He’s ready, willing and able. The only question remains is – Will Joe Schmidt pick him?
Amid all the ‘will he, won’t he’ regarding the senior selection of Garry Ringrose, Stuart McCloskey has passed under the radar.
The Ulster centre has enjoyed a fantastic season and proved himself with superb performances against the likes of Toulouse and Oyonnax. His league form has been extremely good and he is averaging 65 metres off 10 carries [at least] in the Guinness PRO12.
The return of Jared Payne, his Ulster teammate, has tempered expectations of a McCloskey-Robbie Henshaw midfield axis but his name will be mentioned often at Thursday night’s team selection meeting.
Indeed, Payne has played just twice for his province this season and those outings have been at fullback. McCloskey is battle-hardened.
Ireland assistant coach Simon Easterby certainly believes the 22-year-old could do a job against the Welsh midfield of Jonathan Davies and Jamie Roberts. He told us:
“Stuart has played against some pretty physical teams this year. Toulouse up in Ravenhill weren’t a small team; they’re a big set and he did really well.
“He’s gone well in the physicality stakes against Saracens. He’s a big man and so are Wales. They’ve got threats across their back-line the same sort of size as Stuart and he’s well able to step up and that wouldn’t be an issue for him if he were to be selected.”
Easterby was not the first member of the Irish set-up to note how experienced – over 900 caps – Wales are but that does not mean Joe Schmidt will not look to youth.
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“We’ve got enough experience through the spine of the team that allows us to pick players with a couple of caps,” said Easterby. “If they have haven’t been capped before, and they can come in with those other experienced guys around them who can support them.
“Someone’s got to win a first cap at some point during their career. It might be this week, it might be next week but I’m sure we’ll see guys over the next few weeks if they put their hands up in training and they have done in playing games up until this point, get opportunities.”
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