AS TADHG BEIRNE gears up for his second taste of a Rugby World Cup, the Munster and Ireland forward hopes the experience proves to be more fulfilling than 2019′s trip to Japan.
As Joe Schmidt prepared to walk away from an Ireland squad with which he had enjoyed so much success, a desperately disappointing 2019 came to an ugly end as Ireland limped through the pool stages before New Zealand inflicted a remarkable demolition job in the quarter-finals.
“It took a long time to get over it, I’d say. Yeah, it was fairly disappointing to be honest, we had such expectations of ourselves and we probably felt like we didn’t fire on all cylinders,” Beirne says.
“Overall just disappointment from the get-go, even when you talk about warm-ups we didn’t particularly play well in them, did we? And that fed into the World Cup in terms of our performances over there.
I think afterwards it took a long, long time to get over it so I’m certainly hoping that’s not the case this year, and we’ll be doing everything we can to change that.”
Beirne played 197 minutes at the 2019 tournament, but his only starts came against Russia and Samoa. This time around, he’s hoping to have a greater influence as the Grand Slam winners look to finally break past the quarter-final barrier.
“I’d love to play as much as possible, the more I play I feel I can build on the performances, so if I am lucky enough to be selected I’ll just have to make sure I play well enough to keep my hand up to be selected in more games.
“I think back then I was coming off the bench quite a bit and maybe I didn’t put my hand up enough to merit a starting jersey, so hopefully I’ll be able to do that now in the next couple of weeks in these warm-up games.
“The game has changed a lot as well (since 2019), in fairness, but I think I’ve learned an incredible amount over this World Cup cycle off all the coaches that have come in here, they’ve definitely made me a better player, a smarter player definitely.
“And I probably understand what we’re trying to do a lot more than I did in 2019 and that’s probably a credit to the coaching staff here and all the players I’ve played alongside.
“So I’d like to think I’ve become a better player and that’s probably the biggest change (since the last World Cup).”
Beirne is part of the Munster group who bounced back into pre-season following their brilliant URC title win, and the 31-year-old admits that success has given them a real boost heading into the start of a new Test window with Ireland.
“I think it certainly lifted our spirits, that’s for sure. We have been to semi-finals and finals so many times over the years and lost, it can take a while to get over that. So you kind of feel the pain for the Leinster lads as well, what they went through. Just for us it gave us a little pep in our step coming in, we didn’t have our heads down like we have probably in the past. It was a nice feeling for us, for sure.”
Most of Munster’s key men are training away in Abbotstown but two pillars of Graham Rowntree’s title-winning side – RG Snyman and Jean Kleyn – have been off with the Springboks as the defending world champions got stuck into the Rugby Championship.
Four years ago, Kleyn was a surprise inclusion in Schmidt’s Ireland squad but now he could be in line to feature for his home nation in France – with South Africa and Ireland facing off in Paris on 23 September.
“I gave him a few texts here and there, I’m delighted for him to be honest,” Beirne says of his Munster teammate.
“He’s been massive for Munster the last couple of years and has put in performances week in, week out.
“He had an opportunity to go and play for his home country, why wouldn’t he take it and I thought he played excellent in that first game he did get and I’m sure he’ll get a few more caps with them soon and I wish him all the best.
“If he is playing in that game hopefully he’ll be on the losing end!”
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