Cameo got Furlong on right path
TWICKENHAM throws up some strange memories for Tadhg Furlong. The Ireland tighthead has only laced up his boots in the famous old stadium once, for a World Cup warm-up game in September 2015.
Furlong was 22 at the time and winning just his second international cap after pipping Michael Bent to make the final 31-man World Cup squad. It was a day defined by new surroundings both on and off the pitch.
‘I came off the bench, pre-World Cup to play loosehead which was an interesting experience, with Mike Ross at tighthead, me at loosehead and Nathan White at 6 packing down behind me. It was a bit of a weird one really,’ Furlong remembered.
‘Looking back, I don’t think I was ever as nervous before a game of rugby as I was before that one. It was only my second cap. I had learned loosehead in the space of a week, a crash course from Cian Healy, pushing my hips into walls and stuff, weird scrummaging drills.
‘At tighthead you know your role and it doesn’t change a massive amount around the pitch, but [at loosehead] you are in a different position in the lineout, where you go and different phases, it changes completely.
‘I remember just racking my brain, looking at my notes, thinking over and over again trying to get it right.’
It was a cameo that left the Wexford man red-faced, and not because of the hard yards covered. ‘It went well. Solid scrum, played off the back of it, so happy enough. I only packed down... there was one reset. It’s actually a funny story.
‘So I was scrummaging loosehead, and I actually bound over the tighthead. So usually the loosehead binds under and the tighthead binds over the loosehead’s bind. But I bound over the tighthead’s [Kieran Brookes] bind and he said “mate, you know you’re playing loosehead, yeah?” I just said “Oh yeah”... so we reset that one and went again.’
Furlong has since graduated to become one of the most vital cogs in the Joe Schmidt machine. Not only is he much more assured of his own role in the team now, such has been his rapid rise that he has accumulated plenty of notes on fellow Lions tourists Kyle Sinckler and Mako Vunipola, who both start for England.
‘Sincks is a good scrummager, he’s a very good ball carrier, he runs some very smart lines off 9, you’ll see him coming out and hitting hard and getting over the gain line. He has a lot of energy and enthusiasm,’ Furlong explained.
‘Mako, I got on really well with him over on the Lions tour. He’s pretty laid back but when it comes to his rugby, he’s professional and serious.
‘He’s a good scrummager, he binds long, puts a lot of weight across the tighthead. Around the pitch, his play probably speaks for itself. He’s a very good distributor of the ball, he carries it very well, footwork at the line allows him to get soft shoulders.
‘So, he’s one of their key men both from a ball-carrier point of view but also a link man between forwards and Farrell out the back.’
At just 25 years of age, Furlong is already one of the more experienced heads in Schmidt’s squad. Five of the players that will line up alongside him on Saturday had yet to be capped when Furlong made his Twickenham bow, and seven of the matchday 23 have less than 10 caps to their name.
Still, the fear factor that used to hinder Irish teams on these type of occasions is long gone, and the Leinster star explains that there is no overriding sense of pressure or anxiety among the group this week.
‘There’s always craic with the lads, there are 35 or 40 of us. We’re not walking around like zombies. When we’re on, we’re on; when we’re off, we’re off.
‘Even in team meetings, there will be a few bits to lighten up the mood. There may be a few clips from the game where lads might have done something out of the ordinary or funny.’
The last time Ireland captured a Grand Slam Furlong was just 16, and while he admits the achievement didn’t make a lasting impression at the time, he says that the magnitude of what is at stake tomorrow is not lost on the current group.
‘It doesn’t stand out [the 2009 Grand Slam], I would have been watching it with the family at home. I think the group is under no illusion of what it means to the country, the team, our families and where we’re from.
‘But, at the end of the day, it’s ifs, buts and maybes, hypotheticals if we don’t win the game of rugby.’