There are a couple of scenes in Full Contact, the recent Netflix docu-series on the Six Nations, that may be played to the Ireland squad this week. Tadhg Beirne needs no reminder of the comments made to camera by coach Gregor Townsend and former captain and record Scotland try scorer, Stuart Hogg, who retired before last year’s World Cup.
“The last few years, I’ve heard a lot of things come out of Ireland,” says Townsend. “The Irish players, the Irish media, believe we’re soft. Believe we’re the team that’s going to go for 60 minutes, and then fade. That is not happening. We win. We have been building to a performance that delivers the best of us, and the best of us beats any team in the world.”
That may be harder for Townsend to stand up in the coming days after last week’s defeat in Rome to Italy. But it preserves the testy relationship the sides have had over the years, with Hogg using locker room language to make his point. Both Hogg and Townsend were speaking about last season’s championship. But the sentiments, aired earlier this year, hold true.
“We’re due these f***ers one,” says Hogg. “We’re going to lift the Triple Crown and have a s**t-tonne of fun doing it, so let’s f***ing go for it, aye.”
On the face of it, it’s how players talk to each other before matches and how coaches galvanise teams. But the words finding their way on to the screen has made them more deliciously potent as Ireland try to salvage something from the wreckage of last week’s Grand Slam derailment with a championship success at home.
Beirne, certain to be at the heart of the realigned Irish ambitions of back-to-back championships, smiles at being asked if he had watched the series.
“I did,” he says. Surprised? “No, not really. The Scots are the Scots. We have our perception of them and I’m not going to verbalise it here because they’ve given us ammo in the past from what they’ve said in the media, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was any different this week.
“Yeah, it’s a rivalry, isn’t it? That’s part of the sport. We both love beating each other. That would be the way I’d put it. But we’re going to focus on ourselves because we didn’t put in a performance against England that we’re happy with. So, this week is all about getting that right.”
Part of that will be Beirne earning his 50th Irish cap. It’s a moment he could never have seen as a younger player released by Leinster in 2016, before moving to Wales and Scarlets and finally Munster in 2018 just as his international career began to kick off. One of the few to successfully use the years away to become a better player, he is now tantalisingly close to a championship and cap milestone on St Patrick’s weekend.
“It really is huge for me,” says Beirne. “Something, at 21, 22, one [cap] would have been a miracle for me but then obviously after you get your first, it’s then about getting your second and then it’s about your third. Fifty seemed like a long way away. So, to be sitting here and getting 50 and then an opportunity to win a Six Nations on my 50th, you couldn’t really write it better. It would be a massive honour if I am given that opportunity.”
The ideal weekend won’t arrive without repair work to the lineout and better discipline from Ireland. The penalty count has gone up and against England in Twickenham on Saturday, the timing of some of the eight penalties that Ireland conceded was one of the factors that hurt. As a player who operates on the margins and is one of the better turnover players in the game, Beirne knows it.
“It’s one area of the campaign that we’ve been speaking about a lot and it’s probably been the most frustrating area I’d say for the coaches as well, where we haven’t probably fixed,” says Beirne.
“Since game one, we’ve been continually undisciplined. On the weekend, we probably weren’t at our worst discipline-wise, but the penalties we gave away were at crucial times. They had a massive effect on the game.
“It’s unlike us but that’s part of sport and we’ve spoken about that. They lay down a marker and we were passive in defence and were giving away penalties and we didn’t adjust as the game went on. We just continued to do it and that’s probably why it’s such tough viewing for us because we didn’t fix what we were doing wrong as the game went on.”
Scotland will see the match as a glorious party-pooping opportunity. Rivalry, as Beirne calls it. Or perhaps a little more.
