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Rugby

19th Jan 2018

Brian O’Driscoll believes Jordan Larmour’s Six Nations shot may be on the wing

Make it so

Patrick McCarry

This suggestion should please most Irish fans, but Larmour could yet have a fight on his hands.

A young Leinster star pressing for Six Nations starts after six months of professional rugby experience. We haven’t seen this since… Joey Carbery, or Garry Ringrose.

Suffice as to say, Leinster are producing some top young talent and getting them Champions Cup and Test ready while still having them in the academy set-up. Leo Cullen and Stuart Lancaster, and the province’s coaching staff at academy level, are doing a bang up job at bringing through the next generation while competing for cups on two fronts.

Jordan Larmour is the latest breakthrough sensation and his form over the past five months has been rewarded with a call-up to Ireland’s Six Nations squad. But while most of the 20-year-old’s best work has come from his stints at fullback, his immediate future with Ireland may lie elsewhere.

Brian O’Driscoll has made the astute call that Larmour could debut for Ireland on the wing. The Leinster and Ireland legend was quick to respond when his old team named Larmour on the right wing for this weekend’s Champions Cup trip to Montpellier.

Larmour shifts over in the Leinster back three to accommodate one man in decent form, Rob Kearney, and replace another Ireland call-up showing he has plenty to offer yet, Fergus McFadden.

O’Driscoll would like to see Larmour make his bow in either the away date with France, in Paris, or the following game against Italy, in Dublin.

While the selection of Larmour in an Irish back three would get many rugby fans here excited, one cannot imagine Jacob Stockdale being the winger to miss out. Starting Larmour on the wing would mean Munster’s Andrew Conway or Keith Earls would not get a start.

Earls missed the Guinness Series with a hamstring injury but remains the presumptive No.14 while Conway impressed last November, against South Africa [right wing] and Fiji [fullback]. All this competition and there is still no room for Simon Zebo – exiled before his own departure flight to Paris, later this year.

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