LUKE FITZGERALD SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: SPORT

THE phrase 'meteoric rise' hardly does it justice. Last May, Luke Fitzgerald was sitting his Leaving Cert. Six months later, he made his debut with the Ireland rugby team against the Pacific Islands at Lansdowne Road. That his first game in green was the last international to be played at the crumbling old stadium seemed fitting. In the one afternoon, rugby fans said goodbye to the past, and hello to the future.

Fans love precocity, but few sports are as unforgiving towards it as rugby, a man's game into which it is rarely clever to send a boy. Yet seasoned judges such as Michael Cheika and Eddie O'Sullivan have been unable to resist the temptation of elevating him. Fitzgerald's talent has been impossible to miss since bursting on the scene with Blackrock College.

He won Leinster Senior Cup medals in both 2004 and 2006, and picked up the Young Player of the Year award in 2005.

Straight after leaving school, he made his mark with Leinster and was selected for the Ireland A team that played Australia in November. He scored Ireland's only try that evening from fullback and impressed enough to earn a starting spot against the Pacific Islands, becoming at the age of 19 the youngest player to represent the senior side for 29 years.

His dad Des was a tight-head prop who was capped 34 times for Ireland, but to say talent is in his blood is to ignore that he also possesses the dedication and determination to keep improving, always the first at training and the last to leave. While the grounded Fitzgerald claims he just wants to secure a regular place with Leinster, a starting spot at next year's World Cup is also within his abilities. The rest of the rugby world may discover him then; regardless, Irish fans are likely to be chanting his name for years to come.