All eyes back on Billy Burns as out-half takes centre stage

Ireland's Billy Burns. Picture: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

People have been at pains to express their sympathy and support for Billy Burns since the Ulster out-half kicked Ireland’s last chance of an opening Six Nations win long and dead in the Principality Stadium last Sunday.

Will Connors, James Lowe and Garry Ringrose were among the teammates to offer a pat on the back and an arm around the shoulder when they approached at the final whistle. Others have been doing much the same on social media through most of the week.

This being social media, though, some of those seeking to pre-empt a backlash against the player very quickly found themselves the targets of another brand of venom, their intentions thrown back in their faces and labelled as nothing more than virtue signalling.

Somewhere amid all this was your common or garden troll. Delightful.

Cian Healy has been a long and consistent, if semi-regular, presence on Twitter and Instagram but the Ireland prop didn’t add to the noise swirling around the web and he was magnificently blunt when asked if he had shared some private thoughts with Burns this week.

“He doesn’t tell me how to scrum and I don’t tell him how to kick,” he explained when asked if there was anything he could do to help his teammate turn the page and zone in on the business of filling in for Johnny Sexton against France tomorrow.

Burns, he added, is big enough and bold enough to look after himself. If that sounds a tad unreconstructed then there is truth in his associated remark that players are in international squads in the first place because they back themselves.

“I don’t think it’s an issue for us to start worrying about,” he said.

For the Burns family, this must all be painfully familiar territory. It’s a couple of months over two years since Freddie, his older brother, cost Bath a Champions Cup win at home to Toulouse with a disastrous handful of minutes towards the end.

It started with the simplest of penalty kicks that rebounded off a post with the hosts 22-20 down and deteriorated shortly after with Maxime Médard slapping the ball from his hand as he carried the ball across the try line and started to celebrate.

Billy spoke openly and honestly about it shortly afterwards.

“We talk about players having strong characters and stuff and that is what it comes down to,” he told RTÉ. “We are put out on the park, we are elite athletes, and we expect the best from ourselves.

“It is tough. That is the nature of the beast, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m sure Fred will bounce back and get the winner next time.”

He didn’t. Not quite. The older of the siblings converted all five of his conversions a week later but Bath had to settle for a 35-35 draw away to Wasps and he had already hobbled off by the time Alex Davies missed a late penalty to deprive them yet another win.

A couple of months later and Freddie was back at the Ricoh Arena and scoring 19 of Bath’s 24 points in front of over 31,000 fans but he admitted later that the Toulouse episode had left him in a dark place and at an ultimate low.

Andy Farrell doesn’t do social media but hardly needed to be told that Billy Burns has been shipping serious flak online and that more reasoned analysts were questioning his candidacy for this role after a cameo that was pockmarked by a number of glaring errors.

He may or may not be a long-term option for Ireland at ten but you’d want a heart of stone to want anything other than some manner of personal vindication for him this weekend as he steps back in to an unforgiving spotlight.