ANDREW PORTER POPS his head around the corner to scope out the landing area where some of the media have gathered before Leinster’s interviews get underway at their training base in UCD.
The prop asks how everyone is and there’s a bit of a chat about his tattoos.
It might not seem like much but this kind of basic human interaction isn’t always there these days. Some rugby players dislike the media – with reason, they might say – others are tired of the same old faces asking the questions, while lots of players get nervous about these dealings.
Porter seems not to belong in these camps. He’s affable and open. He turns 28 next week so he has done countless interviews and press conferences and sponsorship gigs but it doesn’t seem like a chore to him.
So it wasn’t a surprise to learn that he will feature in the upcoming Netflix series about the Six Nations called ‘Full Contact.’ It was filmed during the 2023 campaign and will be released on 24 January, just over a week before the 2024 championship gets going.
The Netflix cameras were with Ireland throughout last year’s Six Nations but Porter also welcomed them into his home for two full days of filming as he spoke about his mental health struggles, his rugby career, and his life. He jokes about quickly realising that his normal days at home aren’t that exciting, so he brought them to the gym for four hours and out for a walk with his dog.
While Porter was happy to do the interviews, he hasn’t seen what the producers came up with from those chats. Like the rest of us, he’s not sure exactly what’s coming in two weeks.
“I was given the option to watch it and review it and I refused,” says Porter with a smile.
“I can’t listen to myself talking or watch myself so I just gave it to the lads in the IRFU to watch it and get their thoughts and they said it was satisfactory, so I’ll take that. It’s good enough to go on the world screen, so I’ll trust them.”
Porter appreciates that some people who tune into the new series might not know too much about rugby. If the show proves popular, it could even be that he gets recognised publicly for being on Netflix rather than his exploits on the pitch.
That would be huge for rugby if that’s the case and it’s the main reason the Six Nations opted to go down this route. There is always talk of ‘growing the game’ within rugby and Porter admits that he got involved partly because of a sense of responsibility. That said, he just doesn’t see any issue with giving people outside the professional bubble more insight.
“I have seen the Formula One show, Drive to Survive, and I thought I wouldn’t watch it at all but I saw that it was behind-the-scenes and I thought that would be interesting to see the other side of it,” says Porter.
“If it’s anything like that and it catches on for anyone who wouldn’t watch rugby then yeah, that’s great but I’m just kind of more open.”
Porter loves his job. There are tough parts, including the physical pain, but he feels very fortunate to be in this line of work.
His wife, Elaine, tells him he’s living in a dream world rather than the real one the rest of us occupy. Porter tries to give her advice about her job in AIB and she doesn’t listen to him, pointing out that there’s no correlation.
Getting to be around some of his best friends all day every day is why Porter thinks he has it so good. He’s also excellent at his line of work and gets great enjoyment from doing something he feels he “can actually do well.”
Porter knows his family have to make sacrifices for him to do it, with his relentless schedule and weekend work meaning he’s not always there for every big non-rugby event.
But even when people ask if he wishes he just had a normal Christmas every year, he insists he will always want to be down at Thomond Park playing in the traditional St Stephen’s Day clash against Munster.
There is one thing Porter vehemently dislikes about it all.
“I don’t enjoy losing, that’s for sure!”
There was the World Cup quarter-final exit last year with Ireland, which Porter has since said was deeply painful. And the last two seasons with Leinster have been tough as they’ve come up trophyless.
The defeats to La Rochelle and the Bulls and Munster stick with these Leinster players. Porter says they’re a constant kick up the hole whenever encouragement is needed. They’ll look to rectify things this year in the Champions Cup and URC.
While he’s already experienced with 59 Ireland caps and more than 100 appearances for Leinster, Porter knows he is still in the process of mastering his craft as a loosehead prop.
With that in mind, he embraces challenges like the one offered by Munster’s new tighthead Oli Jager in Thomond Park the day after Christmas.
There appears to be real respect from Porter when he calls Jager “a solid lad” who he remembers from back in their school days.
“He was a year ahead of me and I went to the East Leinster Athletics or something and I remember seeing him and I thought he was a coach. It was mad. He was always a huge man.”
Going up against Tadhg Furlong in Leinster training keeps Porter as alert as anything else. Furlong is like a magician, according to Porter, in that he shows you something that’s not there and always has another trick up his sleeve.
Having previously spoken about his frustration with some big scrum penalties that went against him in the World Cup quarter-final last year, Porter is excited to get back in an Ireland jersey in a few weeks when they take on France in their Six Nations opener.
Funnily enough, the Netflix blurb for the new show labels French tighthead Uini Atonio as Porter’s “nemesis” but the Leinster man can’t remember if he actually said that.
With Atonio opting to do a u-turn on his post-World Cup retirement from France duty, the pair of them will be rekindling that rivalry pretty soon, having only recently done battle in the Champions Cup.
“He’s a big man and we have a lot of history, with La Rochelle and Ireland,” says Porter.
The hint of menace tells you all you need to know. And with that, Porter is away, thanking everyone politely as he goes.
