Players must adapt to the Lions way or get left behind, insists Beirne

British & Irish Lions lock/back-row Tadhg Beirne. Pic: Billy Stickland/Inpho

This isn’t the first time that Tadhg Beirne has worn red in the Aviva Stadium, but the crest and the shade caught the eye here. 

The digs this week are the same as Ireland’s, though plenty of the faces around the halls and in team meetings are new.

So much this last week or so, as the British and Irish Lions set out their stall for Friday’s opening game of the 2025 campaign against Argentina at the home of Irish rugby, is bordering on familiar while still managing to be strikingly different.

“The lead-up to the game is going to feel very similar,” said the Munster forward. “Doing all the same things that we would do in Irish camp, going to the same coffee places, or preparing for the game the same way.

“A lot of it is similar but different at the same time because you're not used to being around the players that you would be used to. It makes it all the more enjoyable, though.” 

It’s four years since Beirne got his first taste of the Lions. That was a ghost of a tour played out in an empty stadium in South Africa at the height of the pandemic and it sucked the colour out of sport and life as we knew it.

Even the rugby was mostly grey. When Beirne and Jack Conan chatted and allowed themselves to peek forward to the Lions in the middle of the Six Nations, it was the chance to experience the full panoply of emotions and experiences that got them dreaming.

And he’s not the same player as 2021, either.

Beirne jokes about how he has “gotten slower, put on a bit of weight” since the last excursion, but it’s worth remembering that he had started that season as a squad member with Ireland before he got, and took, his chance in the Six Nations.

All of a sudden, he was a Lion.

“I was kind of playing as a six more than a second row back then. I've been between both over the last couple of years, but if anything, I've probably become more settled in the second row spot over the last couple of months, particularly with Munster.

“I like to think, or I've convinced myself anyway, that my game has improved a bit over the last four years, just in terms of understanding the game and just being a smarter rugby player, and particularly in the second row because I've been playing there a lot more, what's expected of me in in in that role, whether it be for Munster or Ireland.” 

An even better Beirne is an exciting prospect.

He got no more than 18 Test minutes against the Boks in 2021 but that exposure to this most rarified of levels will, barring injury, be massively increased in Australia, and his importance to the squad off the park as well as on won’t be minimal either.

Andy Farrell spoke on Wednesday of how the players have been busy adapting to a new system while, in the next breath, expressing the desire to see cohesion and connections when they put it all together for the first time against the Pumas.

The suggestion that these two dynamics might not be compatible so soon was shut down immediately by the 33-year-old who went on to lay down the sort of marker for the squad that would have had his head coach positively purring.

“Why wouldn't they be compatible?” Beirne asked. 

“We're talking about the best of the best. The expectation we would have of each other is that you can adapt to any system you're given. That's the challenge laid in front of us. That's the challenge of being a Lion. Every four years, there's going to be a new system.

“The coach is going to want to play a certain way. If you want to be a Lion, you're going to have to adapt. You'll get left behind. I would say if you came in here thinking that you could just play your club system or your country system, then you're probably already at a loss.” 

The trick with the Lions is to find that balance between this manner of hard-edged intensity and the sort of levity that you need when holed up in hotels, airplanes and dressing-rooms with the same bunch of people for weeks on end.

Johnny Sexton, of all people, provided some of the latter this week when he joked about purchasing a Munster season ticket in the wake of Leinster’s signing of Rieko Ioane who he has had a very public spat with in recent years.

“I was celebrating with him in the hotel yesterday,” said Beirne on the back of Sexton’s words earlier in the week. “I was like, 'aw brilliant, can't wait to have you down' and offered him a bed to sleep in for any of the late games.

“Looking forward to having him in the stands next year.”