IRELAND SCRUM COACH John Fogarty doesn’t hide his true feelings when asked to reflect on how the team fared at the setpiece on their July tour to South Africa.

“It wasn’t good enough in the summer,” Fogarty admits.

There is no tougher place to test your scrum mettle than South Africa, but the Ireland coaches weren’t happy with how things went against the back-to-back World Cup champions. As such, the setpiece was a huge area of focus for Ireland heading into the November internationals, where Fogarty feels Ireland’s players have delivered an improved return across defeat to New Zealand and last Friday’s win against Argentina.

It was very frustrating in the summer, it wasn’t good enough, we didn’t return enough as a team. Sometimes we can get in our own way, overthink things, sometimes making things simple.

“I think we had a good shape, we scrummage at a really good height at the moment, and that leads to us building weight. That’s important. We’ll always tidy up the pictures and images, we’re always trying to be more aware of what the referees are looking for. Its really important to have a good relationship, a two-way relationship between referees and coaches, particularly at scrum time, so that we can get into scrum contests.

“I think in the first game against New Zealand we got into some nice, good scrum contests. They’ve been alright. We want to create something for the crowd, we want to create something for the team as a scrum. There’s good buy-in. We’re in a good place and we need to get more out of the gains, perhaps.”

One of the key challenges is simply having the tools needed to make the scrum a point of difference.

Ireland have missed the skill and heft of Tadhg Furlong over the last two weeks and his absence has shone a light on Ireland’s stocks in the front row. With Furlong and Ulster’s Tom O’Toole both ruled out for the Pumas win, Leinster tighthead Thomas Clarkson made the jump from ‘training panellist’ to Test debutant, handling himself well in his 33 minutes on the pitch. Clarkson has played 47 times for Leinster but just once in the Champions Cup before winning his first Ireland cap.

John Fogarty speaking to the media in Abbotstown yesterday. Billy Stickland / INPHO Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO

On the loosehead side, 37-year-old Cian Healy remains second in line to Andrew Porter, who has put in 70+ minute shifts on eight occasions for club and country since the turn of 2024.

Asked about Ireland’s loosehead depth, Fogarty lists off the names.

Leinster’s Alex Usanov did “incredibly well” on this year’s Emerging Ireland tour. Connacht’s Jordan Duggan was brought on the same tour as the coaches wanted to give him “a nudge.” “Sometimes players, maybe they don’t believe they can make the step, maybe they don’t believe they’re on coaches’ mind.” Fogarty says.

“We’re not a huge country, we’re looking at every single loosehead that’s playing competitive rugby in the provinces.”

Leinster’s Jack Boyle is someone “that we’re excited about, he’s someone Leinster are excited about.” Paddy McCarthy falls into the same bracket and Michael Milne is “competing hard.”

There are exciting young prospects pushing through but one of the biggest challenges is exposure.

“There’s a good stock of players there, we need them playing rugby,” Fogarty continues.

“There’s lots of ‘A’ games on at the moment in the provinces which is great, and the AIL is there. The AIL is great for front five. It’s difficult, there’s some big, grizzly old players in the AIL, so AIL, ‘A’ games, into the provincial games, there’s opportunities to play.

I’m watching all the ‘A’ stuff at the moment, Leinster played Connacht and they beat the shit out of each other. It was great.

“So we need to create more opportunities for them through the provinces, nationally we need to create more opportunities, so we’ll see how we go over the next few months. The stock is there and we’ve confidence in it. We want to find game time and we want them to step up.”

The search for fresh talent is always ongoing in the background. Fogarty explained the IRFU have recently hired somebody dedicated to monitoring front row players at grass roots level. 

“In the NTS [National Talent Squad], we’ve employed someone who’s going to work directly with front row players through our NTS programme.

“We’ve looked at below U20s, so 17s, 18s, 19s, a technical coach that will make his way around the country to identify players to assist him. It’s difficult for schools players because they’re limited in what they can do for safety reasons. There’s good reasons around that but we can stress them in different ways in the provinces.

“I think that position is going to be a really good one for us to get our U20s guys ready. Sometimes U20s guys come into competition and they’re learning in competition. We want them to compete in competition, so it’s an important role for the IRFU in that NTS space with 17s, 18s, 19s, leading up to your U20s coach and I’ll be there from U20s onwards in and around the academies and we’ve got some good coaches around the country.

“So we’re very aware of it and we’re putting pieces in place.”