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Tom Lynagh: 'I've never felt English... my dad's happy with that'
By Liam Heagney
Tom Lynagh flew into the arms of familiar comforts last weekend. While many of his Queensland Reds teammates checked out the sights and sounds of London after their flight landed at Heathrow on Saturday morning, there was only one place the 21-year was heading to – the family home in Richmond.
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It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen his folks in a while; only last November he remained in the English capital for a six-week holiday after featuring for Australia A at The Stoop. His latest visit, though, offered the rare chance to catch up in person with his brother Louis.
His older sibling wasn’t supposed to be at home. The plan was for him to be an integral part of Italy’s Guinness Six Nations campaign. However, ligament damage with Benetton wrote off that idea, leaving the brothers shooting the breeze at a point in the season they didn’t expect to meet.
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“He was at home having just had knee surgery,” explained Tom, chatting with RugbyPass from Bristol some days later ahead of Friday night’s 12-try Ashton Gate friendly win over the Bears. “I only get to see him once a year now, him living in Italy and the rest of my family living in London. I don’t get to spend much time with him, so any time I spend with him is very cherished.”
It was December 2020 when the then teenage Lynagh first had his interest piqued about becoming a professional rugby player on the other side of the world. He was driving to golf with his dad – legendary Wallaby Michael – when asked if he had any idea what he wanted to do after his A-levels.
“It was during the lockdown periods. I was 17, halfway through my last year, when dad asked what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to stay at Harlequins, look for something else or go to university. I hadn’t put much thought into it and out of the blue, I said I wouldn’t mind exploring the Australian option, just seeing what’s out there for me. I’ve always wanted to live there, be based there. I thought it was a pretty random thought at the time but it came forward pretty quickly.
“Two weeks later, I was on a call with Brad Thorn and Sam Cordingley, they were in Ballymore and I was at my boarding house at Epsom. That was a pretty surreal moment. My thought process behind it? The more I thought about it the more I backed myself to go to Australia.
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“Harlequins at the time and still now, Marcus Smith is there, the England No10, an unbelievable talent. If I were to break through into that I don’t think I could get any game time over him. I looked at that and said, ‘I’m better off going somewhere else and actually playing games’.
‘The Reds option was good. James O’Connor was at the Reds when I decided to go through with that. I’d met him when I was about 11 or 12, he used to come down to do some Sunday training sessions at Richmond when he played for London Irish. He was really cool, I looked up to him and thought it would be very cool to learn from him now as an adult and a professional rugby player rather than an 11- or 12-year-old.
“It was a good idea to go behind James at the Reds and develop under him. I eventually played with him, which was a pretty special moment for me, him being one of the first professional rugby players I looked up to. He is over at the Crusaders now so I will play him in a couple of weeks. Every time I look back on that decision I am very happy I went through with it and I haven’t looked back,” he explained, adding with a chuckle: “My mum (Isabella) wasn’t too happy about it!”
Born near Treviso in April 2003, Lynagh’s parents’ Australian/Italian origin meant he never felt English despite living there for most of his life. This detachment aided his switch to Brisbane. “It was real easy for me,” he enthused about upping sticks as a teenager and making his life 10,000 miles away from London.
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“The first eight months I was still pretty posh, sunburnt all the time, white skin/red skin but after a while, I started picking up an Australian accent and fitted in more. The lifestyle and spending six months with around 40 Australian blokes in a footy team get you acclimatised to it pretty quickly. I have always sort of felt Australian, I’ve never felt English. Even though having lived in England for 15 years and done all my growing up here, I never felt English. I felt Italian and Australian.
“I have always supported Italy and Australia in sporting events, never England. My dad was pretty happy about that. I am happy I made the decision to move to Australia. The lifestyle is great and just being back in England the last few days made me realise how good Australia really is.
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“Brisbane is a very small city, very easy to get around. It’s one of the main things I have noticed; there is no traffic there when you compare it to somewhere like London or inner Sydney. You can get from one side of town to the other in 20 minutes. It’s nice, very close to the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, very easy to get to the beaches and there is a lot of golf.
“I’m fortunate not to have to study, I feel like I don’t want to do it at the moment. I just want to focus on rugby. But I spend a lot of my time on the golf course and I’m getting better. When I first got over to Australia I was about an 18 handicap. I try to play at least a round of golf a week, so I’m down to 8.1 now.
“The decision to go was made easier by having family there. I knew there was someone to look after me. It’s not like I was moving there and being all alone in Brisbane. My grandparents were over there and some of my dad’s best mates are still there.
“They looked after me and all the boys at the Reds took me under their wing. It was a nice feeling, I wasn’t alone out there. Growing up in the English system, you see a lot of boys graduate from the academy into the top squad and quite a lot of them don’t get a lot of game time until they are 21, 22. I just wanted to go and have an experience.”
And what an experience it has been so far! Not only have there been 23 Super Rugby Pacific appearances for the Reds, 14 as the starting out-half, he has been capped three times off the Australia bench under Joe Schmidt and called to attend the recent gathering that laid out a 2025 season where the British and Irish Lions visit is the highlight.
“There is plenty of excitement, you can feel it building,” said Lynagh with a smile. “We had a Wallabies camp a couple of weeks ago in Sydney, a lot of the stuff was putting core values in place for that series and a lot of the boys got pretty excited. Coaches were emphasising it, trying to say how important a series and occasion it is.
Back at it ? #Wallabies pic.twitter.com/ZYwE7CrgJ0
— Wallabies (@wallabies) January 9, 2025
“You can definitely feel there is a different feeling this year. Every rugby player in Australia is hoping to get selected. There is a lot riding on the season for everyone involved. It’s a big occasion and having grown up in England, I always supported the team playing against the Lions – it will be exciting to potentially get that opportunity to play against them.
“I remember the 2013 Lions series, remember where I was for the games, what happened and not being too happy with the end result of the series. Two of them I watched at home and then the third, I watched at King’s House School. We had just finished cricket and went into the pavilion. They had it on the TV and everyone was fixated on the game. I remember being the only person in that room supporting Australia.”
What must happen for Lynagh to enjoy the season ahead is for his body not to let him down. Durability isn’t yet his thing, as witnessed when forced to cry off the 2023 World Rugby U20 Championship in South Africa and when not having the week-to-week availability to contest for a place in Schmidt’s recent Autumn Nations Series squad.
“I’d like to be available for every game,” he explained. “That is my goal this year, make sure my body is in the best shape it can be heading into every game. That is a big thing for me: I want to be there for the Reds, I want to be available to give my best every game.
“I’m keeping my weight the same at the moment, I’m 84kgs. Before every training session, I have a routine I go through now that me and the physios work through and know what works for me. I spend about 30 to 45 minutes doing that before every on-field session. I’m in a good place at the moment touchwood. It will hopefully continue for the rest of the year.
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“I’ve had quite a few little niggles and injuries over the last couple of years since I have been in Australia, but I have learned to use every opportunity in rehab just to work on other sides of my game and my body especially.
“Whether it is hamstring or calf rehab, like that U20s injury, I was just working on a lot of other things around my legs to make them a bit stronger. Stop leaning on my right hamstring, for example. I take the time in rehab to understand what I need to work on and how to do that.
“I was pretty disappointed with that calf injury just before the U20s. Coming off my debut Super Rugby season I thought I was pretty confident going into it, excited to play some form of international rugby which I hadn’t done before and also meet some lads from the other clubs and see what they were like.
“It was a long rehab with that U20s one. I was very disappointed with how it happened but in the end, I got to come back home to England for four weeks to visit my family at the start of the rehab so that was nice. I was pretty upset over in Australia and knew nothing much was going to happen for the next four or five months; it was good to come back and spend four weeks.
“Then missing out on the spring tour (in November), I was disappointed and that was on me. I just couldn’t get my body right to constantly train week in, week out and perform. But in the end, I got to go to Japan with the Reds, played two good games there, and then joined Australia A and played against England A at The Stoop.
“There are positives. I played three games I might not have played on the spring tour. That’s the way I look at it. I don’t look at the negatives or get too down on missing out on opportunities.”
His optimistic outlook sounds very much like his dad’s when he was in his playing pomp. “He always used to talk about big pressure moments towards the end of games, about just going back to what works for him before and keeping it simple,” explained Lynagh when asked what nuggets from his father’s career had most struck him.
“In the Irish quarter-final in ’91, he sort of said to the boys in the huddle after that Irish try, ‘We are going to get up there, we are going to do this, we are going to run this play, just keep it real simple, it has worked for us and just go through with that’.
“That is something I have taken into my game, just try to keep things simple, sticking to what works for us and not going outside the box in high-pressure moments. That is one of the main stories I have taken from him, from that sort of game.
“I was 12 or so when I really found out the extent of what he accomplished and all that sort of stuff, but he was never one to brag about winning the World Cup or all these other achievements and whatnot.
“If we asked he was more than happy to tell us some stories from that time but he’d never bring it up around the dinner table or anything. It was all pretty held back and that is the type of character my dad is. He doesn’t always talk about rugby off the field; there is a nice balance there which he has found and keeps doing. He has been really good in that sort of respect.”
Your first match day squad for the year ? pic.twitter.com/mbc0bOtaGY
— Queensland Reds (@Reds_Rugby) January 31, 2025
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Glad he's with the Reds. The Wallabies could do with all the talent they can get if he's good enough, plus it would be awesome seeing the Lynagh name again when watching Queensland and hopefully Australia too. Loved watching his old man as a young kiwi fan. That Aussie backline on a dry track was a class act.