As breakout seasons go, Jimmy O’Brien was less than two minutes away from having one that was almost perfect. The winger, whose nose for the line, pace and work rate has pushed him up the starting queue at Leinster, was one of the players who performed last week in Marseilles.
Jordan Larmour —not in last week’s 23 — probably didn’t see the Newbridge challenge coming a year or two ago. Probably few did outside the Leinster family. But when the team all but assured a home last-16 tie in the Champions Cup in a 10-try trouncing of Bath at the Rec in January, it was O’Brien who chipped in with almost half the touchdowns. He became the first Leinster player to score four tries in a match in that competition.
As a left-footed full back, O’Brien stepped in at Leinster in 2021 just as another left-footed full back, Rob Kearney, in the twilight of his career, was taking off to Australia. Prior to that he was playing much of his rugby in the centre. But at Leinster, needs must, and that occasionally means being all things. Ask the 24-year-old about scoring tries and attacking and he’ll tell you he works on his defensive play more than any other aspect.
“Honestly, I would say that before most games I play in I concentrate on my defence for the most part because obviously I’m not the biggest winger compared to James Lowe or someone like that,” he says. “So, when they look at me they probably go, ‘Oh yeah, I can run at this lad.’
“So, I actually concentrate quite a lot on defence and would get quite annoyed if I missed a tackle. I don’t know how many tackles I made [against La Rochelle] but it felt like a lot. My body definitely felt it that it was a lot. So, I put a lot of emphasis on my defence anyway before games.”
It might have looked like it against La Rochelle that Leinster were taking a step up in terms of the ferocity and physical challenge. The size of the French frontrow and Aussie lock Will Skelton set minds at preparedness for confrontation. But O’Brien didn’t see that as the most critical factor. Surely a step up, though?
“Not massively,” he says. “The Toulouse game was something similar, the Leicester game. This year those Champions Cup games have been quite similar as big knock-out games, so it wasn’t a massive step up in terms of physicality. Toulouse had a couple of big lads. I remember [Emmanuel] Meafou ran right over me from one of the kick-offs. I don’t think it was too bad.”
Made from the mould of modern players, like Lowe, O’Brien prefers to be constantly involved. If not, he will get involved and if no one invites him in, he will involve himself. The variety to his game, possibly from also playing at 10 and scrumhalf when he was at school, lends an all-round quality to his game without taking away from the sting when it comes.
For Leinster, O’Brien has been a find and he has probably proved some people wrong in that despite his size at 6ft, he has demonstrated a fearlessly physical approach. With the Irish sevens team he generally played at centre, but also filled in at outhalf. He played with Ireland at the 2018 Hong Kong Sevens qualifier, scoring four tries, but Ireland lost to Japan in the semi-final and failed to qualify as a core team for the 2018-19 World Series.
The sevens’ requirement for athleticism and aerobic work rate is high despite the games lasting for just 14 minutes. But they are never less than highly intense, requiring handling skills and a sharp positional sense. Leinster and Ireland full back Hugo Keenan is another who has made the transition and blossomed. In February of this year Andy Farrell finally acted in liking what he saw, and O’Brien was called up to the Ireland squad for the 2022 Six Nations Championship match against Italy.
This week, though, it’s still a little raw for him to look back and see this as his breakthrough season for Europe and into Farrell’s thinking. Nor can he take comfort from the good things he did at a personal level last week. The groupthink doesn’t allow it to work that way.
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard,” he says. “My girlfriend tried telling me that as well and I told her I would have taken playing the worst game of my career if we had won and I would have taken a red card, doing everything bad, missing every tackle, dropping every ball if we had just won.
“Maybe in the off-season is when I’ll look back on it… but at the moment it’s still pretty raw. I wanted us to win and everyone in the building did. We were so focused on winning it. Yeah, 100 per cent. I hadn’t really played knock-out rugby for Leinster up until this season so yeah, I really want to play in these big games and hopefully we still have three big knock-out games to come, starting this weekend against Glasgow. They’re still massive games and I’d love to play in another final and try to win one.”
Glasgow on Saturday could be a season-defining game. At best O’Brien has three more outings with Leinster and maybe a tour to South Africa. A trophy and a cap potentially. Breakthrough season all right.
