YESTERDAY, THE HARD work started in earnest for the Emerging Ireland class of 2024. The 33 players called up by head coach Simon Easterby gathered at the IRFU’s high performance centre in Abbotstown to get stuck into three days of work ahead of Saturday’s departure for South Africa, where the squad will rumble through games against the Pumas, Western Force and the Cheetahs across a busy eight-day schedule.
The plan is to push the players hard in order to give them a taste of the demands of Test rugby, while also offering them a valuable opportunity to work closely with the Ireland senior coaches. Time spent dissecting lineouts with forwards coach Paul O’Connell or learning strike plays with backs coach Andrew Goodman can prove just as beneficial as scrummaging down against powerful South African packs a long way from home.
“The great thing around being in here together for the three days and then being on tour, you get a lot more time then you would say during the week-to-week with your provinces,” says Goodman, who joined the Ireland coaching set-up from Leinster this summer. “You get a lot more time for little conversations and time around the computer, walkthroughs, all that stuff.
“Obviously there will be a few big rocks that we’ll really drive, but we want to try really push the boys and see how they cope with the amount of information they get given in a short amount of time because when it comes to Test windows, for example in November, it’s going to be the same.
“We’re going to have a week, two week build-up into playing the All Blacks, so it’s important we see how these guys come in and respond to that.
It’s 16 days all in so it is important they take it in from the first day. We can’t have people waiting around and holding back. We need them to come and put their best foot forward straight away.”
That Goodman is even mentioning the November internationals highlights how this tour can carve a route into Andy Farrell’s senior squad. As the likes of Jack Crowley and Joe McCarthy have shown, the Emerging Ireland programme can help launch players from promising provincial talents to fully fledged internationals.
“We want to build depth in positions, we want to have competition in positions,” he continues.
“As you’ve seen from the last tour a number of guys have come on to play for Ireland. There’s almost 50 caps or so around guys who played on the Emerging Ireland tour the last time to go on and represent Ireland. We want guys to have that opportunity, see them in our structures, see how they play, how they learn. Especially for a new coach like myself to meet guys from the other provinces that I haven’t had a chance to get alongside yet.
“A lot of it (is) around our language, a little bit around how we want to play the game. The provinces are doing an amazing job, all the lads are very well coached, we’re just trying to build on that but also add our flavour and what makes us different.”
For some, the tour already looks like a stepping stone to bigger things. Leinster out-half Sam Prendergast and Ulster forward Cormac Izuchukwu both toured with Andy Farrell’s senior squad in South Africa over the summer and look on course to make their Test debuts in November.
Prendergast, in particular, will be under intense focus given his clear potential and Leinster’s breadth of talent at out-half. His landing into this camp should be fairly seamless given Goodman was his attack coach at Leinster last season.
“For him to come away to South Africa [with Ireland] was a great experience for him,” Goodman says of the 21-year-old.
“He wasn’t there to make up the numbers, he was pushing hard every training. It was great for him to build another level of understanding around how the Irish team plays the game and also for him to get confident as the 10, calling the shots.
“We expect him to come in after that experience and lead this team around. I’m looking forward to seeing him. I thought he had a good start on Friday night [in Leinster's URC defeat of Edinburgh] in terms of some of the way he drove the Leinster team around, he’ll be looking to kick on on this tour and put his name forward for future Leinster fixtures.”
The same goes for Charlie Tector, who found himself parachuted into the Emerging Ireland squad earlier in the week on the back of injuries and his own fine showing on the URC’s opening weekend.
Tector, 22, was the starting out-half for the Grand Slam winning Ireland U20s in 2022 and made his first competitive start for Leinster last weekend, shifting from 10 to inside centre.
“I’ve seen him play a little bit at 12 these last three weeks in the pre-season and in the first round,” says Goodman.
“I thought he’s been great, he’s had a great start to the season and it was good to see because he was hampered by a bit of injury last year. Having played 10 and now pushed out to 12, you can see he’s been a great extra set of eyes for the 10 and feeding good information in and scanning really well, and he’s been a great ball-player outside of that 10 channel and getting the ball to space well.”
It will also prove a valuable few weeks for Goodman, who has stepped into the Ireland backs coach role vacated by Mike Catt. He shadowed Catt on the South Africa tour but is now preparing to put his own stamp on things, working with the players on strike-plays around setpiece and general skills work.
“It’s a very different workflow [compared to Leinster] for myself, that’s been the biggest thing. I’m looking forward to getting the whistle back on today and getting amongst the boys, even being in an office with other people fulltime, being able to talk footy – I think the wife is happy to have me out of the house as well.
“It’s different from the day-to-day at Leinster where you’re down in the office. I suppose there’s been a little bit of work from home, which is great as well for the kids, but in terms of coaching, I think I’ll probably lose my voice by the end of the day because I haven’t done it for a period of time.”
From here on in, it’s all systems go.
