Leitrim Man Matthews Loving Life With Lansdowne

The road from Carrick-on-Shannon to the Aviva Stadium’s back pitch is not a journey many young players grow up imagining. It is hardly the conventional pathway to the top tier of domestic club rugby in Ireland.

But for Lansdowne scrum half Jack Matthews, that road has always been shaped less by expectation and more by possibility, the sense that if he said yes often enough, and if he worked hard enough, a route would open where others might see none at all.

And as he prepares for tonight’s Energia All-Ireland League clash with UCD, having started all seven games this season and crossed for a try last weekend, there’s something quietly fitting about a Leitrim lad running out for one of Dublin’s most storied rugby clubs, playing at a pace and precision that has made him one of the league’s most consistent No. 9s this year.

He began this journey at Carrick-on-Shannon rugby club, a small club struggling with numbers at the time, in a multi-sport town at heart, a place where football dominates conversation and community.

“I played minis with Carrick rugby club and all, that was great and all,” he says

“But back then the club were really struggling for numbers around my age group, I remember I kind of would have had to play like two years up, I played a lot of Gaelic and soccer as well obviously, I played loads of football and soccer probably more and then played a bit of rugby when we either had a team or played up.”

Rugby, at that stage, was another sport in the mix rather than the organizing principle of his life. That sporting fluidity wasn’t unusual in Leitrim; it was simply the rhythm of the seasons. Winter was for soccer with Carrick Town and the Sligo/Leitrim District League development squads. Summer was for football with St. Mary’s Kiltoghert. Rugby slipped in wherever space allowed.

The turning point came almost accidentally. Moving schools from Carrick to Roscrea, where Cistercian College Roscrea, are one of the country’s most respected and well known rugby schools.

“First and second year I was just going to Carrick-on-Shannon Community School and I was playing a lot of soccer during the winter and then football during the summer really, and then I think one weekend something was cancelled and I ended up playing a few age groups for Carrick and there was a local lad who was involved with Roscrea as well and asked if I’d ever thought about it and I went from there.

So then from third year on, I played Junior Cup then the next year with Roscrea, so with Roscrea it was mad like because I was going from kind of dipping in and out of playing a bit of rugby in Carrick to training three to four times a week with a match on a Wednesday as well, so it was a big jump like rugby wise but I loved it, like it was unreal.”

The shift wasn’t just about rugby; it was about rhythm, structure, identity. In Roscrea the sport wasn’t something squeezed in but something everything else revolved around. It was the first time he experienced what it felt like to be part of a rugby environment in full flow, where progression wasn’t a matter of finding numbers but of embracing the next challenge.

He doesn’t frame Roscrea as some fairy-tale leap toward destiny. It was simply a chance, a door someone happened to open, and one he walked through without knowing where it might lead. But his development accelerated there, his instincts sharpened, his sense of the game expanded. For the first time, he was living inside rugby rather than orbiting around it.

By the time school ended, the idea of playing at a high level was no longer abstract.

“To play rugby in the AIL definitely would have been on the radar,” he says.

“Straight to Dublin, I was probably looking at either Dublin or Galway for college as well. And then we just played a friendly actually for Roscrea in Lansdowne and there was a few connections there between Lansdowne and Roscrea as well, a few past pupils and that kind of stuff.”

That friendly match, another moment that didn’t feel life-changing at the time, turned out to be the spark.

“After that kind of game I kind of thought about it and some of them then made contact, obviously everyone’s kind of going all over the shop then, from my year in Roscrea and I kind of went straight to Lansdowne then. I kind of really wanted to go there after that kind of game, that was 2019 then, I left school and I went and joined the Lansdowne 20’s then.”

The transition, he says, was far less daunting than people might expect.

“It was a seamless enough transition to join Lansdowne,” he explains.

“There are a lot of boys from all over the shop and it was like joining any team, really welcoming, great history and all that kind of stuff.”

Lansdowne’s cosmopolitan makeup helped. Nobody arrives there with assumptions about where you should come from or what your rugby upbringing ought to look like. The only currency that matters is work rate, attitude, and ability. Matthews landed quickly, and he stayed. He built his game. He earned respect. And he began making his name in the most competitive club league in the country.

A Leitrim man in Division 1A might raise eyebrows outside rugby circles, but inside the dressing room it’s just part of the tapestry.

“I suppose football is definitely the main one at home,” he admits.

“All the lads are still kind of playing, still playing for the county or for the club as well. And then there’s kind of the odd few lads playing soccer and all but like no, it’s good to be fair.”

He laughs when the subject of being a Division 1A anomaly comes up.

“It wouldn’t really be something I think about too often, flying the Leitrim flag in Division 1A, to be honest with you,” he says.

“There are other fellas too, like Matthew Earley who is a stalwart of Sligo at this stage. You have Shane Mallon playing with Barnhall this year. Diarmaid O’Connell is obviously flying it for Connacht, he’s playing with Corinthians as well.”

“So there’s a few of us spaced around the place, I love it. All the lads would be saying go on Leitrim and all that kind of stuff, it’s a bit of craic too.”

“Sometimes I have to point out to them where Leitrim actually is.” he laughs.

For all the rugby commitments, part of him still feels that pull toward home.

“I would have played football until I joined the Lansdowne 20’s,” he says.

“I played one year as a senior for St. Mary’s Kiltoghert, I’d love to still, but kind of how far the championships have been pushed out. And then I’ve pre-season for Lansdowne kind of gets earlier each year as well, I played for St. Mary’s the whole way up, and in soccer I was playing for Carrick Town and also played for the Sligo/Leitrim District League development teams. I still get the call every year to see if there’s any chance of coming back.”

One moment in particular still amuses him: Lansdowne’s Bateman Cup semi-final clash with Sligo last season, and the man wearing the Lansdowne 9 jersey that day hailing a stones throw from Sligo, and playing against someone he knew all too well hailing from his own county

“It would have been a strange one alright playing Sligo in the Bateman last year, it was funny,” he says.

“I was on the touchline waiting for a penalty to be kicked to touch, and Matthew Earley goes to their coach, ‘that fella’s from Carrick’ and he goes, ‘Jeez you should be playing on our team.’ And so I was laughing at that.”

Then came scoring a try, an awkward twist for any proud Leitrim man against Sligo.

“It was a strange experience alright. And having scored a try in the game too he was straight into me afterwards.”

And yet, when you zoom out, it’s impossible not to see the scale of the journey he’s already made, a boy playing two age grades up in a struggling rural club, a teenager splitting seasons between soccer and Gaelic football, a chance conversation that led to Roscrea, a friendly match that opened the door to Lansdowne, and now a scrum-half starting consistently for one of the most competitive clubs in Irish rugby.

It’s the type of story that doesn’t rely on romanticism, it’s compelling precisely because of its simplicity, small moments taken seriously, modest opportunities embraced fully, and a belief that nothing in your background is disqualifying if you’re willing to work.

In a league famous for its mix of established pathways and improbable routes, Jack Matthews embodies the best of the latter. He is proof that the geography of your childhood need not define the limits of your ambition, and that being from a so-called non-traditional rugby county doesn’t mean you can’t thrive at the top of the club game.

He plays with the sharpness of a man who has adapted at every stage, and with the enthusiasm of someone who still understands how unlikely this all should have been. In many ways, that’s what makes his rise so resonant, not that he came from outside the mainstream, but that he never let that fact become either a burden or an excuse.

He still carries the ease of a player who played everything growing up, football, soccer, rugby, whatever game was on. That all-around grounding shows in his movement, his decision-making, and his calm under pressure. And maybe that’s the most obvious thread running through his story,  the wider his sporting base, the clearer his rugby instincts became.

The last few seasons have been steady steps upward, squad inclusion followed by more starts, more minutes, more responsibility.

“The last probably two or three years I’ve been in most matchday squads anyway and all that kind of stuff. I was going in and out of the first team a lot. I suppose when you’re playing for a club like Lansdowne, you know you have serious competition.

Over the last few years, you have myself, James Kenny, Oisin Davies, and then Cormac Foley coming down from Leinster as well. It’s tough to stay on top of it but we all get on really well.

We all get on very well together and we kind of know that we have a good squad and everything and everyone kind of understands, that it happens in a lot of different kind of positions, but I suppose it’s kind of going well starting the last seven games as of now anyway, but that could change next week, you never know what could happen.”

In the rush of a game under the Friday night lights on the Aviva Stadium back pitch, with Lansdowne chasing momentum, it would be easy to forget all that. Easy to see only a polished AIL scrum-half controlling the tempo.

But beneath that surface there’s a map of memories: the Carrick minis sessions with barely enough numbers, the games where he had to play two years up, the long afternoons of soccer and summers of Gaelic football, the sudden leap into the intensity of Roscrea, the first run in Lansdowne colours, the quiet pride of hearing someone shout “go on Leitrim” in Division 1A. All of it matters. All of it is part of what brought him here.

And despite Lansdowne sitting in fourth spot with five games on the board this season, they are not getting too far ahead of themselves as he looks ahead to another big night under lights and a long twisting road for the rest of the season ahead, he knows the only way to navigate a league this demanding and one that can always change in fortune is always a cliché, but it really is one game at a time.

“We have UCD under lights on Friday this week,” he says,

“And there’s no point looking past that next game at all. Honestly you can get bogged down there. It’s a really long season and every team can beat every team, there’s always big results every weekend in this Division. You kind of have to just take it game by game and there’s no point looking past that really.”

Keep up to date with all the latest news in our dedicated website hub at www.irishrugby.ie/energiaail, and follow #EnergiaAIL on social media channels.