DCU's 'Lion' hungry for more action

It’s far from playing for the British and Irish Lions that Tadhg Furlong would have daydreamed about when he sat through lectures in the DCU business building.

While he was earmarked early in his New Ross RFC career as a star of the future, making what was then a very competitive Leinster squad would have been the Wexford man’s first priority.

“I liked DCU,” Furlong told me. “It went hand in hand with rugby. I was in the business school, and I won’t lie, I wasn’t the most dedicated or committed student there was, but I really enjoyed it. I never thought I’d get here though.

“The history and the players that went before is what makes the Lions so special. It’s the challenge of trying to mould four teams into one and make it work. The standard of training is ridiculously high, the level of talent there, the minds, and it’s the social side as well.”

Furlong made his Leinster debut while still studying in Glasnevin. Still, little did he know then, that less than a decade later he’d be returning home from his second Lions tour. And with him on the plane home from South Africa was his Business Studies classmate from all those years ago, Tadhg Beirne.

“I was in the same year and course as Beirney. I played underage with him, and we would have seen each other every morning and gone out to DCU then afterwards to get the college done,” Furlong said.

“We would have been in the same groups for a lot of projects too so we would have got a lot of work done together.”

Furlong’s second Lions tour ended in defeat. The Lions won the first test of the series before being beaten twice in the next two by South Africa. 

“A lot of that stuff goes over your head. You’ve enough on your plate to be worrying about what’s being said in the media. I suppose it is a part of rugby now, it is a big part of the game.”

One of the talking points of the tour was a scathing 62-minute video released by South African head coach Rassie Erasmus, analysing the refereeing decisions in the first test Lions victory.

However, Furlong says that this had no impact on the result of the two later games.“I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth. I genuinely don’t think anyone even looked at it. I don’t know if it influenced referees. They’re big enough men to stand on their own two feet.

“A lot of that stuff goes over your head. You’ve enough on your plate to be worrying about what’s being said in the media. I suppose it is a part of rugby now, it is a big part of the game.”

One thing that did have a profound effect on this year’s tour, though, was Covid and the restrictions associated with it. Players and management had to record their temperature every day before any training could begin.

The team hotel itself was deemed a “red zone” and was in full lockdown. No one was able to enter without accreditation and players had to stay there all hours, other than to play or train. Those staying in the hotel wore masks everywhere.

While this was alien to the freedom Lions players usually experience on tour, it did have its benefits according to Furlong.

“Naturally it was different to my first tour,” he said. There are positives and negatives to it.

“No real cliques or anything like that formed in the group because everyone was in the same boat, and everyone spent loads of time together in the team room. Because of that I think we were quite a strong group.”

A tradition in rugby culture and Lions tour history is a system of discipline for small offences whereby a player’s punishment is decided by the number they roll on a dice. According to the Leinster prop, despite not being allowed to mingle with fans and locals, the players made their own entertainment while on tour.

“Robbie Henshaw plays a bit of Irish music, Josh Navidi is a DJ, so we made our own craic that way,” he said.

“It’s the usual. We had the dice roll - if you wear the wrong kits for training or if you’re late or anything - so there were a few phone calls for that, there were a few lads wearing suits all day going in and out of training and everything, there were lads wearing a full match kit, strapping, headbands, the lot.

“It’s kind of silly stuff like that but stuff that is enjoyable to be part of.” In his two Lions tours, apart from this year’s captain Alun Wyn Jones, Furlong was the only player to start all six Lions test matches.

Having drawn the previous series in New Zealand, and lost to South Africa, the New Ross man is already eying another crack at a tour win. “It sticks in everyone’s mind that we lost this tour after giving ourselves a good chance, winning the first test, but you’re not changing that now. That’s life,” he said.

“It’s such a big thing to win a Lions tour. It’s so hard done, just by the nature of it. I don’t know if I’ll have another time in a Lions jersey. That could be my last test, but I’d love to get another stab at it and try to win one.”