LONDON Irish’s signings for next season will “lift” the club, according to Conor Gilsenan.
The flanker, who recently agreed a two-year contract extension with the club, believes that the new additions, including scrum-half Brendan McKibbin, full-back Sean Maitland and front rower Ben Franks will be a welcome boost.
Twenty two year old Gilsenan agrees it’s a sign of the Exiles’ ambitions to climb up the Premiership table. “It gives everyone a lift, I’m sure when they arrive it’ll be a case of them driving the standards,” he said. “Everyone will want to impress their new teammates, they’ll want to make a good impression on us so new faces are always good.
“It brings out new ideas and a fresh bit of energy. And the fact that the line up is made of pretty high calibre players, I’m really looking forward to that.”
The Westmeath native joined the Sunbury-based club from Leinster last summer and is confident about his form so far this season. Gilsenan believes that he is well placed at London Irish to develop his career.
“Obviously it’s a big decision to make when you’re committing anywhere for two years,” he said. “But even before we started talking about contract extensions I was pretty happy with how the year has gone so far.
“It feels like I’m in the right place to continue improving and kicking on with my career.”
Gilsenan rose through the ranks of Leinster’s Academy team, before being loaned to Connacht. While he didn’t gain a huge amount of experience in the GuinnessPro12, he admits that it was a testing transition to the Premiership.
“It’s a little bit more physical,” he said. “It’s a slightly different league, London is more forward orientated, so it took a bit of adjusting.
“I’m always working on trying to put on a little bit of good weight, so I can carry myself a bit better on the pitch. I was given good heads up by guys over in Leinster who’d played in the Premiership before, so I knew what to expect.”
Given his experience playing rugby in Ireland, and his subsequent move across the Irish Sea to play in England’s top flight, would the player – who has captained Ireland at U20 level – encourage more Irish players to follow in his footsteps?
“There’s definitely a little bit of a backlog of players in Ireland, obviously it’s a touchy subject, I’m not going to tell home-grown players to come over and play in England. But it’s worked out reasonably well for me so far, speaking from a personal experience.”
After a two-week break London Irish face Newcastle at home on March 28, a game they are well placed to win having claimed four points at Kingston Park at the start of the season.
They head into the game, and their Challenge Cup quarter-final against Edinburgh a week later encouraged by their improving form.
“We needed the London Welsh victory badly, I think it’d been five or six weeks before we had last previously won,” Gilsenan added. “We played quite well against Leicester and Northampton and came quite close, so we were glad for the win against Welsh.
“Scoring so many tries and to get a bonus point, it was exactly what we were looking for and exactly what we needed. After the two week break we’ve got some massive games that we’re building towards.”
