WHILE IT’S SOMETHING they are all eagerly anticipating, one member of James Ryan’s family has a very special reason to be excited about the British & Irish Lions’ forthcoming Tour of Australia.

A number of years ago – the Leinster and Ireland second row reckons it was the 1980s – Ryan’s mother Clare made the journey over to the southern hemisphere nation with her cousin Paula. Whereas Clare subsequently returned home to these shores, Paula made the decision to remain in Australia on a full-time basis.

It was in Sydney that she started a family with her Italian husband Mario Sindone and with the Lions set to play their third and final Test against the Wallabies in the city’s Accor Stadium on 2 August – there will be also be a warm-up against New South Wales Waratahs in Sydney Football Stadium on 5 July – there will be a perfect opportunity for Clare to take a trip down memory lane.

“They [Ryan’s family] will go. I have family over in Australia as well. My mum, she went over to Australia a long time ago with her cousin Paula. Then she met someone over there and she ended up staying in Australia, settling with him there and the kids there are all my cousins,” Ryan explained.

“They’re all Australian. She’s been talking about going over for years to sort of reconnect with them. So it’d be nice for my family to go over and do that.”

Ryan himself got a chance to meet Paula, Mario and their children (all of whom are now adults) when he was part of the Ireland squad for a three-Test series in Australia during the summer of 2018. Although there was no doubting Paula’s allegiance, Ryan admitted the rest of her family weren’t sure who to back in Ireland’s showdowns with the Wallabies.

“I think Paula was wearing an Ireland jersey, the rest of them were probably somewhere in between. The kids actually, they’ve moved over to London more recently. I’m able to see them a bit more often. They were over in November for the Aussie game [in the Aviva Stadium] as well, the kids. Well they’re not kids anymore, but it was good to see them.”

Although he ultimately was one of 15 Ireland players to make the cut for the Lions, Ryan acknowledges he was ‘nervous for weeks’ in the lead-up to Andy Farrell’s squad announcement for the Australian Tour.

This is perhaps due to the fact he was sidelined with a calf injury for several weeks and missed out on five consecutive games for Leinster, including the Champions Cup semi-final loss to Northampton Saints just days before the Lions squad announcement.

Despite his frustration at having another injury lay-off – he has had his fair share of spells on the treatment table in recent years – Ryan felt fresh when he eventually returned to competitive action off the bench in a URC encounter with Zebre Parma at the Aviva Stadium on 10 May.

“It’s never ideal timing wise. It was a bit frustrating to miss the block that I did, but it is what it is. It happens and I got back in good time. I was able to work with the physios at Leinster, they did a great job.

“So I felt like I came back and there wasn’t a big leap, between what we did in terms of our S&C and then the actual match intensity. So I came back, basically, and I felt like I was fit and good to go.”

Even though the roll of honour shows they have a record eight titles in the competition, Leinster are yet to win the URC since it was rebranded in 2021.

Ryan and Leinster had won the competition for four years in succession under its previous guise as the Guinness Pro14, but the past three seasons have seen them exiting the URC at the semi-final stage on each occasion.

While he didn’t feature when Munster defeated their arch rivals at the penultimate phase of the 2022/23 league season, Ryan was a starter when Leinster lost out to the Bulls in URC semi-finals either side of it.

Since the Pretoria outfit joined along with fellow South Africans the Stormers, the Sharks and the Lions, Ryan believes the standard of the league has increased substantially. A final showdown against either the Bulls or the Sharks awaits Leinster in Croke Park on 14 June if they manage to get past the challenge of Glasgow Warriors at Aviva Stadium this Saturday [KO 2.45pm], though that is Ryan’s main concern for the time being.

“I think it is a much tougher competition to win since the big four South African teams have come in. It would be amazing to win it. For us in here, we don’t want to start talking about winning things and get side tracked by that. Our biggest game of the season for me is this week against Glasgow. We’ve got to take care of that first,” Ryan added.

Daire Walsh