Kieran Treadwell learning to enjoy the return journey with Ireland

Treadwell was drafted back into the Ireland fold this year.

Wed, 09 Nov, 2022 - 08:09

Brendan O'Brien

Professional rugby players want for very little. Their days are mapped out and supervised by a small army of staff who have spent years studying and working in their specialised fields.

They work under coaches dedicated to different departments of the game and benefit from strength and conditioning gurus to hone their bodies, nutritionists to fuel them and sports psychologists to work on the six inches between the ears.

It's that last area that can separate the best from the rest.

Ask Kieran Treadwell why he has been drafted back into Test rugby in 2022, after an absence of over four years, and he will reference most of those boxes, the culture of team environments and all the rest of it.

Crucial as all those have been, the difference between then and now is in the manner in which he focuses on the journey rather than the destination, and the spur for that sea-change in approach came from someone outside of rugby’s inner circle.

Hi fiancé Beth, to be exact.

"She would text before each of my games. ‘Good luck’, or whatever. Once she texted, ‘Go out and enjoy yourself’ and I remember looking at it and thinking, ‘yeah, I will’. That was the trigger for me.

“Obviously there is the pressure of a big occasion but you have to remember to go out there and enjoy it and play the best rugby you can, because you’ve been selected for a reason. Enjoy it and that’s when I play my best rugby.”

If that sounds like an all-too-simple eureka moment then Treadwell nods when it is suggested that he was clearly ready to make that change in the first place. His fiancé's text message was a missive delivered to an open door.

“Yeah. As I said, it was a refreshing phrase.” Andy Farrell clearly likes what he sees in his demeanour and in his delivery. Treadwell managed three games under Schmidt in 2017 before falling out of favour but he has half-a-dozen more caps to his name since returning to the field against Italy in February.

The Ireland head coach trusted him off the bench in all three summer Tests against New Zealand and again against South Africa last Saturday. A second start in what will be his tenth appearance seems a given when a very different Ireland side starts against Fiji.

“The changes shouldn't really matter, to be honest. The changes should be seamless.”