Across the great divide... Leinster prop Tadhg Furlong is happy to embrace his Munster links but he remains a true blue
‘AS A PLAYER, YOU REALLY DO NOT WANT TO LET YOUR TEAM DOWN’
WHEN Tadhg Furlong feels the urge to completely switch off, he tends to head for his West Cork bolt-hole of Whiddy Island. And without fail, the first thing he will see upon arriving down on the edge of this island is his uncle, Tim O’Leary, wearing an old Munster shirt.
O’Leary runs the ferry – as well as being the island’s postman and proprietor of its sole bar – so his nephew must give him advance warning whenever he wants to visit. And perhaps, that is when he digs out the jersey. Or maybe not.
‘He has the ferry so I have to ring ahead and ask him when it is,’ Furlong points out. ‘I don’t know if he always wears a Munster jersey or just wears it when I come down. But he always has the thing on and it is a real stinking one too, an old one from ’08 or something.’
Of course, it may be a sly reminder on his uncle’s part that if things had conspired differently Furlong would be wearing red when Leinster and Munster clash in their first big derby next Saturday evening in the Aviva Stadium. The big prop grew up in Campile where, if a stone was thrown, it usually ended up in Waterford. As a youngster, there was as much red as blue in the training sessions with New Ross RFC.
‘Although I was down there recently, and I didn’t spot any Munster jerseys on any kids now. They all had Leinster jerseys on them, thankfully,’ he said earlier this week at Leinster rugby HQ at UCD.
It’s safe to say those kids might have all been wearing red if life had taken Furlong in a different direction. When he was filling in his CAO form as a 17-year-old, he realised that his home in south Wexford had given him a geographical advantage – Dublin was two hours away, as was Cork and Limerick.
Furlong wanted to do PE Teaching and Maths at the University of Limerick. ‘It was the course I wanted to do and it was the only place I could do it,’ he said.
He told Ken O’Connell, who was his manager with Ireland Under 18s at the time. Leinster intervened. And rather than going to UL, Furlong ended up doing a business degree in DCU and joining the Leinster academy. He hasn’t looked back. ‘I would have voiced to them about going to college in Limerick but [Leinster] would have seen a future for me. They said things could go well for me here. That bit of positivity goes a long way and I am happy enough I didn’t end up PE teaching and went to DCU and got a different sort of degree.’
Furlong should be happy with the path he took. From a naive 17-yearold who had to call his mother on his first night in Dublin to ‘find out how to cook pasta’, he has matured into one of the best prop forwards in world rugby. And it has all happened pretty quickly.
‘I was raw leaving school. I had never really touched weights. With all of the goodness in my heart to New Ross RFC, we trained one night a week in my final year and played at the weekend. From a skills-based game, knowledge-game appreciation and from the point of view of my strength and conditioning profile, I was way behind the eightball,’ Furlong says.
Leinster allowed him the time to develop, though. Mike Ross, a huge influence on Furlong, was still the undisputed number one when he arrived at the academy. Nathan White, Jamie Hagan and Marty Moore were also ahead of him in the pecking order, giving him the space to build himself into the powerhouse that he is today.
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Difficult as it is to countenance from this vantage point,
where Furlong is the immovable anchor of the Irish scrum, his first afternoon playing France in Paris was a chastening experience. Furlong’s struggles against Eddy Ben Arous in the rain mirrored Ireland’s own struggles that day.
‘At the time I felt differently to what I do now looking back on it,’ Furlong recalls of that Six Nations game in Paris back in 2016. ‘At the time, I thought it was a bit harsh but I look back now and think, “Tadhg what were you doing with your scrum”. I was binding, moving two feet back, was high in the hip. With the benefit of a few more years in the saddle and a bit more maturity, I have learnt from that.’
From that day, Furlong has matured into one of the best props in world rugby, starring on the 2017 Lions Tour in New Zealand. He is someone who, even though he won’t be 26 until later this year, is well on his way to superseding John Hayes as this country’s greatest ever tighthead. And he has done it by being an avid student of the scrum.
He talks at length about the technical aspects of the scrum, and how it has developed in recent years with the way that packs bind now, rather than engage as they had in the past. And he accepts that every prop forward must experience an afternoon like the one he had in Paris. ‘You never want to experience that again. As a player and person, you don’t want to let your teammates down. But it is what it is. It happened. You learn from it and move on,’ he said.
‘Prop is a tough position. You literally cannot do it without the lads beside you or behind you. And you have to learn from the experiences. The match-day experiences. What you feel? People have asked me before what do you see when you are in the scrum? I don’t know. I don’t know if I have my eyes open or my eyes closed. I don’t know if I am looking at the ground or my eyes are closed. I genuinely don’t know if I look or if I have my eyes closed in the scrum. But I know what it feels like.’
Last season, there was a feeling that Furlong might struggle to recapture the form of the previous year, especially after his stellar performances for the Lions. Instead, he simply got better.
He admits that it was in the back of his head for most of the year that he had to back up the fact that he now was a Lion.
‘I suppose, sub-consciously, you are thinking that but, at the same time, it is also about the process. You have a checklist of processes and when you are reviewing it, if you fail one of those things, it disappoints you. So, you don’t think, “oh second season, I have to back this up, I was a Lion therefore people are going to come after me harder”. It probably doesn’t get to that. It’s more in your head you’re thinking, “I do this well but I could do this better”. It kind of blocks out all those external factors that you can’t really control.’
Following a season that saw him score his first international try on the way to a Grand Slam and claim the European Cup with Leinster, Furlong deserved a few weeks on the sun-lounger. While he did go to Portugal for Jack McGrath’s wedding, which was a great few days, he only lasted a few hours sun-bathing by the pool.
It’s not particularly his scene. He prefers to head for the edge of West Cork to switch off.
His next visit down there will be even sweeter if Furlong and his teammates gain the local bragging rights in the Aviva Stadium next weekend.