For the Rugby Football Union every syllable of the press release announcing Andy Farrell as Ireland’s next head coach will sting indefinitely. Had England not crashed out of their home Rugby World Cup in the 2015 pool stages, Farrell would probably still be at Twickenham and modern rugby history might look very different. Talk about sliding doors.
Andy Farrell to take over from Joe Schmidt as Ireland head coach
In retrospect Eddie Jones’s decision not to retain Stuart Lancaster’s erstwhile assistant when he had the chance in December 2015 will go down among the more generous Anglo-Irish gifts on record. By the time Jones tried to woo back the former Great Britain rugby league captain earlier this year, it was too late. In company with Joe Schmidt, Farrell has helped construct the most formidable Ireland squad of all time, as reflected in their clean sweep at this year’s World Rugby awards.
The Schmidt era has been remarkable – 46 wins from 62 matches at a strike-rate of 74% – with the power to add more in Japan at next year’s World Cup. But when the Kiwi subsequently steps aside to spend more time with his family – whether his coaching “retirement” is permanent surely remains to be seen – it will be Farrell’s show. The nanosecond it has taken the IRFU to promote him suggests his employers have absolute faith in his ability to propel Ireland even higher.
And why not? Everywhere he has played and coached, Farrell has been a winner far more often than not. He was captaining Great Britain at rugby league at 21, scored over 3,000 points in 370 games for Wigan, was the youngest player ever to taste victory in a Challenge Cup final at 17 years 11 months and became only the second British player, after Ellery Hanley, to be crowned world player of the year. As the defence coach on the last two British and Irish Lions tours, he has yet to lose a series.
Players, not least in Ireland, love him for two main reasons. Firstly, he has walked the walk, which always commands respect. Perhaps even more significantly he speaks their language. It is years ago now that a vastly experienced former national head coach told me the recently retired Farrell was an absolute natural in terms of simple and effective communication. When he talks players listen and, more often than not, make a mental note never to let him down.
His famous “We are taking them boys to the hurt arena” speech before the third Lions Test in Sydney in 2013 is just one example of the uncompromising Wigan attitude drummed into him from the moment he made his debut aged 16 against Keighley. “It was definitely fear-driven,” he once told me. “You knew you were going to get it on Monday if you’d made a mistake. From day one you learned to know your job and to work as hard as you possibly could.”
He has also come a long way from his days as an apprentice joiner “on £30 a week” for Wigan council but, from the age of 21, he knew he wanted to be a head coach. He had seen how Wigan’s Graham Lowe and John Monie operated and had plenty of his own ideas too. “I wrote stuff down from all the coaches I’ve had in my career. I suppose that’s the type of player I was. I was never an individual player, I was always a team player. I was always a captain. It was always about how teams gelled together. I was fortunate as a player that I loved training, watching videos. I don’t see it as work, I see it as a pleasure.”
He also had a short spell under Jones at Saracens and, as befits a man who once won rugby league’s Man of Steel and Golden Boot awards in the same year, has never been a one-trick pony. “Andy was a warrior who led from the front and took no prisoners but he was a great tactician as well,” recalled Phil Larder, the man who appointed him Great Britain captain. Pressure does not faze Farrell; when you have had to run for your life pursued by an angry crowd in Papua New Guinea, as he did in 1996, the Aviva Stadium is child’s play. “We were chased around the field with sticks. We had to try to jump on a minibus, to get away at the end. The minibus was backed up to the gates, the gates opened and we all had to pile on. People were hitting the side of it and we were saying: ‘Go, go, go!’”
With Irish heritage in both his and his wife’s families – one of his brothers, Phil, represented Ireland at rugby league in 2003 – he has hinted he feels more at home in Dublin than he ever did at Twickenham. Given his son Owen is now leading England, however, the Farrell effect is now a multinational phenomenon. The rugby world will be fascinated to see what unfolds when Ireland host England on the first weekend of the 2019 Six Nations championship but in the Farrell household – “He’s a professional, I’m a professional. You do your job, don’t you?” – it will be business as usual. Anyone hoping Ireland will be a softer touch without Schmidt is doomed to disappointment.