I never expected a smooth road, but I can cope: Farrell
ANDY Farrell says a life in professional sport has conditioned him to ride out the difficult times.
The Ireland coach, who has come in for huge criticism in recent weeks, yesterday revealed renowned high performance coach Gary Keegan has been working with the squad and management during the Autumn Nations Cup as they look to cure the ‘performance anxiety’ that afflicted them in last year’s World Cup in Japan.
Tomorrow, Ireland play their final game of an underwhelming 2020 against Scotland. They have won all of their home games, but the performances in defeat to England and France and the second half of last week’s win over Georgia have led to pundits questioning the team’s direction under Farrell.
He believes the team is improving and hopes the return of captain Johnny Sexton and Robbie Henshaw to the side will help bring the necessary improvements against the Scots.
And he says the adversity of the past number of weeks will stand to him.
“I 100 per cent know there’s always going to be massive ups and downs. It’s never a smooth road,” he said. “The learnings that you take along the way make you stronger in the long run, and that’s what I’ll take from it.
“I’m big enough and ugly enough to have been around professional sport for most of my life, so this is another big game — I’m aware of that but the stress levels are okay. You always take note (of criticism) because people always tell you anyway, not that I read too much.
“I’m pretty self-aware and I suppose I would trust myself to know where I’m at. I know where
I’m at personally and where the team is at, so I trust that.”
Farrell took over a team with shattered confidence after last year’s World Cup, and he says Keegan — the mastermind of Irish boxing’s High Performance Unit and a big influence on the Dublin footballers — has been “tremendous” when working alongside former manager Mick Kearney on the mental side of preparation.
“Gary’s mental skills as far as how that translates to performance is second to none, and his whole connection piece in bringing the whole squad and the management into a place together is a big part of his remit,” he said.
The Englishman hopes a vastly improved performance following last weekend’s underwhelming 23-10 success over minnows Georgia can provide a “big building block” towards the 2021 Guinness Six Nations.
“We always want to put in a performance, but professional sport doesn’t always go your way,” said Farrell. “This is the next game on the calendar, so it’s always the most important — that’s how we’re looking at it.
“We want to be better than that second-half performance (against Georgia).
“A lot of what has been going on over the last five games is about building towards next year’s Six Nations. This is a big building block towards that.
“We’re in a determined mood, ready to put a performance out there at the weekend.”
With an experimental period set to end, Farrell was non-committal when asked if he now knows his strongest team.
“This is a strong team. Everyone knows we’ve got quite a few injuries. But that’s professional sport, there’s no excuse,” he said.