FOREIGN AGENT
Ireland coach Andy Farrell has enjoyed more success facing his native England than he ever did with them
SIX NATIONS weeks with England at their terminus have rarely featured prominent appearances by Andy Farrell. He is preparing to oppose England for the fourth time in the Six Nations, but in the past he has been hidden away in the build-up.
Ireland under Joe Schmidt were a minutely prepared team, and England invariably provided the biggest challenge in a championship season.
The presence of Farrell, a former England defence coach, in the Irish system was an obvious hook on which to hang previews of these games, but an irresistible one was the fact that his son is England’s most influential player.
Rather than have Farrell the senior exposed to a blizzard of media enquiries, then, the extremely cautious Irish media operation hid him away.
He never gave the impression of relishing an audience with the press in those days anyway, so one supposes Andy Farrell was content to sit those weeks out.
The memory remains clear of a battery of incredulous English press people who had dutifully trooped out to Ireland’s base in Maynooth last year to quiz the coach about preparing a game-plan that had his eldest child as its main target, only to be told that he would not be talking.
He has had to talk this week, and the questions duly flew at Wednesday’s team announcement.
And while he returned to his old reticence on the subject of family, one of the notable aspects of his time as Ireland head coach so far has been Farrell’s open engagement with the media. He speaks well and at length, and of course a mood buoyed by two wins from his first two Tests in charge is a help.
Notwithstanding the obvious emotional complication of coaching against his own son, Farrell is entitled to be optimistic in the week of an England Test.
In three Six Nations games as Schmidt’s defence specialist, Farrell has seen Ireland win twice and lose once (he has faced England a fourth time, the disastrous World Cup warm-up defeat in Twickenham last August).
As a coach, facing England has brought significant joy for him, such as the game in Dublin in March 2017 when an English side trying to win a Grand Slam were defeated by an Irish team that stopped them scoring a try.
A year later, the riotous victory in
Twickenham won Ireland their own Grand Slam, but last year’s emphatic loss in Dublin saw the English attack unpick the Irish defence twice inside the first half an hour.
That was the first evidence of Ireland’s calamitous decline through 2019, and was less about the failures of Farrell’s defensive plans than the general collapse in Ireland’s form and confidence.
His time in Ireland so far has brought the best out of Farrell – and sharpened the contrast with the often underwhelming time he endured in rugby union in his homeland.
He was a superstar in rugby league when he switched to union in the spring of 2005, at the age of 29. He had been voted World Player of the Year in league in 2004, but by the time the English union paid a reported £1million to move him from Wigan to Saracens, he was a veteran with an extensive injury record.
Andy Robinson was the English head coach at the time and desperate to get Farrell into union, thereby hastening his move to Test rugby.
But from the outset, there were doubts about how effective he could be.
His body had been battered by over 12 years in a bruising sport, but even more disarming was the realisation that nobody seemed able to decide where he would play in the 15-player game.
There was vague agreement that he could be either a flanker or a centre (it was the latter, eventually, where he settled). Former England fly-half Stuart Barnes was a sceptic.
‘Is he big enough to be a forward or fast enough to be a back?’ asked Barnes. ‘You can’t just jam a player from one code into the other.’
Injuries severely complicated attempts to start his union career, and a car accident in December 2005 in which he suffered a prolapsed disc in his back was another serious check on Farrell’s attempts to start playing.
It was not until September 2006 that he finally played his first match for Saracens, and within six months he was capped by England.
His union career for his native country was squeezed into seven months and amounted to eight caps, six as a starter. They included his appearance at Croke Park for the unforgettable Irish victory in February 2007, as well as two other Six Nations starts.
He also played in two World Cup warm-up matches, and in three matches at the tournament in France — two off the bench.
Farrell was peripheral as England reached the final of that tournament, and while he soldiered on for another 18 months, he confirmed his retirement in April 2009. ‘I’d love to keep on playing but my body tells me otherwise every morning,’ he said.
He started coaching with Saracens and at the end of 2011, he joined England under Stuart Lancaster.
As with his Test career as a player in union, though, his coaching experience with his country was unfulfilled — especially compared to the success he enjoyed with Ireland.
England under Lancaster famously recorded four second-placed finishes in the Six Nations, and the home World Cup in 2015 was a disaster.
It was doubly disappointing for Farrell. Not only was his son a part of an England team that failed to progress out of its pool — the only time that has happened to England at a World Cup — but Farrell senior was blamed for the ill-fated Sam Burgess conversion attempt.
The switch from league did not work for Burgess, and, largely because of his own experience, Farrell was associated with the failure.
That morphed into suggestions that Farrell exercised disproportionate influence on team selections, a claim he later disputed.
In January 2016, weeks after Eddie Jones confirmed he did not want Farrell as part of his new England, the IRFU said he would join Schmidt’s management after the Six Nations.
The news was not widely acclaimed here, but the years since have re-established Farrell as an outstanding coach.
He has excelled with Ireland to an extent that he did not manage as a player or a coach with England.
If that continues at the cost of his son’s ambitions on Sunday, Farrell will survive the conflicting emotions.