For Simon Easterby this is like house-minding. In theory he has the run of the gaff but the owner, Andy Farrell, is not far away and liable to check how things are going. By no means would that same owner be a control freak – an unusual state of affairs in this line of business – but he has invested a lot of himself in the project. No harm to keep tabs then.
If you were Easterby you would welcome the contact. His short tenure as Ireland head minder coincides with the possibility of a unique achievement: three Six Nations titles in a row. It’s far from the Championship hat-tricks Ireland fans were reared on so it’s worth reflecting on how this happened, and perhaps what we can learn from the last time we were paused at these traffic lights.
That situation presented itself as recently as 2016 when Joe Schmidt was at the controls. His default before any game was to block out the sunlight with a sobering assessment of what lay ahead. If talking up the opposition was an Olympic sport Schmidt would have one foot on the podium every time. Let’s say the Vatican City were next on his team’s fixture list. He would namecheck players you’d never heard of, warming to the task as he mastered their pronunciations, building to a crescendo of doubt about Ireland’s chances of keeping things respectable. When the monologue was over you’d wait for an off-record follow up, telling it really as it was. It never came.
Back then, in fairness, he was sobered by the shellacking from Argentina that ended Ireland’s 2015 World Cup four months earlier. Paul O’Connell had retired from international rugby. There was widespread uncertainty about the squad’s depth. The coach didn’t need to take us on the scenic route through the forbidding landscape that awaited. He knew it didn’t look like history.
It’s inappropriate that his successor, Farrell, is not on hand to deal with this one for his influence on the group has been immense. After a slow start, untying some knots and creating some new binds, he got the team up to a gallop that took them to the head of the field. The issue is whether Easterby can maintain the equilibrium while the boss is away; and how do Ireland look now compared to 2016.
Easterby is not the only one on unfamiliar ground. His old teammate David Humphreys is 10 months into his new job as the director of high performance with the IRFU. Ireland were very slow out of the traps on the whole business of catering for performance as well as participation, but Humphreys’ predecessor, David Nucifora, infused the role with potency. Compared to his experience at the same gig in Australia Nucifora will reflect on his 10 years in Ireland with a rush of happy hormones.
Even so, Humphreys has quite the to-do list. It should help that the new man has experience of the Irish game at the coalface – Ulster would be an instructive workstation for any man – so he will be arrested by the lopsided Irish rugby map. When Schmidt announced his 35-man squad for the 2016 Six Nations Leinster were front runners with 17. The disparity is growing: Easterby’s 2025 squad features 23 players from Leinster, five each from Munster and Connacht, and three from Ulster.
Seemingly Humphreys plans, or hopes, to uplift the other three provinces without tearing down the rugby industry on Ireland’s east coast. This is delicate. There is a microclimate in South Dublin that produces a steady crop of schools players because, for many in that part of the world, rugby is the only game in town. For example, of the 23 in the squad to face England 14 have come through the Leinster schools system; Munster have two; Ulster and Connacht have one each. The other five learned their rugby in New Zealand or Australia.
Does it matter if at the top end Ireland are ranked in second place, the only one of the home unions in the top five? It does if you want to sustain a model where there is genuine rivalry between the provinces and a varied throughput to the national squad.
That issue of variety is also on the agenda for Humphreys. For all its lauded functionality Ireland’s rugby system is homogenous and self-perpetuating. At his opening bun fight with the media last year Humphreys said he recognised that X-factor is a missing link in the Irish game.
Sadly he conceded he had no plan to address this. If you’re wondering how Irish rugby has punched so far above its weight for the last 20 years it’s because they compensate for ordinary genes by breeding bright, hard-working, brave athletes who love what they do. Moreover, in the Nucifora years, the IRFU did his bidding and spent some cash.
So the house Simon Easterby is now minding is in good nick, with a tidy garden. Andy Farrell won’t be returning to unwashed dishes, but for sure the decor could do with a freshen-up.
