Today more of a trial than a test for Jack Carty

Rugby skeptics love to nitpick about ‘Test’ matches.

Even Ireland’s historic defeats of New Zealand in Chicago and Dublin had their value queried by those who grind their teeth at talk of ‘Rugby Country’ and scoff at the all-too-familiar sight of an Irish team scurrying for home after another World Cup quarter-final defeat.

Even rugby nuts have to admit that games like today’s in Cardiff are little more than glorified run-throughs. ‘Warm-up’ is the unofficial moniker.

There’s no getting away from the diluted nature of it all but there is another word you could use to the heighten the tension and the stakes. Trial. Not to watch, though that does hold true at times, but to play in.

The result may not matter but some performances could hardly be weighted with more meaning.

Jack Carty turns 27 today. He has spent a long time proving himself but it is an age since he faced a test — with a small ‘t’ — like this.

Seven years, by his own reckoning, when he was one among a blue-chip crop of out-halves in contention for duties at that year’s Junior World Cup.

Paddy Jackson, who made an Ulster debut 16 months earlier and found himself picked by Declan Kidney the following February, had left underage rugby behind.

That shortened the queue but still left Carty, JJ Hanrahan and Cathal Marsh vying for a place on the plane to South Africa.

“I just managed to creep in at the tail end for the World Cup but I didn’t get capped during the Six Nations, so it’s kind of been a similar story,” he says.

#TeamOfUs

Here's the Ireland team to play Wales on Saturday afternoon.#ShoulderToShoulder #WALvIRE pic.twitter.com/4cRDt0cYLp

— Irish Rugby (@IrishRugby) August 29, 2019

Carty did make three appearances for Joe Schmidt this spring, so he’s ahead on that score, but he will be doing well to match the four appearances he earned in South Africa as a teenager with a similar workload in Japan. Not that he doesn’t feel ready should it happen.

Carty had an inkling Schmidt was going to give him the nod for this afternoon from early in the week but it is excitement rather than nerves that have steered him through most of the run-up to kick-off, even if he expected to be “bricking it” come the hour.

The tentative player that first tiptoed into the Ireland camp has been supplanted by a man who has been more comfortable in his skin as a player the more his 20s moved on and one who now feels equally at home in the surroundings of the palatial Carton House as he would on the windswept back pitch at the Sportsground.

He knows what is at stake here.

“It’s strange, for the whole summer and pre-season you are thinking about that 31-man squad and then, when this week comes along, even though it’s like a couple of days away, you manage to forget about it because you are thinking about playing at the weekend.

So it is nearly a nice distraction that I have a game at the weekend and I don’t have to worry about what happens after that. I’m just fully focused on giving my best performance for the team. If we can deliver a performance after last week, it will help me and it will help everyone else.

He spoke again this week about how he has left his inconsistent days behind. The arrival in Galway of Andy Friend has been good for him, the new head coach giving the Westmeath man the licence to play and constantly topping up his reserves of self-belief. Carty has helped himself too.

He has seen improvements in everything from his kicking to his tackling and his game management.

Patience has played another part. He thinks back to his 21st birthday in Athlone and how, great a night that it was, he had been hoping to be on duties with the Connacht seniors instead.

Robbie Henshaw and Kieran Marion had made that leap up to the senior ranks at 18, 19 but it took him longer to follow and, now too, at international level.

All this informs the man and the player he has become.

“Looking back now it’s probably something that put me in the position where I am in today. That period of time when I didn’t play in the run-in in the PRO12 as it was at the time, that could have been the making of where I am today. You have to look back at things with a pinch of salt because you never know what way it’s going to go.”

Maybe the stars are aligning for him. Finally. Schmidt was full of praise this week for the impact he made at the back end of the Six Nations when his seven-minute cameo against the Welsh was a rare spark of positivity on an awful day for the team. A more experimental home side awaits today but the test remains much the same.

“Wales play really, direct. So, first and foremost, I’ve to make sure I get my body out in front of tackles and in front of men. Putting in tackles, which is something I was happy with last week, so I’ve to continue that.

“The way they play with their backfield, space will be at a premium. So try to find space wherever that may be. Then just to not burn forwards’ diesel and find space in the backfield, alleviate pressure when I can.”

Shine today, after the storm clouds that have gathered over the team in 2019, and Carty can ease the pressure on everybody.