Tadhg chows down to beef up for Samoa
STAYING sane on tour can be a challenge at times. This Ireland squad will want for nothing at this World Cup in terms of comfort, nutrition, coaching and support, but the necessity to find activities and distractions is still paramount.
The old school days of midweek booze-ups are long gone, so the modern player must find more healthy ways to clear the head and unwind.
For Tadhg Furlong, one of the big characters in this current set-up, it was a trip to a good steakhouse which gave him a boost this week. The 19-stone tighthead comes from Wexford farming stock and was heartened to get some cuisine more akin to home.
‘Japanese food is lovely, but it’s nice to get a nice bit of steak as well,’ he said.
‘It was top notch, a tiny little place. You go through the front door and you’ve to stoop down to get into it. They cook up a load of Wagyu beef, bring out the board and they cook it in front of you with an open fire. It’s lovely.’
Fukuoka is a gastronomic dream for visitors with an adventurous palate. The city’s streets are lined with Yatais, small street food stalls that can seat eight people and serve up all kinds of creations. Earlier in this World Cup, Keith Earls spoke of giving sea urchin a swerve when it landed on the dinner table one night. Furlong has been a similar predicament this week.
‘We were in a place the other day, you just potter out for lunch and it’s hard to find restaurants because the name is in Japanese,’ the Leinster prop explained.
‘We found a place, got the Google translate out and it came up as “fried chicken cartilage”. I’m all for embracing the culture, but that’s a bit much for me!’
As is the case on tours and World Cups, the players set up various committees to manage matters among the squad such as entertainment, food and fines, of course.
The fines committee is a long-held tradition on rugby squads, a player led initiative that punishes sloppy behaviour such as tardiness and telling bad jokes on the team bus.
‘It’s myself, Rob Kearney and Garry Ringrose on it,’ said Furlong.
‘I don’t mind it. I think Garry Ringrose needs a bit more cut in him. He is so nice and polite and stuff. Get the finger out, Garry, come on. Not punishments, to be fair, it is just about a bit of squad enjoyment and trying to get a kitty together to do stuff as a squad. There’s nothing overly harsh.’ And what about Kearney? ‘He can lash it out, yeah. He’s a ruthless enough character!’
Furlong is being engaging and gregarious as usual but this is a World Cup and things are getting serious. As that crunch meeting with Samoa moves ever closer, Furlong is asked quite bluntly to give an assessment of his own performances in Japan thus far? He takes a pause, before answering: ‘Okay, yeah. Like, it’s tough. Playing rugby at World Cups is tough. Teams, the way defences are now? It’s tough going. Scrum rules change — it’s how you adapt to them. ‘I suppose I’m the same as everyone else really. There’s a few little bits of the game that you’d like to tidy up.’ The question remains, was Scotland or Japan a blip? We will find out in the coming weeks.
‘It’s a hard question to answer,’ Furlong admitted.
‘It feels like it’s very, very nearly there but probably just hasn’t clicked yet. It is hard to put your finger on it. You try to hold onto the ball a little bit better, go through a few more phases, get on to the front foot.’
After that shock loss to Japan, the message is clear: Ireland cannot afford any more bad days at the office or they’ll boarding a flight back to Dublin, sooner rather than later.
‘That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the game,’ Furlong added.
‘You can’t over-force it or anything like that. It’s going through your week and trying to up the gears a few levels and try to put a performance out there at the weekend.’