Munster appoint Martyn Vercoe as new team manager
The New Zealander is the current team manager and Head of Teams at Super Rugby side Gallagher Chiefs and team manager for the All Blacks XV.
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Jamison Gibson-Park set for Lions debut against Queensland Reds
Vercoe has worked as team manager in a number of environments over the past 12 years.
In addition to his current positions with the All Blacks XV and the Gallagher Chiefs, he was also team manager with the New Zealand U20s from 2016 to 2022 and Tasman Makos from 2013 to 2020.
He has previously worked with incoming Head Coach Clayton McMillan, Alex Nankivell and John Ryan at the Gallagher Chiefs and will join the province next month.
Prior to moving into sports management, Vercoe was a Personal Development Manager and Commercial Manager at Tasman Rugby, and Head of Faculty at Marlborough Boys' College in New Zealand.
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The 42
10 hours ago
- The 42
'Coming from Munster, it's all you want to do. It's such a proud club'
IT'S A FRESH, bright weekday morning in Melbourne and the city is alive with people bustling to work. As the rush goes on outside, Alex McHenry is sitting in a quiet hotel lobby, taking a moment to pause and reflect. The former Munster centre will be in the office soon himself, but he's good enough to explain how he has come to live here. At the age of 27, McHenry is an ex-professional rugby player, but there wasn't any dramatic retirement. He came to Australia 12 months ago for an adventure and he's had no reason to go home yet. The Cork man reckons he'll stay for another few years. He's still playing rugby in Melbourne with the superbly-named Power House in the Dewar Shield, the highest level of the club game in this neck of the woods. It was rugby that partly brought him to Australia in the first place, McHenry making a big impact as he helped Easts to win the Shute Shield in Sydney last year. McHenry finished up with Pro D2 side Dax at the end of the 2023/24 season and had spoken to a few other French clubs before he caught wind of Easts needing a centre. His older brother, Jack, was already living in Bondi and McHenry knew a few others in Sydney. Two weeks after chatting to Easts for the first time, they were flying him Down Under. It was only supposed to be for two or three months, but McHenry left knowing that it might be longer. 'It's funny because I was packing my bags to go, and my mum said, 'Why are you packing so much?' and I was like, 'If I really enjoy this, I'm staying.' And he loved it. McHenry moved in with former Munster scrum-half Jack Stafford, who was already playing for Manly in the Shute Shield, and Wexford man Barry O'Connor, who played for the AFL's Sydney Swans. Alex McHenry playing for Easts in Sydney. Easts Rugby Easts Rugby McHenry made a big impact on the pitch, helping Easts to end their 55-year drought by winning the Shute Shield. The Irish centre played with the likes of Charlie Gamble, who impressed against the Lions twice recently, and Waratahs wing Darby Lancaster. And away from rugby, he got stuck in too. McHenry's cousin moved to Sydney 15 years ago and runs a construction company, so he got a job there for six months. 'It was the most humbling thing ever, concreting motorways,' says McHenry. 'I walked onto the site one day and the lads were like, 'You're not cut out for this, your hands are too soft to be here,' but that was a bit of craic and got you by in the off-season.' Just three weeks after he arrived in Sydney, McHenry got a contract offer from third-tier French club Rouen. He had enjoyed his time with Dax and weighed up Roeun's offer, but decided to stay in Sydney. 'I was like, 'Do I keep on chasing this?' I just kind of came to the stage in my career where, yes, you could go back, but you're probably taking a contract that's not worth that much money and it's like, how long are you prolonging the inevitable? 'It was a difficult decision and you probably had sleepless nights over it and still do, but I'm happy with the decision I made.' Advertisement One of the other reasons Australia was so attractive was that McHenry's partner, Louise, was already there. McHenry won the Shute Shield with Easts. Easts Rugby Easts Rugby She was down in Melbourne working as a chemical engineer and so, when the Shute Shield season ended with Easts, McHenry made the move south. They've been together for years, but this is their first time living together. Having seen him move from Munster to Wasps on loan, then onto Jersey Reds and Dax, Louise had decided to do her own thing and head Down Under. Happily, Alex joined her. He now works with tech software company Workvivo, which was founded in Cork in 2017, acquired by Zoom in 2023, has an office in Sydney, but allows McHenry to work remotely from Melbourne. Having earned an economics degree from UCC at the encouragement of his mother, it feels like a better fit than the construction site. Melbourne is also a brilliant city for anyone into their sport. Rugby union in Melbourne isn't as strong as in Sydney and other Australian cities, especially since the demise of the Rebels, but McHenry is enjoying playing with Power House, who have a huge number of Irish players including former Ireland U18 international Cian McGovern. 'It's funny, our changing rooms are in the Grand Prix pit lanes [at Albert Park], so you come out the door and you see where the cars pull in for their pit stops,' says McHenry. 'Power House is a great club. There's a massive Irish connection there. There's a real family element to the club. It's a step down [from Shute Shield] and has that social element, which is good. 'You probably do miss the higher level, but in terms of club, it's been brilliant.' McHenry in action for Power House in Melbourne. Power House Power House It's a world away from Munster. McHenry came through Christian Brothers College and Cork Constitution, played for the Ireland U20s in 2017 and earned a place in the Munster academy. He was highly rated and though he earned three senior caps, it just never quite happened for McHenry under Johann van Graan. There were times when it looked like McHenry might kick on but with Damian de Allende and Chris Farrell having the centre spots locked down, it was tough. McHenry's only hint of regret is that he didn't have a bit more of a vicious edge in training, but it was a frustrating time as he watched close friends like Shane Daly, Gavin Coombes, and Calvin Nash kicking on. 'I was annoyed because I wasn't playing. You feel like you can offer something and that didn't happen but you make your peace with those sorts of things. 'I had some brilliant years in Munster as well. I'd say I could be one of the most capped A players ever! But you grow up with a group of lads and I'm delighted to see lots of my academy group have pushed on to be internationals now.' His debut for Munster away to Benetton in 2019 when he was still in the academy was the big highlight of that time. McHenry was over in the US with Munster A for the one-off Cara Cup competition when he was called home early to go onto the bench for the trip to Treviso. It should have been purely exciting, but McHenry ended up dealing with lots of stress. 'Because of all the travel, my hips got really tight and they locked up,' he says with a smile. McHenry with Damian de Allende. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO 'I was crocked before the match but they're like, 'Whatever you do now, don't pull out because you're going to get on the pitch, you'll get your debut.' 'I got 90 seconds off the bench, but it was massive, playing with those lads that you grew up with. Coming from Munster, it's all you want to do. It's such a proud club and it's boyhood dream kind of stuff.' His parents, John and Sylvia, were watching back in Cork with Daly's parents. Daly scored his first Munster try as McHenry got his debut. McHenry's parents still have a champagne cork from that night. They're currently over in Melbourne to visit him and Louise, as well as take in the second Lions Test today. 'They give so much,' says McHenry of his parents. 'They came to Jersey a couple of times and they came to Dax last year with my aunt and uncle. They kept being like, 'What's the next trip?'' Now, they're all enjoying Australia. Jack has settled in Sydney, where he plays 'subbies' rugby, and youngest brother Harry has just finished university in Cork. The McHenrys lived in Kildare until Alex was 11 because John, a professional golfer, worked at the K Club but they 'thankfully saw some wisdom' and moved back to Cork, where rugby took over. Playing for Munster was a dream come true, then McHenry played for Wasps on loan in 2021 before joining Jersey when he left his native province in 2022. Sadly, both English clubs ended up going bust. McHenry with his good friend Shane Daly. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO Playing with Dax in the Pro D2 was another fantastic experience for McHenry, who couldn't get over the sight of the club's players smoking cigarettes outside the gym, with the S&C coach sometimes joining them. The rugby was ferocious and fun. Now, he's loving life in Australia. He's had a couple of clubs in Sydney getting in touch and a return to the Shute Shield is possibly on the cards next year. Getting back to that semi-professional level would be welcome. Yet McHenry is slowly starting to feel at ease looking back on his days as a pro rugby player. 'You do have those nights when you relay conversations and think how things could have gone. But that's almost a toxic way to be thinking. I've gotten better over the last few months, I'm really happy with life. 'I've a good job. I want to start saving money to buy a house, or build a family, or to set myself up financially moving forward. Rugby probably wasn't going to do that for me. Not that it's all about finances, but that is important. 'You do your bit, you give your best, but then it comes to this age where you know plenty of lads who do kind of f*ck about and then they're 33 or 34 and going into an entry-level salary. 'It was the right time for me.'
RTÉ News
13 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Enya Breen: Eight-year wait makes World Cup special
Enya Breen was there at one of the lowest points in Irish rugby and that makes the upcoming World Cup all the more special for the Cork woman. The Ireland centre was injured for the qualifier play-off defeat to Scotland in Parma in 2021 but was among the extended squad who cut stunned and dejected figures strewn across the pitch when the final whistle blew that evening, the team losing to a last-minute converted try. There was to be no trip to New Zealand for the 2022 World Cup. Some of the pain many of the players felt came from knowing that was their last chance, while others knew their time would come; seven of the 15 starters that evening have retired or are injured this time around. But the gap to the last time Ireland ran out for World Cup action will be eight years by the time they face Japan on 24 August in Northampton. A third-place finish in the 2024 Six Nations, after a winless 2023 campaign, meant that Scott Bemand's side avoided a potentially tricky play-off route and qualified automatically for the tournament, where they will also face Spain and New Zealand in Pool C. "It's huge. We didn't make it in 2022 and that was devastating at the time, but it probably put a bit more importance on this one," Munster centre Breen told RTÉ Sport's Michael Corcoran. "We've been building for this for eight years now at this stage since the last one was held here. "It's really important to us as a group, we know it's really important for the country. "It's the pinnacle of the rugby calendar for us and we're loving the build-up, we're loving every second of it." Ireland have been training all summer with an extended preparation squad named last May. Most of the work is being done at the HPC in Blanchardstown, Dublin, while they also decamped to Ennis for a two-day stint. It's all building up to two 'Summer Send Off' warm-up games against Scotland in Cork on Saturday week and against Canada in Belfast seven days later as Bemand and his fellow coaches whittle the squad down to 32 players. "We're not rugby players to be training, everyone is buzzing to get into games now," added the 26-year-old, who has 29 caps, speaking at the Canterbury and Elverys launch of the new Ireland kit. "It'll probably show what we've done over the last few months. We've been training hard but you never know what's going to come out until you step into a Test game, into that cauldron. "Once the pressure is on, we'll see how it goes. "It's important to put ourselves in a good light, but everyone is putting the team first. "We back everyone to put in a shift and do the job the best they can. "It's going to be tough, the squad is smaller and selection is tight. It's been a tough summer but it's been great as well. "It's the longest block we've had together as a team without games so to be able to bring that intensity through the summer and bring that intensity that we need building into a World Cup. "We've hard some really hard sessions and we're pushing each other bloody hard. "There's been plenty of bite to everything. "Everyone is blowing all the time but we are chasing quality as well. We are growing every day and taking small steps in the right direction." For second row Fiona Tuite, it will also be a maiden World Cup campaign. The Dubliner, who plays with Ulster, made her Ireland bow at the victorious WXV3 tournament against Colombia in 2023. "Playing in a World Cup is absolutely huge, one of the best competitions in the world, in any sport," said the 28-year-old, who has been capped 15 times. "It's absolutely phenomenal. "Some of our girls have gone through heartbreak before and not qualified for the World Cup so this is huge. "This is massive for us and really exciting, a huge competition and we're looking forward to continuing the success that we've been building the last couple of years."
Irish Daily Mirror
13 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Kerry's summer sensation: 'He's the biggest competitor I ever came across'
He may have only pierced the wider public consciousness this summer, but Joe O'Connor has been hiding in plain sight. After all, he is an All-Ireland winning captain, albeit largely as a bit-part player in 2022 as he came off the bench in four games, including in injury time in the final, but still lifted the Sam Maguire Cup with Seán O'Shea. At that stage, David Moran, Jack Barry, Diarmuid O'Connor, Adrian Spillane and Barry Dan O'Sullivan were all ahead of him in the midfield pecking order, with O'Connor favoured more in a half-back or half-forward role. Last year he started each of seven of Kerry's Championship games alongside his namesake Diarmuid in the middle but was replaced in all bar one of them and appeared very much the junior partner. Midfield was still identified as a problem area for Kerry and, until recent months at least, O'Connor wasn't identified as part of the solution. But his emergence as a Kerry player of real substance has come at a time when the need could hardly have been greater. Diarmuid O'Connor has had ongoing problems with his shoulder and O'Sullivan's season was ended by a cruciate ligament rupture. Amid all of that, their much maligned midfield has emerged as a strength rather than a weakness, and much of that is down to O'Connor, with the 26-year-old a nailed-on All Star. Former Kerry star Marc Ó Sé is on the teaching staff at Tralee CBS, where he first came across O'Connor, who comes from a rugby household. 'He was very much of a rugby background,' says Ó Sé. 'Would have focused on his physical strength, strength and conditioning, and would have worked really hard at that. 'He was in with Munster rugby growing up and then obviously changed, worked really hard with Austin Stacks then and won a county championship and I think since then there's the grá for the football.' His brother, James, was a bright prospect in rugby before a pair of cruciate injuries effectively put paid to his ambitions. Joe was making inroads, however, winning an interprovincial title with Munster's under-18s, though Austin Stacks minor manager Wayne Quillinan was gently keeping communication lines open. 'He had not played football for a couple of years and I just made contact with Joe just to let him know, 'Listen, we'd love to have you back, but we know you have an interest in rugby',' Quillinan explains. 'So those conversations kind of continued for a while and then he came back playing.' Quillinan's brief, as far as he was concerned, was to develop players and people that could come through and contribute to the club at adult level more than stockpiling underage honours. As it was, he managed to achieve both, but there was a moment where he realised that O'Connor was had Kerry potential. 'I remember we played Na Gaeil, their our local, local rivals, I think it was a county semi-final or something like that, and we were being beaten by five or six points and Joe was just coming back, so we hadn't started him. 'Diarmuid O'Connor was midfield for Na Gaeil and was running the show and we put Joe on at half-time and he turned the whole game around. I think we ended up winning the game by four or five points and, particularly against such a quality player like Diarmuid, you just kind of said to yourself, 'Jesus Christ, there's a lot here in this fella'.' Within a couple of years, rugby was parked and he was playing for Kerry under-20s while he made two League appearances for the seniors of the 2021 Allianz League. That same year, with Quillinan having taken charge of the senior side by then, Stacks won the county title, which effectively granted O'Connor the senior captaincy in 2022, but injury prevented him from building up a head of steam. Kerry's Joe O'Connor celebrates at the final whistle of the quarter-final win over Armagh. (Image: Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/James Crombie) 'We won the county championship in '21, and we played the Barrs in the Munster final, and he got injured in that game. So he was out for a lot of the year in '22 when Kerry won it. So it was very hard to play catch-up there and that following September, we played championship again, and he did his cruciate, so that put him out for the whole 12 months so I think what we're seeing now is actually Joe O'Connor, the one that we knew was developing in this direction, but it's just the consistency now.' This year's Championship opener against Cork was essentially the making of him. He scored a magnificent winning goal, firing to the roof of Micheál Aodh Martin's net in extra time, but his performance also included a point, directly assisting 1-1, winning clean possession on four kickouts, breaking four more to teammates and winning a break from another himself that set in train a move that finished with Kerry's first goal. There were a handful of turnovers too and, of course, the hard running that is arguably the standout feature of his game. 'That's what I think just that he missed in the last two years,' says Quillinan of that Cork game. 'Obviously with the injury, he couldn't get those moments because he wasn't on the pitch. But the more moments you get like that, obviously the more confidence and belief that you're going to say to yourself, 'You know what, I belong here'. I think that's what Joe has done this year, and shown us all that it's absolutely true.' Further man of the match awards have come in his last two games against Armagh and Tyrone. 'Technically he's become a vital cog in this Kerry team,' says Ó Sé. 'You cast your mind back to 2022 when he was only coming in as a cameo role, but you see the way he goes at the opposition now. He's been outstanding.' And the new rules have contributed to his rise, Quillinan believes. 'Hugely so, because of the fact there's obviously so much more space and I think the big thing that Joe would have taken from rugby was actually the ability to come off the shoulder, the support play and I think that's a huge factor in transition in the game these days and that's one of his huge attributes. He's the biggest competitor I ever came across. Even when he was 16-years-old, you could see that competitive edge about him and then he developed his skills, then along the way.' Wayne Quillinan when managing Austin Stacks back in 2022. (Image: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne) Much of the pre-match debate has centered around the degree to which Donegal can negate David Clifford's influence, yet O'Connor is in the Footballer of the Year conversation with the Fossa great. 'If we get a big game out of Joe it'll be huge for Kerry getting over the line,' Ó Sé insists. 'I have nothing but great things to say about that man. He's a lovely man off the field, an absolute gentleman, and he's doing his stuff on the field and he's making what was a needy area for Kerry in the middle of the park seem as though it was a distant memory.'
