TADHG REVELS IN HIS LUCKY BREAK
SOMETIMES, all it takes is a lucky break – as the boxer Steve Robinson would doubtless agree.
There the Cardiff boxer was, fighting in small halls across Britain, often seeing tight verdicts go the way of hometown opponents.
Such is the lot of the journeyman fighter.
Then Robinson’s life changed. World champion Ruben Palacios failed a HIV test, leaving promoters looking for someone to step in at short notice and contest the vacant WBO featherweight world title against John Davison.
“I had just finished pie and chips with a round of bread,” Robinson has since said.
“My trainer, Ronnie Rush, phoned me and said: ‘I’ve got a big fight for you’’
I said: ‘When is it?’ He said: ‘Two days’ time’. I said: ‘What type of fight?’ He said: ‘World title fight’. I said: ‘I won’t be ready for that!’ He said: ‘ You will, you’re fit enough, you can do it. If you lose, you lose to a world champion, but you won’t lose, you can beat this guy’.”
Robinson did beat Davison, and went on to defend his title seven times before running into Naseem Hamed.
As for a good stroke of fortune, Lions Test candidate Tadhg Beirne can credit his spell in Wales for that.
There he was, cast aside by Leinster as a youngster, pitching up in Wales and being sent to Llandovery not long after he arrived at the Scarlets.
Drovers team boss Euros Evans told how he had a conversation with the Scarlets’ Jon Daniels about the possibility of a lock being sent their way in 2016.
He revealed: “I said to him ‘give us the second row who is the last one on your pecking order’ because I hoped we’d see a lot of him whoever he was.
“Jon said: ‘There is a boy coming over from Ireland. We don’t know much about him, so you can have him’.
“It was perfect for us, but Tadhg only played two games.”
Destiny called.
In a podcast with House of Rugby Ireland, Beirne told how his circumstances changed dramatically, with two Scarlets players’ wives having babies on successive weeks, leaving the region looking for someone to step in.
“I don’t think anyone would have guessed, or put money on me being in this situation,” he said when discussing his inclusion in the Lions squad.
“It is only about five or six years ago since Leinster told me they didn’t see me playing for them anymore, or didn’t want me.
“So to then make my journey to Scarlets, well, my career took off from there.
“I just think it comes down to timing.
“Timing is essentially everything. “I got picked up by the Scarlets last minute because they decided they needed a second row.
“I then got my first opportunity at Scarlets as, two weeks on the bounce, two players ( Jake Ball and Aaron Shingler) were having their first children.
“So I was put into the team, obviously played well and kept my position.
“If they hadn’t had those kids, then, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today, you know!”
Call that serendipity.
Beirne made the most of his break, though, quickly establishing himself in the side, with the Kildare man piling up the turnovers with his freakish breakdown skills and impressing whether at blindside or at lock.
By the time he left for Munster in 2018, he was established as a Scarlets hero, one who had played a key role in the Llanelli-based team winning the PRO12 title in 2017 and reaching a Heineken Champions Cup semi-final a year later.
Now, after a big Six Nations, his goal will be to make the Lions Test XV.
Plenty in West Wales will be cheering his efforts.
He is where he is thanks to a stubborn refusal to accept what fate had dished up to him.
There was a touch of luck thrown into the mix as well.
But he still had to take his chance.