Stethoscopes, scrubs and surgical masks are not the typical clothing that you would expect to see in a rugby player’s kitbag but for medical student and Ulster second row Charlie Irvine, it is normal attire.<\/p>\n
Irvine is a fourth-year medical student at Queen’s University Belfast, balancing his studies with a full-time rugby career at Affidea Stadium.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old signed a development deal at Ulster last season to keep him at the province until at least 2027 and, when available, also captains his university rugby team.<\/p>\n
“I have gone part-time and I am in there [university] two or three days, living as a normal student I suppose,” Irvine told BBC Sport NI.<\/p>\n
“When I am in, I am in the wards or a clinic and that is all I am thinking about. When you have tough training or a tough weekend, it helps getting out of the rugby sphere to not worry about it at all.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a whirlwind two months. [This week’s] day off from rugby I think I am in a labour ward all day, it is a bit of a change of scenery from out on the pitch.”<\/p>\n
Irvine started playing rugby at Lisburn Rugby Club and represented Wallace High School before joining the Ulster academy.<\/p>\n
He made his senior debut for Ulster against Bulls last season in what was his sole appearance of the campaign but Saturday’s game against Cardiff in the United Rugby Championship [URC] will be his sixth of 2025-26. <\/p>\n
“The Benetton game in November I was 24th man. I was due to play for Queen’s the next day, so my mindset was to do the warm-up, go home and get ready for the match the next day,” Irvine said.<\/p>\n
“Hendy [Iain Henderson] went down in the warm-up unfortunately and I went ‘flip, I am now on the bench’, then [Matthew] Dalton went down five, 10 minutes in and I thought ‘flip, I am on the pitch now’.<\/p>\n
“In 20 minutes, I went from going home to put my feet up, getting food and going to bed early to you’re on the pitch in front of a full Affidea. It was pretty special.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stethoscopes, scrubs and surgical masks are not the typical clothing that you would expect to see in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-448140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}