same season – 2016/17 – Mike Ross was leaving so it was kind of strange. I was playing a few games, here and there, at loosehead for Leinster then going back and playing tighthead for UCD in the Ulster Bank League, to learn some of the tricks of the trade… I was pulling my hair out. It was that frustrating at the beginning.”
The work paid off. Six months after starting as loosehead in a win over Zebre, Porter came on as tighthead against Ulster’s Kyle McCall for the final 15 minutes of a PRO12 game in Belfast. Another month after that and he was playing tighthead for Ireland, in his first two Test appearances, against the USA and Japan.
He has taken to his new position superbly well and his first full season as main provincial and international competition to Tadhg Furlong finished with that raft of trophies. In 11 Tests for Ireland, Porter has been on the winning side 11 times.
On the horizon, and moving fast, is the Six Nations, Champions Cup knock-out stages and the end of the PRO14 season. After that, the World Cup in Japan.
“It’s good to have goals and to keep pushing yourself to be the best you can be,” he says. “I’ve different goals for Leinster and for Ireland. For Leinster, it is to get that fifth star and win back-to-back Champions Cups, and to win the PRO14 as well.
“For Ireland, it is to be more consistent on the pitch and to hopefully get myself in that bag for Japan.”
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