Tadhg Beirne on the road not taken to the red of Wales

The Munster man could easily be playing against Ireland this coming Saturday.

Tadhg Beirne at the IRFU High Performance Centre. Pic: ©INPHO/Andrew Conan

Tadhg Beirne lets out a hollow laugh when the question lands. Did he earn above or below £30,000 a year in his time with the Scarlets? As with the contract he was offered back then, the answer is light on embellishment.

“Way below,” he says.

The thought was that Beirne’s time playing in West Wales had been picked dry, that another round of questions on his two years across the Irish Sea might turn out a barren enough harvest in the week leading up to Ireland’s next Six Nations appointment in Cardiff.

Just goes to show again that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. Or an old one.

Beirne would move on from Scarlets after two years and pitch up at Munster where he has played ever since, working his way up from a young player deemed surplus to requirements at Leinster to an Ireland regular and one of the best forwards in world rugby.

That status was reflected again last week when the IRFU announced his signing of a new two-year central contract with the union that will take through to the 2027 World Cup. Fair to say that this latest deal leaves his Scarlets one in the ha’penny place.

The true value of that Welsh interlude was in its role as his sliding doors moment – his last, desperate shot at making it as a rugby pro – and he approached another defining fork in the road just over six months into his time there.

He tells that one best himself.

“I was very close to signing on with Scarlets in the January of my first year. At the time, the person who did the contracts, I won’t name him, he was away skiing so he wasn’t replying to my agent’s emails.

“I got a bit fired up, so I was very close to signing. I probably would have signed in that month or the following month. I wanted them to rip up my second year [of my contract] and re-sign a two or three-year contract.

“At the time, playing for Ireland wasn’t even in the conversation. I had probably just started maybe ten games at that point. I wasn't on a lot of money, let's put it that way, and my second year wasn't looking great either.

“So I was just looking to rip that up and sign on for a couple of years but they weren't willing to do that. Then luckily for me it opened the door then with Munster because the chat of eventually coming back to play for Ireland as well as coming back to play for Munster became a real conversation.

"So yeah, I was probably lucky I didn't end up signing that contract, for sure, because I would probably be in a different place.” 

He could easily be wearing red this coming Saturday.

There were other crucial staging posts and people before this. Of course there were.

He looks back now and knows that his school days in Clongowes under the expert eye of Noel McNamara set him on the right path, and that he might not have ever started walking it had the college not fielded a ‘B’ team for him to make at the time.

Added to that was his stint working under Declan Fassbender at Lansdowne were integral to getting him this far, and the intercession by the club’s director or rugby Mide Ruddock who gave him such a positive reference when Scarlets were doing their due diligence.

But he stills owes Scarlets and Wales so much. Wayne Pivac was head coach at the time when the last-minute decision was made to offer the young Irish forward a chance. It was a shot to nothing, for them and for Beirne. What had either to lose?

The punt was sound. Scarlets won the league in his first year courtesy of a team littered with some of the Welsh’ game’s finest talents. Men like Jon Davies, Scott Williams, Liam Williams and Hadleigh Parkes. Scotland’s John Barclay. And the new Irish phenom.

It brought Beirne on off the field too.

This was new ground for a man who had been cloistered in the contained world of Leinster schools, club and provincial rugby. Someone told him once that it takes three months to settle in a new location and Llanelli “was in the middle of nowhere” as he says himself.

“I didn’t have a car when I first got over. One of the players, Dylan [Evans], he looked after me from the get-go. He drove me everywhere and helped me source a car and everything like that.

“He helped me to get on to two feet over there. Over time, I think I slowly made friends, especially outside of the rugby circle as well. I spent a lot of time with them and once I settled I loved it there.” There were only six months left on his time there when he met Harriet, the Bridgend woman who would become his wife and he would dearly love the opportunity to get back to his old stomping ground to share a few days with old friends.

Tadhg Beirne of Ireland celebrates with interim head coach Simon Easterby after the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Championship match between Scotland and Ireland at Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Beirne isn’t the only revered Irishman in those parts. Quotes from interim Ireland boss and former Scarlets captain and head coach Simon Easterby still adorn some walls in Parc Y Scarlets. Like Munster, they remember their favoured sons.

The game in Wales has slipped inexorably into a state of crisis at various levels. If Warren Gatland’s departure as national head coach last week was the latest nadir at Test level then the regions have been struggling to stay afloat since the dawn of professionalism.

There have been some signs of improvement on that score in the URC this season but the future remains uncertain. It’s a sad state of affairs given the history and tradition in the game, and the love for it that Beirne would have seen first-hand.

"Oh, it's huge. Scarlets are similar in some ways to Munster in terms of the passion they have for the sport. The one thing I found similar when I came to Munster was how passionate the fans were in terms of the club and rugby in general.

“I got that sense in Scarlets as well and just as a nation they are very proud of their achievements and the quality of rugby players they have produced. It's something they live and breathe over there, for sure.

“So I think the struggles they have probably had regionally, particularly over the last while, have been a hot topic for sure, it's probably why we hear so much about it over here because they are so passionate about the sport.” Scarlets made him. There had always been an inner belief that he had what it took to make it in this game, but that began to erode when his opportunity failed to materialize through injury and unfortunate timing and whatever else the gods had in mind for him.

And look at him now.

“I feel pretty lucky to be in the situation I’m in. When I was 23 to 25, this was never really on the cards for me. The opportunities came quite late in my career so you certainly value it a lot more… 

“Well, I wouldn’t say more because I don’t know what it would have been like to win my first cap at 20 but I certainly value it very highly. I want to be in this position as long as I possibly can and keep my body in good shape to continue to perform for my country and my club.”