Schools profile: Clongowes Wood

Winners of two of the last three tournaments and determined to make up for last year’s agonising defeat in the final, can Clongowes win the Leinster Senior Cup for a ninth time this year?

If you are to use recent history as a guide, the chances that Clongowes Wood will feature prominently at the business end of this year’s Leinster Senior Cup competition are very high indeed.

Last year, the prestigious Kildare College came agonisingly close to becoming the first team to win three Senior Cups in a row since Blackrock in the early 1960s. They have been in six of the 13 finals since the turn of the millennium and have a 50 per cent success rate. And they’re only two steps away from reaching their fourth final in as many years after a comprehensive defeat of St. Gerard’s last week.

If there was any hurt lingering from the defeat to St. Michael’s in the final last year there were few signs of it in Templeogue on Thursday last as Cian O’Donoghue inspired the men in purple and white to victory with two tries in a 30-6 victory.

O’Donoghue is one of six members of the current Clongowes panel who was present last year; with Cillian Burke, David Garty, Dylan Donnellan, Stephen Keelan and Sebastian Fromm also back in an attempt to go one step further this time around.

Both Keelan and Donnellan have represented Leinster at under-19 level, while O’Donoghue and talented out-half Fergal Cleary were part of the Leinster under-18 side (coached by Clongowes’ Noel McNamara) who brushed aside all comers in the 2012 Schools Inter-Provincial competition, scoring 163 points and conceding only 20 in victories over Ulster, Munster and Connacht. Cleary scored a try against Munster and Connacht and claimed a brace of touchdowns as Leinster ran riot against Ulster in Donnybrook, running out 68-5 winners.

Clongowes and Germany under-18 flyer Sebastian Fromm

This year’s team also includes a link back to the first Irish team to win a Grand Slam through the presence of Kyle Mullen, who is a grandson of Karl, the captain of the 1948 Irish team and a former British and Irish Lion.

Sebastian Fromm, meanwhile, is a German under-18 international and he was also on the scoresheet against Gerard’s in a game in which the Clongowes backline did the majority of the damage, with Ben Osborne also touching down and centre William Lappin having a hand in a lot of what the winners did right on the day.

Noel McNamara’s side will face tougher challenges than they did against a Gerard’s side coached by Eric Miller, but any sense of complacency was surely eradicated when the draw paired Clongowes against their conquerors from last year, St. Michael’s, in what should be a cracking contest in Donnybrook on Friday, February 22.

It is asking a lot for a team to reach four consecutive finals in a competition as ridiculously competitive as the Leinster Senior Cup, but given Clongowes’ pedigree and the amount of talent and experience in this year’s outfit, you certainly couldn’t rule them out.