Tadhg Furlong: 'We feel there is potential left in us'

MENTAL WELLBEING: Ireland and Leinster rugby player Tadhg Furlong, alongside students from Good Counsel College in New Ross, who had teamed up with Rugby Players Ireland for a new content series centered on his journey back to his old school to spotlight the work of the Tackle Your Feelings Schools programme to promote mental wellbeing. Pic: INPHO/Evan Treacy

Ireland’s failure to make it beyond the last eight of the first nine Rugby World Cups has fuelled a deep well of frustration and disappointment, prompted no little mirth/schadenfreude, and fostered a whole host of theories.

One train of thought has it that the IRFU’s player welfare system plays to the national team’s advantage during the course of a normal season but dilutes in importance every four years when everyone else gets their ducks in the same neat row for the big one.

The four southern hemisphere contenders are currently sharpening their swords in the Rugby Championship and the tectonic headaches between club and country that can unsettle England and France don’t apply with squads squared away in pre-season mode.

There’s no way of proving or debunking any of this, but Ireland’s latest crack at the global tournament will be no less interesting for a side ranked world number one after a miraculous year and one facing up to maybe the most daunting schedule yet.

Awaiting them are champions South Africa, a Scotland side desperate to convert potential into product, and a Tongan team buttressed by major stars available thanks to looser eligibility rules. Come through that and its France or New Zealand in a quarter-final.

Piece of cake.

“We went into the last World Cup number one as well but we had a really poor Six Nations, whereas we're coming off the back of a decent run of form now and it feels credible within the group to believe we can push on,” said Tadhg Furlong.

“That's important when you go to a World Cup, that it's built on the right foundations and a solid success in your game, but also the basis of your game. You're confident in it and you believe in it and we're going well.

“That being said, every team goes into a World Cup campaign or a pre-season saying we'll start afresh and we're going to get as fit as we can, spend some proper time together within the environment to really nail down our game.

“We're not different but we feel there's a lot of potential left in us and we're excited about where we can bring our game. If that's good enough, time will tell.” 

Whatever happens down the line, it makes for a long haul. Pre-season kicked off in mid-June but it isn’t just Ireland’s form that is different to 2019 when they were simultaneously the highest ranked team and devoid of all confidence and momentum after a rocky Six Nations.

Every fortnight spent in camp this time around has been followed to date by a week of remote work where the assigned duties have been much lighter. The focus when they’re together has been resolutely on rugby rather than running.

What’s clear is that Andy Farrell’s brains trust are as keen to prepare the players’ minds as much as they are their bodies and Furlong is one of those more experienced heads who is hoping to lean on past excursions.

It’s not the losses to Argentina, Japan and New Zealand that exercise him so much. The squad hasn’t sat down and reflected on any of those reversals this summer, but his involvements in 2015 and 2019 have offered up more general lessons.

He was only a “chap” eight years ago when Joe Schmidt gave him 16 minutes off the bench against Romania at a full Wembley Stadium. The last World Cup brought more game time and a deeper appreciation as to how the whole circus plays out.

There is an understanding that they can’t be performing all the time now and he doesn’t demur when it is put to him that the 14-day break between their pool games against South Africa and Scotland could be of considerable benefit.

“You think of the Six Nations and it’s two weeks on and then a down-week. You get that mental break from rugby. I come down to Wexford to see grass, get fresh air etc. When you are away together for that period of time as a group then how do you stay fresh and stay at it?” 

This focus on mental well-being has spilled over into his involvement with the Rugby Players Ireland TYF Schools programme and a visit to his Good Counsel alma mater where he saw so much of his younger self in the shy and slightly awkward kids he spoke to.

That reticence, to talk and to share, can be a fact of life for people long after they sit their Leaving Cert but there is a regularly stated conviction in the Ireland camp that theirs is an oasis of openness and honesty where seniority is not a prerequisite to be heard.

If this thing is to be successful it will take all of them.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a hundred-capper like a few lads in the squad or it's your first day in,” said Furlong. “There’s no social hierarchy. Does it work for us? It definitely brings the group closer together, leaving those shackles off.

“That’s so important. Rugby wasn’t always like that, that’s the easiest way to say it. To be involved in a group of people who believe in it and who practise it: it’s a very enjoyable place to spend time.”