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.
Nearly three years later, he is mentally in a very different place when it comes to his rugby. “Before I had kids, rugby was everything,” he explained to RugbyPass at a rendezvous in Cardiff before hooking up this past week with the Ireland squad in Portugal ahead of an Autumn Nations Series that begins in Dublin with next Friday’s blockbuster clash with the All Blacks.
