Duignan sidesteps into destiny

Right man, right place, right time. When a 24-year-old, Canadian-born, Australian-reared son of Roscommon emigres wandered over to Ireland in September 1996 and joined Galwegians it was to meet people through the rugby community, as opposed to a career move. But there's an unmistakeable whiff of destiny about the Pat Duignan story.

Galwegians had won one match the previous season and Connacht were as unfashionable as ever. Perfect timing, as it transpired.

Galwegians were recruiting busily as a prelude to successive promotion campaigns, while, of course, Warren Gatland was about to shake Connacht up from its foundations.

Had Duignan come a year earlier, he would probably have backpacked around Europe and would now be back in Australia. Had he come over a year later, he could have missed the boat, as the good ships Galwegians and Connacht might have set sail without him.

As it happens, Duignan has been the most potent centre in the interprovincials this season, scoring three tries and winning a couple of man of the match awards. He has adhesive hands, is genuinely quick, has impressed Mark McCall and others with his pressure defence and, where before there was more meat in a cheese sandwich, he has beefed up from the 12 stone whippet of two years ago to 13 1/2. He looks the business now and is part of a new wave of Irish centres coming through the ranks.

Last season a glut of provincial flankers emerged who would climb the representative ladder - Andy Ward, Trevor Brennan and Alan Quinlan. Where before the Irish midfield was a desert, now it's more like an oasis, the Connacht pair of Duignan and Mervyn Murphy breaking into the senior Irish squad along with Shane Horgan, who heads a posse of Leinster tyros set to challenge the existing order.

Given that Mark McCall is injured and Kevin Maggs, his midfield partner, can't break into the Bath team, the forthcoming European campaigns could go some way towards resolving a fascinating midfield conundrum. And you sense Duignan will get there eventually. Certainly his one-time Connacht coach, the former Connacht centre Michael Cosgrave, who is now coaching at Lans downe, thinks Duignan has the ability to make it.

"Definitely. He's quick, as you'd expect of a guy who ran 400 metres at university level, and he has excellent hands. The one thing he has which few other players have is the ability to change direction without losing stride. He's a really well-balanced runner and he runs tremendous angles. He's the best runner of angles around, and once he breaks through he's away."

For Duignan, it would be a circuitous route. Born in Canada, he moved with his parents and two sisters to Australia when he was seven. His father, Patrick, was "a professor of leadership in education at the `uni' there".

Both his parents hailed from Roscommon, near Boyle, before moving to Canada, where they lived for 14 years.

According to Duignan, his mother, Nuala, "was, I think, runner-up in the Irish Women's (Golf) Open".

There was plenty of Gaelic football in the Duignan bloodline - his father played minor for Roscommon - but no rugby.

Armidale in New South Wales changed that. For the most part, Duignan played wing for his school and local junior sides before moving to a boarding school in Sydney when he was 15 called St Joseph's - "probably the biggest rugby school in Australia".

"Matt Burke, Tony Daly and lots of other players went there. They've a big rugby culture."

Even then, his rise was hardly meteoric, progressing no higher than the sixths in his final year. Duignan graduated to Hawkes bury College, where he studied horticulture, although now he is doing a masters in marketing. At the end of three prolific years on the wing, he decided to concentrate on rugby for a year and moved to Manly in Sydney.

"I played sevens tournaments and did really well."

Probably too well.

"My first game was in first grade and I got busted," he recalls, laughing now. "The first tackle, I remember getting spear tackled. It was a trial game against Parramatta, who are pretty hard, older guys. I was lost. I just had a nightmare and they dropped me three grades, like in one go. So that knocked my confidence back."

He buckled down but gradually became frustrated at the lack of opportunities on the first team. Not for the last time Duignan came to what he describes as a "crossroads" in his career.

"I didn't know what to do. Fiona, my girlfriend, and a couple of others from `uni' were going to travel to Europe, and I thought `perfect', because I was always going to travel at some stage and Ireland was the first option always."

So Duignan double-jobbed in a nursery on weekdays and a bar at weekends, saved up some money, and came over here in September 1996 after making contact with John Cullinan at Galwegians.

"I played quite well but I didn't take it overly seriously. I'd had enough at Manly, but I played a couple of A games for Connacht, and I sort of got to know Gatty as well."

Cue to another crossroads. "I had to decide whether to go home or stay, because I was going to travel around Europe. I said to Gatty, `What should I do? Is it worth my time or am I wasting my time? 'Cos if it is, just tell me.'

"It was a big decision for me. I didn't want to stay if it was going to be wasting a year.

"And he said, `I think it's worth your time, but you've got to be serious, work on your speed, and weight and ball skills, because if you don't you'll just be playing club rugby.' He reckoned I had potential so I took that on board. I went travelling for six weeks, came back, moved in with Jody Greene from the club."

Greene lived five miles from the gym, so Duignan ran there four or five times a week, as part of a twice-a-day training regime.

Living off a part-time provincial contract of £7,500 required a frugal existence. "I was pretty broke most of the time."

He didn't take a drink for three months. "I just made a conscious decision not to and it helped that Merv (Murphy) and myself were training together towards the end of that time."

When last season started, Duignan felt fitter and stronger than he'd ever felt. Fate intervened again, and Duignan admits that Alan Reddan's injury left an opening for him which he exploited with some good early-season performances.

"That year set me up for this year because I knew I had to put more weight on, and I knew what I had to do. Again, Gatty was very good. He and Cossy (Cosgrave) taught me a lot about lines of running, defensive patterns, everything.

"It was the first time I had been coached professionally. The amount of information we gained was unbelievable. It changed my whole game. I was shocked," claims Duignan, breaking into a wide-eyed look of self-mocking innocence . . . `Crikey, so this is how you play the game'. I just used to play it off the cuff."

Again, though, it was decision time. Should he stay or should he go now? "I had to balance it with what Fiona wanted to do as well. It wasn't just me because we were pretty serious by this stage. But she decided to give it a go and it's all gone pretty well so far this year."

During the close season, he spent three months back in Australia, where he "did the same: trained twice a day and put on another three or four kilos. I ate four meals a day and drank two protein shakes. I was constantly full the whole time. Basically just carbohydrates, pasta, rice."

A self-professed late developer, the 26-year-old Duignan is still learning about the position of centre, but he has a clear sight of where he's going. "At this very moment in time, I can see it. In my mind now, it's going to happen because I'm going to make it happen. But it's only in the last couple of months that I've really realised that I can do it. Even when I was at home training last summer I had doubts - a lot of doubts.

"I've got a good friend called Jamie Holbeck who's a centre for Australia and I look at him and think, `Jeez, can I really compete with someone like him?' But since I've come back I've competed against guys like Rhys Ellison, Mick Lynch, Mark McCall and Stanley McDowell. You get the better of them in games and you realise, `Okay, you can compete at this level'. And I feel a lot stronger this year, that's one big thing. At centre you have to be strong."

His parents, who still live in Australia, have come back occasionally to witness their son's progress. "They're right into it, they just love it. They always believed in me. They never once said, `You're wasting your time'. That helped me no end."

Last week in Dooradoyle his uncle, aunt and Fiona were part of the entourage. You can sense the Duignan clan are excited about the possibilities ahead, though the player himself is reluctant to look beyond the next game.

Nonetheless, it's out there and he's hungry for it. "Whew, big time," he admits, drawing a breath. "I've always wanted to play for my country. When I was younger it was Australia, but to play for Ireland now would be the biggest thing for me. I couldn't even describe it, it would be so big."