Tommy Martin: Blessed are the Bealhams, for they shall inherit the earth 

MANNING THE BARRICADES: Finlay Bealham during Ireland rugby squad training at IRFU High Performance Centre at the Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Let’s hear it for the Finlay Bealhams. Three cheers for the unlikely stars, the unheralded ones, the unexpected saviours. All hail the humble heroes. The boy with the finger in the dyke, the little ships at Dunkirk, Paul Revere riding through the night.

Upon hearing that Tadhg Furlong had been pulled up lame at half-time in Saturday’s win over South Africa, most Irish rugby fans became gripped with a sense of impending doom. After all, no preview of the Springboks’ visit did not have the Leinster tighthead as key to an Irish victory.

Certainly, not one forecast of glory for Andy Farrell’s men was predicated on Furlong having his feet up halfway through the contest. There was no rugby correspondent whose pre-match copy proclaimed, ‘Bring on Bealham — the earlier the better!’.

This was nothing personal against Bealham, a doughty servant for over six years and 26 hard-earned Ireland caps. The Canberra-born front row has even chipped in with three tries, the most recent of them when he emerged from a heap of flesh at Twickenham in March with the ball and the bonus point.

For all but four of those caps he trundled on only when the men he was understudying had puffed themselves out. Only Japan, Georgia, USA and Canada have borne the brunt of Bealham from the start. No shame in that — this is international rugby and Ireland are at, or very near, the top of it. Being the man after the man is not too shabby.

The problem is that the man is THE MAN. Furlong is the Miles Davis of tighthead props: taking the position into daring new places, experimenting with form, freestyling wildly over the basic chord structures. Watching him in broken play pirouetting his eighteen-and-a-half stone bulk and then delivering gossamer offloads reminds you of those dancing JCBs that perform at agricultural shows, but a dancing JCB that’s also brilliant at the basics of digging holes.

It might be a stretch to say that Tadhg Furlong has made tighthead prop sexy, but if they were to release a calendar called ‘Scrum Hunks — 2023’s Hottest Tighthead Props’ then he would definitely be there in July, posing suggestively in distressed dungarees.

So, when that great meaty ankle of his took a blow shortly before half-time last Saturday, things didn’t look good. Given that South Africa’s modus operandi is to mill the bejesus out of the opposing forwards and then, halfway through the match, bring on another bunch of guys to mill the bejesus out of whatever husks of humanity remain, Furlong’s absence in such a key position would surely be felt.

As the second half was about to begin, the Virgin Media studio struck a tone of contained terror, the mood what you’d imagine it would be like in a NASA control tower that has just spotted a giant meteorite headed toward the earth. “Benches all important here, Matt,” said Joe Molloy over a shot of Bealham. 

“Ireland can win this,” Williams replied, “but they’ve gotta maintain their scrum and lineout, they’ve gotta maintain their set play.”

The moment of truth came just two minutes later, when Ireland had a scrum just inside their own half. The camera zoomed in on Bealham and Alan Quinlan on commentary said how the Springboks would have targeted this moment. The inference was that the apex predator had spotted the runt of the herd and was going in for the kill.

Steven Kitshoff, Bealham’s opposite number, lined up the target. The first attempt was a scraggly mess. Go again. This time six muscular necks locked in perfect sweaty embrace. On the near side, both Kitshoff and Bealham were bent over like swans cleaning their plumage. A shrill blast of referee Nika Amashukeli’s whistle.

A moment of cinematic tension. Bealham looked up, his head now pointing fully towards the ground. He would have seen the Georgian referee upside down, framed by the stadium lights, everything slowed down and heightened. What way is his arm pointing? A roar, deep and rumbling around the Aviva. Penalty to Ireland. The rest is history.

Three minutes later Josh Van Der Flier was spirited over the line and Ireland were making their burst for home. Bealham was at the back of that maul, helping to spin it like a Shane Warne leg break bamboozler. He would get penalised in a scrum a little later when South Africa sent on Ox Nche to exact vengeance, but his job was to hold the line, to man the barricades, to break even and it was a job well done.

Being an Irish rugby player is not as glamorous as it used to be in the single nickname heyday of Rog, Drico, Shaggy and all the rest. But the game here still has its celebrity cohort, those marketable faces and household names.

Bealham is not one of those. Say the name Finlay Bealham to someone outside of the core rugby fanbase, to that general audience who only watch the biggest Ireland games, and they might think you are talking about a firm of Edinburgh solicitors. Show them a picture and some might suggest an actor from The Vikings, one of the ones in the background casually holding the severed head of an Anglo-Saxon monk.

The point is that most of us are not Johnny Sextons or even Tadhg Furlongs. The way we live today is to think of ourselves as brands, curated and projected, stars of our own reality show, champions of our truth. But really, very few of us are calling the plays or pointing to the posts. 

Mostly we are holding tackle bags or heaving others into position, small parts of a greater machine, holding on for dear life in the test match sturm und drang, our heads upside down in the middle of the scrum when the whistle blows, hoping to get the benefit of the doubt.

Blessed are the Bealhams, for they shall inherit the earth.