Van der Flier tracked McCaw movements into seven heaven

Josh van der Flier poses for a portrait after an Ireland Rugby media conference at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Nestled between Malcolm Marx, Ardie Savea, Antoine Dupont and Pieter-Steph du Toit is an understated Irishman, Josh van der Flier.

They’re all World Rugby Player of the Year recipients.

The list goes on and on: Johnny Sexton, Kieran Read, Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick, Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Theirry Dusautoir and all the way back to Keith Wood in 2001. Kings of the international game.

At first glance, van der Flier feels like an outlier.

It was certainly the case in 2022 when jaws dropped down south when the classy No.7 was awarded the prestigious list and joined rugby’s royal list.

Even now, some believe Nick Timoney is knocking on the door to demand regular selection in the starting side.

But van der Flier isn’t one to lose sleep over the outside noise, nor believe he has a point to prove ahead of Saturday’s Test against the Savea-led All Blacks.

“I suppose I'd always try and be playing my best, to be honest,” he said. “That's always the goal.

“Nick Timoney was mentioned earlier. There's a lot of competition within the group. Bryn Ward got a chance to play at the weekend as well. So yeah, I mean it's always competitive. I’m always trying to play my best and give it my all. I just keep it to that, to be honest.

“I try not to look into who's playing worldwide, who's playing better, that kind of thing. I always try and push myself to be as good as I can be. So that's kind of where I try and focus on it.

“Obviously there's some good players, you mentioned a couple there, they're playing really well and yeah, I try and do my best, keep improving, that's kind of where I'm at.” 

It’s easy to forget, however, that the last time Ireland were in the Shaky Isles they walked away as the first Irish side to knock over the All Blacks on home soil in a series in decades.

Van der Flier was at the heart of the 2-1 come-from-behind series win and his brilliant series was the catalyst behind him edging Savea for the No.7 role in World Rugby’s dream team of the year and, ultimately, the player of the year.

He’s also looking forward to taking on Savea in a battle that has spanned more than a decade.

“I love playing against Ardie,” van der Flier said. “The first time I played against him was at an U20s World Cup. He was pretty impressive back then.

“I remember hearing about him and then we were watching him, I think in the first game of the 20s World Cup against Fiji, and on the first play, one of the Fijian lads ran into him with the ball, he reefed it and ran the pitch and scored. You’re thinking: this lad's pretty good!

“I’ve played against him loads now at this stage, which is pretty cool and he's a great guy. I've chatted to him a good bit after games and stuff and always look forward to competing against him.

“He's a player I would have watched a lot. We've mentioned Richie McCaw but I would have watched a lot of Ardie as well and the way he plays. He's really, really good at what he does and it's brilliant, it's good to see him captaining as well, it's great for him.” 

Criminally underrated by the public, van der Flier is always looking to improve and find another element to his game.

While some players barely watch a second of action, van der Flier very early heeded some advice from John Fogarty, who is now Ireland’s scrum coach, and has lived by it since.

It led to van der Flier studying the movements of former All Blacks skipper Richie McCaw – arguably the All Blacks’ greatest No.7 – in a bid to grow his own game.

“I remember getting into the academy in Leinster and it might have been John Fogarty, who would have been one of the academy coaches, telling me to watch players in your position and Richie McCaw was obviously the best at the time, certainly as a number seven,” van der Flier said.

“So I used to get full recordings of games from a wide view and just follow his movements and everything. I would have done that with a lot of players and a lot of lads would do that. But yes, he was an unbelievable player in fairness to him. And yeah, I tried to learn a few things from that.

“You do it with different players who do different things well and try to learn from them. But yeah, he would have been one I would have watched particularly.” 

And what did he notice?

“I find that you can see the big moments,” he said. “I hear people sometimes saying ‘Camera 1’ because we'd have the video analysis thing and camera 1 is always the zoomed-in one, so you can see the big moments - the turnovers or any time they're around the ball.

“But then with a lot of good players - Richie McCaw would be one of them – (with wide-angle) you see the support lines he runs off a lineout or how he ends up being on the end of linebreak. It's easier to see the route they took or how hard they work off the ball or how they like to position themselves in the field.

“Sometimes you pick up nothing, sometimes it's kind of the system of the team. But I find from a wide view sometimes, while you don’t get the detail in terms of technique, you get a bit of a view on how they manage themselves through the game and get themselves in the right positions.”