Jacob Stockdale was full of beans when he sat down the other week in person with RugbyPass, delighted with the early-season form he had shown with Ulster and confident it could carry over into the four-game November schedule that Ireland have. Test selection would be quite the comeback as Stockdale’s name has been absent from the Andy Farrell team sheet for quite some time.
While the world No1-ranked Irish have been busy winning back-to-back Guinness Six Nations titles and chalking up seminal tour victories, the winger has featured in just two of his country’s last 35 matches, August 2023 games against Italy and Samoa before he was told he wasn’t selected for the Rugby World Cup.
Rejection would have buckled him when a younger buck. He had initially ridden the crest of the wave and scored international tries for fun, only to then frustratingly slip down the pecking order in 2021. Exclusion drove him daft and it needed the…
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