Last December, UL Bohemians rugby club asked Peter O’Mahony to record a short good luck message for their under-15s team ahead of their big final against Garryowen. You may have heard that O’Mahony ended up making two videos, the one he was asked for, and then another for the opposition apologising for calling them “fuckers” who he had “never liked” after the first video was leaked online . At 32, and after a decade of hard graft for Ireland, the Lions and Munster, a round of shoulder surgery, some bad knee, ankle and rib injuries, O’Mahony’s body may be beginning to slow down, but he’s clearly lost none of his edge.
You could hear it when he was talking to the press on Thursday, after Andy Farrell had named him in the starting XV to play England at Twickenham.
“Every game is hugely important but country is different to club and there’s no point saying otherwise,” O’Mahony said. “Every game brings massive nerves for me still, 24 hours out, I’m physically ill with what’s coming up; the battle, the wanting to play well, the not wanting to let anybody down. Regardless of who the opposition is, that doesn’t change.”
O’Mahony only tends to start every other game for Ireland these days. He’s been on the bench for a lot of the big ones, against the All Blacks last autumn, and Wales and France earlier in this tournament. “We’re going to play a physical game they’re not used to,” said Eddie Jones, who must have missed their match against France in Paris a fortnight ago.
“Obviously O’Mahony’s pretty good in that area. He’s a guy they tend to pick against us. He doesn’t tend to start against too many other countries but England, and he’s a good man for the job, and we’ve got to be good enough to outmatch him.” He has what Liam Neeson might call a very particular set of skills – skills acquired over a very long career.
O’Mahony is there to take England on the breakdown, an area where Ireland were out-thought and out-fought by the French. He only managed to play five minutes of that defeat after he was on and off again, injured. Ireland’s pinball attacking play depends on their getting quick ruck ball and, with O’Mahony off, France did a good job of slowing it down. England will be planning on trying to do likewise. He’ll have an important role to play in the lineouts, too. It will be harder for England to pull the sort of ploy they used on Adam Beard to set up their one try against Wales. O’Mahony knows all those tricks and uses them.
But it’s not just a tactical pick. As Farrell said when he was explaining why he’d picked O’Mahony to start ahead of Jack Conan: “Pete’s a good emotional leader for us, and leadership is a big part of every team performance.” You guess O’Mahony feels much the same way about England as he apparently does about Garryowen’s U15s, and this pre-match message will be similar to that one.
“It would be foolish to say there isn’t something special between the two of us,” O’Mahony said. “It’s always a huge occasion, a huge encounter.” He’s been on both sides of it. He has played seven Tests at Twickenham, lost six, some badly, like the 18-7 defeat in 2020, and won one, the famous grand slam game in 2018.
The defeats haunt him. “There are certainly days you don’t forget about. They were a different time, a different team, a different game, but you always have those emotional scars,” O’Mahony said. “They stay with you forever. But they’re not something I’ll be thinking about this week. They probably moulded me as a player, but they’re not something I go back to. But they’re certainly in there and I’ve learned lessons from them.”
They are lessons Farrell wants him to draw on. He’s been picking over what went wrong in Paris and has decided that the team needed more experience and leadership, especially in the moments after they went 10 points down early on.
With Johnny Sexton, O’Mahony and Cian Healy back starting, they should have it. “How we react in those moments when we’re not going so well is going to be very important,” said the scrum coach, John Fogarty. “There’s a lot of leadership experience there in key positions, and they’re really important players for us. They need to be clear enough, and calm enough, to deliver the right messages when we’re not on top, that’s really important – and Andy has worked closely with that group to make sure the mood, and messaging during the game, helps us get momentum back.”
Ireland are expecting England to have their moments, and they’re expecting they’ll be able to survive them, and win, too.
