Tommy Martin: Has Andy Farrell's fun factory set Ireland free?

It is very difficult to imagine a Mexican wave taking place in a Six Nations match under Joe Schmidt

Thu, 10 Feb, 2022 - 06:00

A funny thing happened on Ireland’s way to victory over Wales last Saturday. Around the hour mark, with the benches emptying and the game, if not quite dead, then certainly flopping about on the riverbank, a Mexican wave started.

And not just any Mexican wave either. This one was long and disturbingly persistent. It lasted beyond what might be excused as a harmless diversion during a stoppage in play. The teams had resumed pummelling each other and still the Mexican wave continued, like a big, stupid farmyard animal trampling the flowerbeds.

A Mexican wave is fun in the way a conga line at a wedding is fun, by which I mean oppressive and judgemental like a Stalinist show trial. Refusal to join in a Mexican wave is viewed as an act of quisling betrayal by those caught up in the hilarity. Boos are directed at small sections of conscientious objectors, the unspoken understanding being that if we all look like eejits then none of us will look like eejits.

Still, while a Mexican wave is not everyone’s idea of fun, it is, at least, some people’s idea of fun. And fun, even in this contested form, is not something you would always have associated with watching the Irish rugby team.

It is very difficult, for example, to imagine a Mexican wave taking place in a Six Nations match under Joe Schmidt, who exercised such a headmasterly grip on the Irish rugby psyche. Under Schmidt, even the crowd felt like they needed to stick to the process. With the players stressed out about complex set-piece calls and first-phase starter plays, spontaneous outbreaks of galootery would have seemed inappropriate.

Indeed, Saturday’s incidence of what can loosely be described as ‘fun’ is a challenge to the entire Six Nations brand. The tournament’s marketing palate is all brooding charcoal and ominous cello, suggesting a Tolkienesque journey through steel and fire. There’s nothing in there about throwing your hands in the air and going “Wahey!”

But, it appears, such is life in the Andy Farrell fun factory. While he cannot be held responsible for displays of mass frivolity, the Ireland head coach has clearly lightened the overall tone. There are undoubtedly many complicated and well-rehearsed moving parts within a performance like Ireland produced last weekend, but the general impression was of a team, frankly, having a lot of fun.

That’s not to say that the successes under Schmidt were not enjoyable for players and fans alike, but they felt more like frightening displays of martial power, with all the joie de vivre of a Roman legion crushing a provincial revolt. Under Farrell, everything feels looser, more expressive. It is as if Ireland, having made their name banging out rock ‘n’ roll standards, have grown beards and started twanging the sitar.

The overall vibe seems cheerier. Peter O’Mahony’s general demeanour has always put one in mind of the famous line about Frank Stapleton — that he would smile first thing in the morning just to get it out of the way for the day — but speaking after the success of the November internationals, the Munster flanker was gaiety personified.

“I speak for the group in saying that it’s been an incredibly enjoyable month,” O’Mahony told the media after the concluding win over Argentina. “It’s just been great fun. The cohesion that we have built has brought us to that next level of friendship which is so important... I have loved the month. It’s probably the most enjoyable one of my career so far. It’s been great.”

Talk of fun and friendship makes the Ireland set-up sound more like teen summer camp than the brutal coalface of international rugby, but it suggests a collegiate decency at the heart of Farrell’s philosophy. Sift through player quotes after the victory over Wales and you find references to ‘freedom’ and ‘playing with heads up’. There are good, practical reasons for this — being less structured and predictable makes Ireland harder to defend against — but it also, on a basic human level, seems a hell of a lot more of a laugh.

Take the Irish forwards, whose ball-slinging virtuosity is key to Ireland’s shift towards sexy rugby. They passed the ball a combined 38 times against Wales on Saturday, compared to 21 in the corresponding fixture in the 2018 Grand Slam year. Or centre Bundee Aki, who passed 15 times on Saturday compared to just four back in the 2018 game. How much more fulfilling to be thought of as more than just a human JCB — to be told that you too shall go to the ball?

Then there’s the conscription of Connacht winger Mack Hansen, who Farrell described, positively, as an “untidy” winger, able to pop up in unexpected places to dangerous effect. Bearded and swaggering, even Hansen’s name suggests a guitar dude in leather pants brought in to provide the licks for a funky new sound.

And no-one looks to be enjoying themselves more than Johnny Sexton, Schmidt’s erstwhile on-field nuncio, whose write-the-theme-tune, sing-the-theme tune role always made him the target for premeditated opposition brutality. Because there are threats popping up from everywhere now, even the lumpen ranks of the forwards, simply smashing up Sexton is no longer a sufficient defensive strategy. In terms of pure playmaking, the Irish captain has been gifted precious seconds, but in a wider sense, frankly, it has taken years off him.

And so to Saturday. Ireland’s last visit to Paris was for the delayed 2020 Six Nations decider, when a substituted Sexton walked off the pitch shaking his head in dismay, his frustration interpreted, probably unfairly, as a stinging judgement on Farrell’s fledgling stewardship. If that unhappy night in an empty Stade de France was the grim nadir of the post-Schmidt hangover, Saturday’s game gives Ireland a chance to try out fun-time Farrell’s feelgood factor against the team who own the patent on rugby flair.

It should be everyone’s idea of fun.