BEING NOMINATED FOR World Rugby’s Player of the Year award is a big achievement to try play down, but Josh van der Flier did his best to do just that when he sat before the media at Abbotstown today.
Johnny Sexton, Lukhanyo Am, Antoine Dupont – this is the company Van der Flier now finds himself in. Come Sunday, one of the four will be crowned the best men’s player in the world.
“It’s obviously a lovely thing to be nominated for,” said Van der Flier, who has already been named 2022 EPCR European Player of the Year and recently added the Players’ Player of the Year and Rugby Writers’ Player of the Year awards to his collection.
“I’m very grateful for being part of a very good team that’s done well this year with Ireland and Leinster, it’s a very pleasing thing to get.”
There will have been pats on the back all round at the IRFU’s high performance centre when the nominations for this year’s awards were announced on Monday. Andy Farrell is in the running for Coach of the Year while Mack Hansen and Dan Sheehan are up for Breakthrough Player of the Year. Across the various national teams, both 15s and 7s, Ireland players and staff received a total of eight nominations.
“It’s a testament to Andy and the coaching staff, that they’ve managed to bring out the best in a lot of us,” Van der Flier continued.
“When the team does well, everyone who is playing looks better as well, and I think having the good group, with the quality of player in each position, when you have that amount of quality it just makes everyone around them look good as well.
“I think once you have one, you get the other. It’s nice, especially for Andy as well, he’s been brilliant in developing the group and trying to help us improve as much as we can, so it’s great for him to be nominated.”
Self-improvement has clearly been a big focus for Van der Flier over the last couple of seasons, but his understanding of that term has also developed. At 29 years of age and with 44 caps to his name, the flanker can now consider himself a senior man in the Ireland set-up. He’s become increasingly aware of the need to put that experience to good use.
“I’ve tried to influence as much as I can, I guess. Certainly the more games you play and the more experience you get, I suppose I’d be in more of a position to hand on some advice, especially to the other back rows and number sevens. I certainly learn from them as well.
“I do enjoy helping some of the younger guys out or trying to make sure people are comfortable, whether it’s defence, trying to add where I can.
It’s certainly something I’ve been trying to add to my game anyway. I remember Stuart Lancaster saying to me before that really good players can play for themselves, but it’s learning to try and make everyone else play really well as well.
“That’s something I’ll certainly be trying to work on, because it’s one thing to trying to play well yourself but I mean you look at someone like Johnny, it’s well documented how he pushes on the team but he makes lads around him play really well and he pushes them to be better.
“It’s certainly something I’ve been trying to work on and something I’ll continue to try be better at.”
Ireland’s work on as a team this week is to improve on last weekend’s showing against Fiji. Farrell is expected to revert to a more familiar selection for Saturday’s clash with Australia, with Johnny Sexton fit to captain the side, as Ireland look to close out their Autumn Test calendar with a clean sweep of wins.
As other sides have struggled for form this season, Ireland have managed to build a steady run of consistency, winning eight of their last 10 Tests.
“There’s a lot of things that it comes down to,” Van der Flier explained.
We’ve had a good focus on working with the likes of Gary Keegan, the mental skills coach, and individually guys making sure they have their own prep right. Each individual is trying to prepare as well as they can to get that consistent performance.
“As well, the focus on learning from previous games, and trying to do the basics really well. A lot of the times, when we play well it’s not necessarily fancy things coming off, it’s just doing the really simple things.
“The coaching staff have driven that really well over the last couple of years, certainly it comes down to learning from mistakes, willingness to improve and individuals getting themselves as good as they can.
“I should also mention the competition, in every position at the moment there are people pushing for places and it means that every player, whoever is in any position, has to be performing at their best, because they know there is pressure behind them. It all feeds into having better performances.”
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