Not exactly the new kid on the block

Andy Farrell is not exactly the new kid on the Six Nations block but Ireland’s new head coach has never been more excited by the challenge he faces in his debut championship as the main man.

The 44-year-old has been in elite professional sport since he was 16 with Wigan. He went on to captain the Rugby League giants to huge success.

As a coach, too, he has been front and centre but not since he guided Saracens to their first Premiership title in 2011 has he been the man pulling the strings.

There is authority and a wealth of experience in Test rugby that the Englishman brings to the party but the last decade has seen that expressed at the right hand of the decision maker, be it Stuart Lancaster with England, Warren Gatland on British & Irish Lions or most recently Joe Schmidt as Ireland’s defence coach.

So while the billing heading into the upcoming 2020 Guinness Six Nations has Farrell up in lights as one of four new head coaches in the championship, the feeling from within the man’s chest is more nuanced.

“Did he feel like a new boy, or not?” Farrell was asked yesterday as he attended the competition launch in London’s docklands yesterday, suited and booted for once alongside his tracksuited captain Johnny Sexton.

“I understand the question,” came the reply, “I do and I don’t.

I’m excited about taking the team in the direction I want to take them with the inclusiveness of the senior players and the coaches etc but yeah, I’ve been in professional sport for 28 years now and I feel that I’ve been waiting for this day to arrive but at the same time I feel like I’ve been here quite a while.

“So it’s a bit of a different feeling and that’s why I understand the question. I’m excited to be here, I am. Totally excited, because of the group that we’ve got and how we’re going to push forward as a team excites me as well.

“I’m proud to be sat here, I am, and that’s the buzz that gets me out of bed every morning and the buzz has never been better at this moment in time.”

In succeeding Joe Schmidt last autumn, Farrell takes the reins from the most successful head coach in Irish Rugby history, despite the disappointing conclusion to the New Zealander’s six-and-a-half-year tenure at the hands of the All Blacks.

As a part of Schmidt’s coaching team for the last three of those years, Farrell knows only too well what a hard act he will be to follow, particularly in the Six Nations, a competition which his predecessor won in 2014, ’15 and ’18, the year Ireland also completed the Grand Slam.

He also recognises the mistake he would make if he were to turn his back completely on the Schmidt formula that brought so much success to the national team and took them to the number one ranking in the world.

“We did an unbelievable amount of really outstanding things under Joe Schmidt and I’d be absolutely foolish not to harness those bits,” Farrell said.

“Do I have an idea as to where I take a few bits of the game under Joe and make it how I want to make it, of course I do. We’ll see how we progress with that across the way.”

As a challenge, Farrell ranks it as “right up there” among those he has faced throughout his professional career and he would have it no other way.

“Challenges are what float my boat, really, I love a challenge,” he insisted. “I’ve worked hard to get here and I want to meet that challenge head on and enjoy it as well.”

Ireland face Scotland in their first game of the Farrell era, at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium in nine days and the head coach is hoping to have some surprises in store for a familiar opponent eager to avenge their heavy World Cup pool defeat to the men in green in Yokohama last October.

“Yeah, we hope so, we hope that we get the competition off to a decent start but know the threats that are coming our way as well.

We have to be thinking hard and fast about ourselves because it is a little bit of a fresh start, a bit of a new feeling within camp etc, there’ll be a bigger focus on ourselves in the next 10 days because we’ve got to get across our work and get ready for a performance at the weekend.

“But we’ll be looking at the Scottish team and history tells us that Gregor (Townsend, Farrell’s opposite number) always has something up his sleeve himself, so we’ll be expecting the unexpected from Scotland as well.”