‘I’m Glad I Stuck At It To Experience Days Like This’ – McCloskey

A real shining light for Ireland during this year’s Guinness Men’s Six Nations, Stuart McCloskey has been playing with a confidence and relish that seems a world away from the pressure he felt when making his international debut at 23 years of age.

He had a full circle moment yesterday when running out at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham where he won his first cap against England in February 2016, alongside two other debutants, Josh van der Flier and Ultan Dillane.

The trio finished on the losing side that day, with McCloskey and van der Flier the only players from that matchday squad to feature in the 2026 encounter. McCloskey’s centre partner back then, Robbie Henshaw, is currently injured.

Over the last 10 years, Ireland have turned the tables on England, winning eight of the last 13 meetings. The Ulster centre found it difficult to get a consistent run of games at Test level in that time, until featuring more regularly across the last three seasons.

He played five times as Ireland won back-to-back Six Nations titles, including the 2023 Grand Slam. With his patience and years of hard work paying off, he has really cemented himself in the inside centre role these last few months, bringing his total number of caps to 26.

McCloskey reserved one of his best performances for his return to Twickenham, finishing as Ireland’s top ball carrier with 15 carries and 55 post-contact metres, making 14 tackles, including a memorable try saver on Marcus Smith, and blasting through midfield with a big break before Robert Baloucoune’s try.

“It’s probably close to 10 years to the day since I got my debut for Ireland here. It’s probably taken me longer than I’d hoped to really, like, solidify a slot in the team,” he admitted, speaking after the 42-21 bonus point win over England.

“There’s tough times in there, but I’m glad I stuck at it to get to experience days like this now. My body feels really good, as it has done for a while but when you play more, you get more experience.

“I’ve seen most of the things that can happen on the rugby field now. I probably have played the most professional games, or close to the most professional games, on our team, and I’m just confident in what I do.

“As long as my body stays in pretty good nick, I’m pretty confident I can do this for a while longer. It’s class. I think I said to myself a few years ago, I’m just going to enjoy every game I get from now on.

“I obviously haven’t played as much as I would have liked over the years. Not to turn my nose up at how many caps I have, but I would have loved more. And I think at the start, I probably didn’t enjoy it, I was just feeling the pressure.

“Now, let’s take every chance I have and try to enjoy everything I do out here. It’s amazing to do it in that jersey, what it represents, and do it for the team that we have in there.”

That enjoyment factor in his play is there for all to see at the minute. Given how indispensable he is becoming, with seven starts in Ireland’s last nine Tests, it is no surprise that the 33-year-old is standing out as one of the 2026 Championship’s best players.

He provided assists for three of Ireland’s five tries during the first two rounds, with his offloading ability and powerful carrying a focal point of the Irish attack, and he has also shown his defensive strengths.

He chopped down Henry Pollock with an important early tackle yesterday afternoon, and crucially got his hand in to bat the ball back on two occasions, disrupting dangerous English moves late on in both halves.

How he hunted down Smith to deny him a 73rd-minute intercept try certainly summed up Ireland’s ‘all in’ attitude, with head coach Farrell saying that the Bangor man ‘chasing back Marcus there and being able to put him into touch just shows the fight’.

“That’s one of the things we said going into the day,” explained McCloskey. “Be all in for everybody, be in every moment. That’s the first minute, the 80th minute. As long as we fight for each other, whatever the result was, we’d be happy.

“I probably ran back (chasing Marcus Smith) and hoped more than the expectation. And as I got closer, it was like, ‘Oh flip, I’m actually going to get him’.

“But yeah, I was absolutely cooked after it. I was basically a body bag for the last five minutes but thankful the game was won.”

Despite losing their Calcutta Cup clash with Scotland, England were still heavily favoured to get back to winning ways against Ireland. They had won a dozen Tests in a row before last week, and had put together a nine-match winning streak at Allianz Stadium.

Adding to that, the performances of Farrell’s men against France and Italy had been patchy. However, the manner in which they responded against Steve Borthwick’s side made the victory all the sweeter, with McCloskey pleased with how ruthless they were with their attacking opportunities.

“It was a great performance, I think. We proved a lot of people wrong. We probably proved to ourselves more importantly what we can do when we get stuff right.

“Probably more we wanted to prove to ourselves how good we are. And obviously a lot of things didn’t go right over the last two rounds. Some went well and we got it right.

“I thought we looked really good, but just didn’t really piece it all together. But I thought today we pieced a lot of what we wanted to do together and I thought it was pretty good all round.”

On how they broke England down, he added: “I think we won that sort of aerial battle. We ran our shape a lot better. We were pretty good at taking our chances as well. I thought we were better at that than them probably.

“They had a load of chances and we just managed to force knock-ons or get turnovers at the right times. They maybe didn’t manage to do that to us.”

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