It’s fair to say that Warrington Wolves have one of the finest young talents, if not the finest, in Super League in the form of Ewan Irwin, however, that talent has to match up with attitude, grit and mentality, and club director of rugby Gary Chambers has now revealed the moment he realised that the teen sensation had all of the above in abundance.
Still only 18, Irwin has made a total of 11 Super League appearances but as has been said by pundits such as Sam Tomkins, the teenager plays as if he’s had 111 games at the highest level, such is his composure.
His debut as 18th man last April against St Helens saw him take to the field as a fresh-faced 17-year-old and really catch the eye but it was in his third appearance of the year, the round 27 game against Hull KR when Warrington were severely understrength, that Gary Chambers has claimed he knew exactly what Irwin was all about.
“The big test for me was if you remember to last year when he played Hull KR, he got a real bad cut just before half time,” Chambers explained on Sky Sports’ The Bench podcast.
“It was one that swells and then it split and they’re a pain to stitch with all the fluid dripping. So at half-time, the doctor is plowing into him and you can see he’s gripping the bench really hard.
“He stood up and he’s got these stitches in his eye and I’m thinking ‘this is his next step, let’s see how he goes’. He disappeared into the toilet and he came back out, grabbed Sam and went ‘do not take me off this field’.
“That was the thing with him, that was the one and another step.”
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Warrington Wolves director talks Ewan Irwin
Wire came incredibly close to spoiling the Hull KR party and denying them a League Leaders Shield but for Chambers, it wasn’t about the result but more so about the fact the club’s young star had proven what he is truly about.
Reacting to that tale, Sam Tomkins said: “That would have been a test for him.
“I don’t think every young player takes that chance. When you come into first team you have an idea of how tough it is and it is very tough, until you have to play hurt.
“That was probably his first experience of being really hurt and having to still go out and do your job and risk getting hurt again, that would have been a massive test for him.”
Chambers also revealed exactly how Irwin was discovered, explaining that Ewan has an older brother named Pat who has recently been playing in the Queensland Cup down under.
He said: “When we were running camps, Ewan came down and it was one of them where you were like ‘is anybody seeing what I’m seeing here?’”
Andrew Johns had a similar assessment when Warrington’s academy went to play in Australia with the NRL legend hailing Irwin, something that prompted Chambers to attempt to take the attention off Irwin for the good of his development.
Chambers revealed: “At a time, I sort of went to our media team and said ‘just back off now, everybody knows about him, Andrew Johns really likes him so just let him develop now’.
“The unbelievable thing about him is he’s just the quietest lad you’ve ever seen, dead down to earth, studies the game like I’ve never seen, you can’t get him off the field, polite, he’s got everything and he’s just a good role model for our young people who are coming through.”
