THE IRISH SCRUM-HALF WHO PLAYS PROFESSIONAL RUGBY FOR BENFICA

SITTING IN A slick café in the heart of Lisbon, Elliott Ryan pauses more than once during the conversation as he gets his head around how a unique rugby journey means the Portuguese capital is a place that feels like home.

Not many interviews conclude with a mini-tour but Ryan knows the best spots around the city.

The 25-year-old Bray native plays professional rugby for Benfica.

Yes, the same Benfica you know in football and the club where the legendary Eusébio made his name.

Portuguese legend Rui Costa is president of the football club now and Ryan rubbed shoulders with the Fiorentina and AC Milan legend last year when the rugby section of Sport Lisboa e Benfica celebrated their centenary.

Ryan is in his third season with Benfica, having had spells in Canadian and Spanish rugby since playing for the same Leinster U18 Schools team as current Ireland internationals Ryan Baird and Cian Prendergast in 2016.

The scrum-half lives close to the 64,000-capacity Estádio da Luz, north of Lisbon city centre, has a Portuguese girlfriend, and recently signed a new two-year contract with Benfica that runs until 2027.

Indeed, Ryan is due to become eligible for Portugal that year and despite being in line to qualify just a month before the tournament begins, he now hopes to feature for Os Lobos at the 2027 World Cup.

“At the start here, there was always a bit of chat that I could stay and do it but when I secured the two-year contract, I could really start thinking about the national team,” says Ryan during a fascinating chat in Lisbon. 

“It really dawned on me that if I put my head down, I can go for it.”

That possibility is still a fair way down the road but Ryan is delighted to have signed with Benfica until 2027 having initially been on the more common 10-month deals that cover just one season at a time.

Benfica are one of the top clubs in the Divisão de Honra, also known as the Top 12. The Portuguese league is home to many full-time players like himself and a raft of local players who have other jobs alongside rugby. While some top Portuguese players are professionals in France, most of the national squad play in the Top 12.

Ryan’s days are packed with skills sessions, gym work, coaching, and all the usual routines of a pro, although Benfica train together in the evenings to allow many of the squad to do their day jobs. The Irish scrum-half loves living in Lisbon and being part of such a special sporting organisation.

He has to pinch himself at times when he thinks about how he has ended up here.

Ryan comes from a rugby-loving family and followed a tradition by going from Greystones RFC into secondary school in Presentation College Bray, where things started to get serious.

Ryan was only 15 when he came across now-Ulster head coach Richie Murphy for the first time. As a former Pres Bray student, Murphy remained heavily involved with the school as his sons, Ben and Jack, progressed through the ranks.

Ryan benefitted from Murphy’s expertise in kicking and skills throughout his years at Pres Bray and even spent a week on work experience with Murphy in Ireland camp when he was in fourth year. Murphy brought Ryan to a kicking session with Johnny Sexton, Ian Madigan, Paddy Jackson, and Fergus McFadden at the Aviva Stadium in 2016.

“I got to take one kick to impress the boys,” recalls Ryan. “I nailed it, I was delighted!

Murphy was a major influence and Ryan would love to follow in his footsteps by becoming a full-time skills coach when he finishes playing.

Ben Murphy – who is currently with Ireland in Portugal as a development player – was in the year below Ryan at school and the latter shifted to out-half for his last season with Pres Bray as Murphy slotted in at scrum-half. Mick O’Gara, who now plays for St Mary’s in the AIL, was outside Ryan in midfield.

It was a talented team but they were well beaten by Newbridge in the Leinster Schools Senior Cup, which meant Ryan wasn’t really in the shop window to progress with Leinster.

He had played for the Leinster U18 Schools side – Connacht’s David Hawkshaw and Leinster’s Michael Milne and Scott Penny were also part of that squad – but was left out of the final Leinster U19s group and fell out of the pathway.

“I didn’t really grab the chance, I should have been more focused when I was in Leinster but when I was there, I knew I wanted to be a rugby player,” says Ryan. “I played other sports but rugby was just different.”

He also had the honour of playing for the Ireland U18s Sevens team, helping them to win the European title in 2017.

He still holds the jersey and cap from that trip to Heidelberg, Germany dearly. His mother, Rachel, has Elliott’s cap proudly on display just inside the front door at home in Bray.

Ryan knew he wanted to be a rugby player but he wasn’t sure what he’d do after school until a letter arrived from Trinity College director of rugby Tony Smeeth, well-regarded as a great judge of talent and a key figure in helping the likes of Dan Sheehan and Joe McCarthy to develop.

So Ryan joined a talented crop of Trinity players, helping them to become the All-Ireland U20 champions in 2019.

Smeeth had a huge impact on Ryan as a player in that 2018/19 season.

“His knowledge of rugby is just amazing,” he says. “I was dumb about rugby, I didn’t know systems. He taught me so much and I still have that now.

“That guy is a genius – tactically, why you’re doing things, formations, maps. And the quality of players I was around was unreal.”

Off the pitch, Ryan wasn’t interested in further education, feeling that it just wasn’t for him and that rugby was his future. He decided to move to Old Wesley RFC the following season but just three months later, he had ”itchy feet” as he realised he wasn’t settled in Ireland.

Ryan wanted to see more of the world and found a playing opportunity in Canada through a friend. A two-month stint playing with the Halifax Tars in Nova Scotia on the eastern coast. He hoped it might lead to a shot with the Toronto Arrows in Major League Rugby but had to return to Ireland due to the lack of a visa.

“As I came back from Canada, I realised I enjoyed being abroad playing rugby,” says Ryan. “I could feel that I just wasn’t going to be settled in Ireland.”

He began working with his uncle in IT but was hoping to find another rugby opportunity when a random message landed on his Messenger app one Tuesday night at 10pm.

It was a French agent asking if Ryan wanted to go and play in Spain for a club called Ordizia. This agent had been given a nudge about the young Irish scrum-half and made the connection.

Ryan quickly Googled the tiny Basque town of Ordizia but knew his answer as soon as he first read the message. He didn’t even tell his family, signed the deal, and began preparing for his move in the summer of 2021. This was a big step into the unknown.

“I started on €900 a month,” says Ryan, who suddenly had to cook, clean, and organise everything for himself as he lived away from home for the first extended period of his life.

“These things help you grow up and mature, doing it by yourself. I couldn’t bank on my mum anymore. That’s the great thing about going abroad, you’ve got to do it yourself.

“I didn’t feel nervous or scared, not once. I enjoy getting outdoors and meeting new people. I didn’t speak a word of Spanish or Basque but I’d go the local café and order a coffee, sit there and meet other people, talk to them.”

He liked being able to call himself a professional rugby player and it made him realise he needed to take his craft more seriously by being early for every meeting, training as hard as possible, and being disciplined.

Ordizia is a town of just 10,000 people an hour from Bilbao in the north of Spain but they love their rugby. Ryan was one of six full-time players, including some who had spent time with Biarritz, Argentina 7s, the Stormers, and the Cheetahs.

The majority of the squad were locals with other jobs but Ryan was impressed with their talent and says the physicality of the División de Honor de Rugby in Spain was high. He arrived weighing 69kg and clocked in at 81kg by the end of the season, having force-fed himself in order to deal with the big hits.

Oridizia had a great season, reaching the Spanish final for the first time in a decade, but came up short.

“We arrived back after losing but the town gave us a parade,” says Ryan. “You could see what it meant to them, how proud they are of their club.”

But Ryan says the offer to extend for another season wasn’t financially strong enough so he enlisted a rugby agent to find a new opportunity for him while he went back to Halifax in Canada for another summer of playing and coaching there.

The agent soon called Ryan and told him Benfica needed a scrum-half ahead of the 2022/23 season.

“I said, ‘Benfica Benfica? The football club?’ I was like, ‘Wow.’

He didn’t take long to accept the offer and having been warmly welcomed to Lisbon, reckons he felt settled within a week of arriving. Ryan moved in with Kiwi centre Hayden Hann and his partner, making the adjustment much easier. 

After two 10-month contracts, Ryan’s business-savvy uncle, Michael Murray, was a key figure in helping him to seal the security of his two-year deal. 

Benfica lost in the league semi-finals in Ryan’s first two seasons with the club and despite a good opening half of the current campaign, there are higher expectations in what is a big sporting organisation.

“If someone in Lisbon knows you’re with Benfica, they really react,” says Ryan of the club’s standing.

“Benfica is huge. You really need to win. That’s the mentality of the whole club – win, win, win. You’ve got to be aware of that. But once you’re part of the club, they take care of you.”

While the football club is a separate entity with a sprawling training campus across the water south of Lisbon, Benfica’s rugby team benefit from some of the organisation’s top-class facilities in the Estádio da Luz.

They play their home games at the University of Lisbon and are doing their best to grow the fanbase at a time when rugby has increased in popularity after Portugal’s exploits at the 2023 World Cup.

Ryan hopes to get involved with the Lusitanos representative side who play in the Rugby Europe Super Cup later this year and the aim of qualifying for Portugal in 2027 looms in the background.

He is coaching the Benfica U16s and is keen to progress through his coaching qualifications as his longer-term plan in rugby.

He believes lots of other young Irish players should look further afield if they don’t get into the provincial academies or are released early on. His advice is to pack the bags, get on a plane, and use rugby to meet new people, learn a language, and have amazing life experiences – even if only for a season or two.

“I’m doing well,” he says. “I have money in my bank account, I’m healthy, I’m fit, I’m enjoying life, I get to wake up in the sun and eat a pastel de nata! I’m very lucky and grateful for what I have here, I can really appreciate that.

“My family miss me. My mum and my nan miss me the most. I have an older brother and sister, I’m the baby as they say. It was a very Irish thing at the start where they were telling me to give up the rugby and get a job.

“But as I’ve continued, they can see it’s going well and they’re really happy for me to be doing something I love.”

2025-01-26T08:40:54Z