RUGBY: AUTUMN NATIONS SERIES – IRELAND V FIJI
Suncroft’s Cian Prendergast Makes Ireland Debut Off The Bench
By Daire Walsh
SUNCROFT native Cian Prendergast said it was a ‘surreal’ experience to make his full senior international debut for Ireland against Fiji at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.
One of Connacht’s most consistent performers in the 2021/22 season, Prendergast has long been earmarked for a first cap at this grade. While he featured twice against the Maori All Blacks during the summer tour of New Zealand, neither of these encounters were classified as tests in the traditional sense of the word.
He also featured prominently for an Emerging Ireland side on a recent three-game trip to South Africa, before also starting at blindside flanker for Ireland ‘A’ in their recent 47-19 defeat at the expense of an All Blacks XV.
Having shown considerable patience over the last few months, he was finally thrust into the test arena as a replacement for Kieran Treadwell with 50 minutes gone in Ireland’s 35-17 win over the Fijians in the Autumn Nations Series.
“It’s pretty surreal, to be honest. It took a while to really sink in. It has kind of been a whirlwind of a week.
“It’s Monday that I blinked and all of a sudden I’m here now. It has been mad, but it has been thoroughly enjoyable,” Prendergast remarked after Saturday’s match.
“It has been really competitive in camp. Faz [Andy Farrell] made the point, it’s not going to be easy to get a cap and he’s not just going to hand out caps for the sake of it. Just to get the opportunity and then to do it in front of a sold-out Aviva, having friends and family coming down to watch the game, it has just been incredible.”
When he was a young and aspiring rugby player growing up in Kildare, Prendergast had no shortage of role models to look up to. A veteran of 34 international caps, Fergus McFadden also hails from Suncroft and helped Ireland to claim a Grand Slam title in 2018.
Additionally, his alma mater Newbridge College can count several former Ireland stars amongst their list of past pupils such as Jamie Heaslip, Geordan Murphy, Mick Doyle and Bernard Jackman.
Another recent graduate of the school, Jimmy O’Brien, made his own senior bow off the bench against South Africa just seven days earlier and was selected at full-back for his second cap at the weekend.
“When I started taking my rugby seriously, when I was about 13 in Newbridge College, it was always a dream [to play for Ireland]. You see people in Newbridge College that have represented Ireland and you say ‘why can’t I be one of them, it would be so special to be one of them’.
“Then I saw Jimmy last week play and it made me even hungrier to play because it’s so special and it’s so special for the community as well to say they have someone that has been capped by Ireland.”
As for the game itself, it wasn’t the most polished of Irish performances and head coach Andy Farrell was left wanting more from his charges in the aftermath of the contest. Despite losing Albert Tuisue and Api Ratuniyarawa to red and yellow cards respectively, Fiji made life difficult for the hosts and Prendergast acknowledged there are a number of areas to work on ahead of this Saturday’s final autumn international against Australia.
“We’re probably disappointed with elements and how scrappy we let the game get. Even with them down to 13 men, we still allowed them to throw the ball around loosely.
“That probably just wasn’t the game we wanted to play and we felt like we could have stamped our authority on the game a little bit more,” Prendergast concluded.