Furlong happy 'to be a rugby player again' as he prepares for Leicester clash

Tadhg Furlong has three games under his belt after his return from injury and is looking forward to another challenge on when Leinster take on Leicester Tigers in the Champions Cup quarter-final. 

INJURY-RETURN: Leinster's Tadhg Furlong is happy to be a rugby player again after being a "professional rehabber". PIC: ©INPHO/Tom Maher

There isn’t much to tell a passer-by that they are in the vicinity of greatness as they wander past Leinster’s headquarters on the fringes of the UCD campus. There is no blue livery, no billboards of players past or present out front, just a simple plaque next to the front door, the kind you might see outside a dentist's rooms.

It is the halls inside that speak for the history and the heritage. There are trophies in the boardroom, images on the walls and, in the area used for media duties, a spectacular collage of photographs depicting various teams as they celebrate on the pitch after yet another competition bent to their will.

In one corner, the boys of ’09 after that first Heineken Cup win in Murrayfield. In another, the side that won the 2015 PRO12. Somewhere in the middle is the second-string that captured the British and Irish Cup. To the right, one of the women’s teams as they chalk off another interpro series. Trophies here, there and everywhere.

What the club will do when more honours are earned may be a problem – the wall is packed to capacity as is - but the inability to add another ‘European’ title to this sporting tapestry is a motivation that grows with every year that passes since they danced and sang on the Sam Mames turf in Bilbao.

“Sure, it’s what it’s all about,” said Tadhg Furlong this week. “Look behind you, look at all the pictures on the wall, that’s what the club wants to do. We haven’t won Europe since 2018. We’ve got close lots of times. There’s no lack of desire there. It’s on us to go out there and try to prove that we’re good enough to win it.” 

Furlong is actually in mighty form and why wouldn’t he be?

Last week’s defeat of Ulster in the Champions Cup round of 16 followed on from Ireland’s clinching of a Grand Slam at the same Aviva Stadium venue two weeks before. And the man from Wexford got to taste both after being starved of game time for far too long.

His appearance against the northern province was a first for Leinster in four months. The start against Scotland in Murrayfield was a first run of any kind in three. All because of a stubborn calf injury that was damaged again during the pre-Six Nations camp in Portugal.

“It’s great to be a rugby player again,” he said.

Why, what had you been?

“A professional rehabber. I must go back and change Linkedin.” 

The flip side now is that he feels “as fresh as paint” and that can only be a good thing for him, and for club and especially country, as the year turns ever closer towards the World Cup that awaits the far side of the summer holidays.

“It feels like the first time in a long time where we have a good grasp of everything,” he said of his fitness. “There’s a lot of work gone in since probably the 2019 World Cup. I was only just talking to my physio about it: I went there but my body was in absolute bits at it.

“I had so many niggles and I had probably under-trained because I’d gone through a lot of rugby without getting injured. And sometimes when you get injured you get an eight-week/ten-week break, and you start hitting the gym hard.” 

The energy levels were flying when he came back in Edinburgh but the sharpness takes a bit longer. Furlong is still just three games into his return and he can feel that he is still that bit reactive rather than proactive on the pitch. That’s elite rugby, it takes time to catch the beat, and there have already been a few discordant sounds.

The sight of Ireland’s playmaking tighthead flipping at least three passes directly to ground in the first-half against England spoke for the gremlins that affected the team’s play that day. Scotland? That was just a catalogue of the unlikely bordering on the ridiculous.

Trying to digest the reality that Josh van der Flier was throwing into the lineout was the most visible representation of the madcap nature of the day but Cian Healy, a prop, packing down alongside Furlong and Andrew Porter for a scrum was equally bizarre.

“Yeah, and they were laughing,” he said of the Scottish front row. “We were binding up for the first scrum and they were like going to us and going, 'who's hooker?' Looking at three props. Dealers choice!” 

Andy Farrell, as we now know, embraced all the chaos. The Ireland head coach is said to have laughed out loud when he walked into the dressing-room after that bizarre first 40 against the Scots when so much went wrong and his players have echoed his relish for the unexpected.

Gary Keegan’s role in getting inside their heads and rewiring some of the parts was highlighted by plenty of those inside and outside the tent throughout the Six Nations but it isn’t just a case of being told to think in a different manner and following through on that.

Embracing adversity, and refusing to be derailed by misfortune, is not straightforward.

“Ah, it's a hard thing to do, to actually do it,” said Furlong. “You have to stay calm and move on if something bad happened. But it's something we've been working on for two or three years, you know what I mean?

"It's very much a collective thing and some lads will share how they do it, maybe some of the more experienced lads. It's not just trying to pay lip service. Every team in the world wants to do it. We're not where we want to be with it either yet.”