Jacob Stockdale: 'That was a turning point, that really got to me'

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 lay-off that came with a January 2022 ankle operation for him to finally realise he was too caught up by it all.

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.

“All I cared about was being successful and famous and all this, and since having kids that is not anywhere near as important to me anymore. What’s important to me now is building a safe and secure home life for the two girls and my wife and making sure they are proud of me. Whenever you look at it from that point of view you realise, ‘Do you know what? Rugby is just a sport. Nobody’s died, nobody’s life is being changed significantly if we win, lose or draw’.

“Having that perspective is important for me. I still absolutely care whether we win, lose or draw but yeah, the most important thing to me now is my family and making them proud. During my injury, that was a real turning point for me where the frustration of not playing and seeing the lads in the position that I had been in before and seeing them really kick on, that really got to me.

“The frustration of not being able to play was really getting to me and through the course of that injury, it was just acceptance that not everything is going to go your way all the time. You’re going to have setbacks, you’re going to have disappointments. If you put 100 per cent of the weight of your care into rugby, you’re going to be disappointed. You need to find something else that is more important than that.

“My wife is a great sounding board. Very good at being completely honest with me. Especially if she thinks I’m being a bit of an ass,” he chuckled. “You need people in your life that are going to be honest with you no matter what and Hannah is certainly that, she is brilliant.

“With family, they’d be pretty open in talking about it and say they knew if I played badly or if we lost to know not to talk to me, they’d know not to contact me for 24 hours after a game. But you can’t do that when you have kids.

“You get home and you’re just daddy as soon as you walk through the door and all they want to do is play with their toys and you have to pretend to be the doctor or the dentist or whatever it is. That was a big learning curve for me, just parking it and making the decision when you walk through the door that you are just going to be daddy, you’re not going to be the rugby player.”

This altered perspective has been rejuvenating. “I’m loving my rugby at the moment,” he continued with a smile. “It’s funny. Like, sport in general, it feels like the easier thing when it is going well and it feels like the hardest thing ever when you are struggling. Fortunately, right now, I feel like I am in a good vein of form, scoring tries and playing well. I am enjoying it and appreciate it.”

One thing that isn’t as appreciated by Stockdale is how he is viewed by a cohort of Irish rugby fans. Rather than just be seen as a 28-year-old loving life and enjoying being back in exciting form, their reference point continues to be 2018.

That was the Grand Slam-winning year where he set a Six Nations try record – seven – and chipped in with the killer score that helped Ireland to a first home win over New Zealand. He gets why fans like recalling this vintage time; he just wishes it didn’t colour their 2024 assessment of him.

“Yeah, there is a degree of frustration with that around me. On one hand, it was a brilliant way to start your international career and it was an amazing year. Similarly, it feels like when I do something well now it’s ‘Oh, is 2018 Jacob back?’

“There is a degree of frustration for that for me in the sense that I am the player that I am now. 2018 was great. Probably the New Zealand try was the standout for me, a pretty special moment, but they are just memories and I want to focus on where I am now and the player and person that I am now.

“I don’t begrudge people for that. Like, I’m glad I was able to entertain people in the way that I did and make people enjoy watching Irish rugby and be successful, but at the same time I’m excited with what I am doing now and I don’t really feel talking about what I did six years ago really matters anymore if that makes sense.

“I understand why people want to talk about it. It’s okay, it’s not that I’m going to get angry at anybody or anything like that, but just for me personally there is a degree of frustration. It was great but it is in the past.”

What’s so great then about Stockdale 2024 that people should be focusing on? “I have a better all-round game. I have still got the attacking ability, being able to do stuff with the ball well like I was able to do back then but my ability in the air has grown, my kicking has got better and my defensive game has got better.

“That is reflective as well of how the game has evolved over the last seven, eight years. Rugby players in general have got a lot better. You see guys coming into the academies at 18, 19 and their skill sets are 10 times what mine were at that age.

“You see these young guys come in and they get it, they already understand rugby inside out, they understand what pictures to look for in attack, what to look for in defensive. I didn’t have any of that understanding when I was 18 or 19. We have all got better across the board as rugby players and I can see my skill set has improved as well with that.

“I have started to focus on really working hard on things that I am good at, things that I know can set me apart in the game as opposed to other players. In years gone by, I have worried about trying to do everything and really be the best overall player, have the perfect kicking game, the perfect running game, the perfect defence and perfect in the air.

“Sometimes you have to maybe accept, ‘Do you know what? I’m never going to be a player that makes perfect reads and flies out of the back in defence and smashes lads and knocks them behind the gain line’. No. But I can still be a player that defends well and is solid, but I know I am a player that can make stuff happen in attack. I can score tries and make linebreaks and stuff, so really focusing on those strong parts of my game and practicing them as much as I can has been really beneficial for me.”

That emphasis has the attention of Ireland boss Farrell, who picked Stockdale in eight of his first nine matches in charge in 2020, seven as a starter. He brought Stockdale to South Africa last July for the drawn Test series. There was no match day involvement on that trip but there is a genuine confidence that caps can now be earned across a November featuring fixtures versus New Zealand, Argentina, Fiji and Australia.

“The fact that even when I had dips in form I have always been brought into Ireland camp has been a big vote of confidence for me,” he reasoned. “I’m very appreciative to Andy Farrell for that. That being said, I would like to put a green jersey on a few more times this year. That’s the big goal for me. Hopefully I get the opportunity to do that.”

The icing would be sharing a family moment post-game in Dublin. “Exactly, I’m excited for that. Phoebe, my eldest, she has already started pretending to play rugby running around the house which it’s quite cute,” he beamed.

Being a professional rugby player wasn’t something on Stockdale’s radar until his late teens. “I probably didn’t think it was really a career option until I was 18 and a year later I was playing for Ulster. You see younger lads come through and that is all they have known.

“I think of Nathan Doak at Ulster with his dad being Neil Doak, he has been on that pathway since he was like 12 years old. I remember in Wallace, I was last year in school and he was first year and him pointing to the sticks when he was 12 years old and taking three points, stuff you didn’t see.

“I remember thinking that kid has a one-track mind and I love that he is playing for Ulster now but for me, it was very different. It was all of a sudden when I was 17, 18, it was here this could be an option for you. Very thankful that it did pay off.”

There should be plenty of years left in Stockdale’s rugby career but having flicked the switch during his injury lay-off a few years back, he knows the day will come when an alternative wage is required. “I have thought a lot about retirement. It’s something I hope is a good few years down the line yet but I have put plans in place.

“I am doing an engineering degree at the moment and yeah, it’s something I think about a lot. Not entirely sure what I want to do yet but I would like to do something around engineering, in that world. But either way, having that degree under my belt is a good look for employers and that is what I am worried about. I can’t see myself staying in rugby. I don’t think I have the patience for coaching.”

Engineering might be just the thing given his interest in classic cars. “Yeah, they both go hand in hand. Probably the intrigue in cars and anything with an engine pushed me towards doing the engineering degree but if I could combine the two and that would be my job after I retire, that would be better than being a professional rugby player,” he quipped. “We will see how all that pans out. I’ve still got the Mustang but it’s sitting in the garage and has been for a few months now. I think I’m going to have to sell it.”

His dogs have been another great distraction. “A Hungarian Vizsla and a Bernese mountain and they are brilliant. They are a pain sometimes, especially if I have a daughter and a baby running about, but they are great.’

So too the sounding board wisdom of his father, Rev Graham Stockdale. “The biggest thing I have learned in my career is resilience, to keep getting up every morning and doing what you know is the right thing to do even when it is not paying dividends, when you are not seeing the results. It’s the most frustrating place in the world to be but eventually it will turn around and that is what I learned. Resilience.

“It [religion] is an enormous part of my life and my family’s life. It’s definitely something that has been a comfort to me whenever things are feeling a bit more difficult. Dad knows from a faith point of view but also from a general role model point of view, he has always been a really good sounding board for me, somebody I can bounce things off and ask advice from, and he has always been very good in that sense. Very lucky to have him.

“He is fairly unflappable and really thinks about things. He thinks through answers before he answers and I can sometimes be the opposite of that where I just work straight off emotion so he is good to pump the brakes for me a wee bit and go you really want to think about this for a second before you do or say anything. He has been a brilliant source of advice and an incredible role model growing up.”