“I’m not leaving. What do you mean I’m leaving? I live in Sandymount, 10 minutes away from here. I’m not going anywhere!”
When the final whistle sounded, at Aviva Stadium on Saturday, as day rapidly turned into night, Andy Farrell did the rounds with his players, shook hands with Australians, did the obligatory interviews and posed for pictures with supporters. There was no British & Irish Lions commissioned tractor-beam to spirit him away. That happened on Monday.
Farrell is now on his sabbatical from the Ireland head coach job and already at work on piecing together his coaching, support and backroom staff for next summer’s trip to Australia. The Lions squad and XV predictions are coming in thick and fast, and jingoistic debates are heating up.
Before he stepped back and handed over the Ireland reins to Simon Easterby, Farrell was keen to stress he is not heading to distant shores just yet. When one reporter spoke about his ‘little break’, Farrell cut in, “It sounds like I’m going on holiday. And that’s not the case, I can guarantee you that.”
Ireland defeated Australia 22-19 to finish the calendar year as Six Nations champions, with a share of a Test Series in South Africa, eight wins from 11 matches, and second in the world rankings. Still, an error-strewn and penalty-high November – along with a new contender for the 10 jersey, lineout worries and questions raised about veterans in bench roles – means Farrell is not exactly leaving behind a finely tuned Swiss watch for Easterby to drape across his wrist.
Convening in the corridor behind the stadium’s press briefing room, Farrell insisted Ireland’s three-point win was a good one because of the hole they had to dig themselves out of. “We found a way,” he said. “Eight points behind (at half-time), not playing well, things not going for us, feeling sorry for ourselves. We showed unbelievable character in my opinion so I’m really proud with that.”
“I suppose,” he added, “that’s all that matters to me – where we’re going. The story of the autumn for us is we’ve four new debutants, we’ve four new members of staff who are settled in really well and we know where we’re going. The future is bright, for me, because we have the right people on the bus.”
The conversation with Farrell bobbed back and forth between where Ireland are at, heading into 2025, and priorities now that he is on the Lions brief.
The conversation with Farrell bobbed back and forth between where Ireland are at, heading into 2025, and priorities now that he is on the Lions brief. He was not switching tracksuits on Monday morning, as there were no Lions tracksuits to wear. Yet. He mentioned Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong and Jack Conan as big-hitters to come back into the squad and praised Caelan Doris for maintaining high performance levels while getting used to the captaincy.
The final questions from the huddle – the last Farrell would have to answer during this stint as Ireland coach – came from me. They dealt with players responding to missing out on the starting XV, and how they responded to what we, on the outside, may see, and report, as a low point. I had Jack Crowley and Garry Ringrose in mind – two players that would have loved to start against Australia but still had positive impacts, off the bench.
When it was mentioned that spinning his wheels on the bench would be a tough pill for Crowley to swallow, Farrell responded, “It’s not, honestly. I know you guys think so because you’re not in it. I appreciate that you feel he is like that, but Jack has just been himself within the squad. He gets it, like. You know? People need a chance to try and kick on to show what they’ve got. He’s had that.
“So, when you guys feel like he’s been dropped, he’s not. And when you guys feel like he’s pissed off, he’s not. He’s a team player. He’s a team player and he gets the bigger picture himself. He gets that from my conversations with the three fly-halves is that I wanted Sam (Prendergast) to play unbelievably well, so that Jack responds and plays unbelievably well, and so does (Ciaran Frawley). And everyone keeps growing together. It’s part of the squad.”
Getting beckoned away, Farrell was asked about Ringrose. “Yeah, outstanding,” he replied, before taking a beat. “Have I ever dropped Bundee (Aki), Ringer or Robbie (Henshaw), in your eyes? No. It’s rotation that’s good for us in the moments when somebody has played a lot of rugby, not enough rugby, to freshen the team up, etcetera. They’re brilliant players, they’re good team players, so we work it out together.”
The notion of everyone being in it together is a noble one, but it has often proved tougher to implement on a Lions tour. There are only so many training sessions, and tour games, in which to make your mark.
Together. It is a simple concept and one that Farrell will look to instil in his British & Irish Lions squad. By most accounts, it is something he has got through to this Ireland crew. It is something Ireland loosehead Andrew Porter spoke about, heading into the November games. Porter loves how, driven by Farrell, the camp encourages players to be themselves, and be open about any struggles they are experiencing.
“That openness,” Porter told me, “is driven from the coaches, and the players have all bought into that, as well. We’ve all embraced that, and I think that is what makes the team work that so much better – that fact that you can be so much closer as a team when you truly know someone. You know someone as just more than a rugby person – you know that human element, what’s inside of them, you know more about their background. You get them, way more. That brings even more trust, which is huge when you have a high performing team. When you trust them, off the field, you know when you’re on the field you can really trust them to do their job, and give it their all.”
The notion of everyone being in it together is a noble one, but it has often proved tougher to implement on a Lions tour. There are only so many training sessions, and tour games, in which to make your mark.
Farrell is finding it hard enough convincing the Irish media and, by extension, wider public he is not dropping players for big games. Imagine that with three other nations, and their press packs and passionate supporters, thrown into the mix?
The competition for places will be fierce, too. Looking just at a few positions, hooker options include Dan Sheehan, Jamie George, Dewi Lake, Ronan Kelleher, Ewan Ashman and Luke Cowan-Dickie. Blindside could be anyone from Chandler Cunningham-South, Caelan Doris, James Botham, Tadhg Beirne, Tom Curry or Courtney Lawes. At outhalf, take your pick from Marcus Smith, Finn Russell, Owen Farrell, Jack Crowley, George Ford, Fin Smith or even Sam Prendergast.
Eleven months on from his confirmation as Lions head coach, there remains no better person for the job than Farrell.
In such a short space of time, in such an intense environment, convincing a player outside of the XV or match-day squad that they are not dropped will be a hard, hard sell.
Farrell has proven adept at man-management and getting players to buy in. Talk to any of this current Ireland squad or watch his famous ‘hurt arena’ speech, when he was defence coach, on the 2013 Lions Tour to Australia.
Eleven months on from his confirmation as Lions head coach, there remains no better person for the job than Farrell. Gelling a team of superstars, bolters and veterans, from four different nations, together for a mounting challenge, now that Joe Schmidt is imposing shape, identity and pride in the Wallabies. This is why he is paid the big bucks. This is why he is wearing the tracksuit. Well, he’ll have to wait a while yet for the tracksuit.
