Ireland remain next-job focused as Six Nations looms

'Honestly, the disappointment or all the work that went in, it's so irrelevant. It's called life, isn't it? You get on, move on, try and evolve, and get excited about what's next,' said Farrell.

FULL-FOCUS: Head coach Andy Farrell. Pic: Dan Sheridan, Inpho

Andy Farrell is in a hurry.

With Ireland's 2024 Guinness Six Nations kicking off against France in Marseille on Friday night, the head coach is working with a familiar core of players with which he hopes to get life after Johnny Sexton up and running in double-quick time.

As the 2023 Grand Slam winners embark on Day 107 of the post-Sexton era today, continuing their preparations for the visit to Stade Velodrome at their warm-weather training camp at Quinta do Lago on Portugal's Algarve, Farrell will have expected a fresh crop of leaders to have already emerged behind new captain Peter O’Mahony and for his squad to have filled the considerable gap which appeared with the retirement of the 38-year-old Sexton following his 118th and final appearance in an Ireland jersey.

That last hurrah of course, came with defeat and a narrow World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand and Farrell has been urging his players to move on ever since.

The Ireland boss certainly has. He was otherwise engaged as World Rugby named him their Coach of the Year for 2023 at their awards gala in Paris in October, a fortnight after his side were ousted at Stade de France, and was earlier this month appointed head coach to lead the 2025 British and Irish Lions Tour to Australia.

That makes the upcoming championship his final Six Nations before he temporarily steps away this December 1 for a six-month lead-in to doing battle with new Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt. And he bristled at the suggestion he had taken time away from his IRFU post to digest the World Cup fallout.

"I didn't take any time off," Farrell said.

"I'm feeling great, honestly. If you can't get excited about what's coming up, you shouldn't be in this job. Honestly, the disappointment or all the work that went in, it's so irrelevant. It's called life, isn't it? You get on, move on, try and evolve, and get excited about what's next."

The World Cup review was concluded swiftly by the Ireland coaching staff when the squad reconvened last Monday in Dublin and it has remained next-job focused, the exit of Sexton was dealt with pragmatically.

"There will be a void, obviously, but it's there..." Farrell said at last week's Six Nations launch in Dublin, before joining his squad at the IRFU High Performance Centre at Abbotstown.

"I've got my first meeting at 4.30 or whatever and after that people start filling it straight away and making sure that they fully understand what we're about. That it's their team and it's not just the coaches trying to tell them what to do. It's their team.

"Of course they've got experience of that and they understand what that looks like, but some responsibilities might be a little bit different as in trying to take that gap and going, 'you know what? I'm going to put myself out there whether it be a certain position or the social committee or the leadership committee or whatever.

"We want to see people stepping up all the time so hopefully we get back up and running in that regard pretty quickly... we move on."

That need for focus in a high-intensity training camp is emphasised by Farrell's decision to name just 34 players in the Six Nations squad, all of them capped, plus three untested training panellists, Munster prop Oli Jager, Leinster fly-half Sam Prendergast and the now injured Munster lock Tom Ahern, who was last week replaced by the already blooded Connacht back rower Cian Prendergast.

Farrell outlined the logic.

'I liked the fact that the smaller group (33) that we had at the World Cup, there's that little bit more detail that you can get into individuals but not really because of that, it's because I actually didn't count the numbers at all really.

"I just look at what we have available and what's going to complement each other and allowing those three lads to come in and have a bit of space to try and get some time within training to be able to show the rest of the people what they've got and for us to be able to get a look at them.

"For example, if you're going to pick 38 and we took three of them away to Portugal with us, how much of a chance would they have had to be able to put their best foot forward.

“If you'd picked 38 and took three of them away with us to Portugal, who much of a chance would they have had to be able to put their best foot forward? More than anything, it's the feel of it all coming together."