Furlong relishing link-up with Porter in Irish front-row

Tadhg Furlong is full of praise for international team-mate Andrew Porter. Photo: Sportsfile

Cian Tracey Twitter Email

November 03 2021 02:30 AM

Tadhg Furlong chuckles to himself, as he reminds us that he won his second Ireland cap as a loosehead.

So much water has crossed under the bridge since then, it’s easy to forget Furlong was double-jobbing at the 2015 World Cup, when he was asked to cover both sides of the scrum.

“Yeah, I was a mixture between loosehead, tighthead, and I was covering back-field in training during the week because the four props were playing, so if you ever want to know anything about the pendulum, give me a shout,” the Wexford native smiles.

Ending up as a sweeping full-back was always a long shot, and while he could have done down the loosehead route, he soon made the tighthead spot his own after Mike Ross hung up his boots.

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Having briefly dabbled with both positions, which, as Furlong is keen to point out, are extremely different, he has a fair idea of the amount of work that went on over the summer, when Andrew Porter and Cian Healy switched sides.

It remains to be seen what position Healy will see out the rest of his career in, but there is plenty of excitement around the prospect of Porter continuing his return to loosehead over the coming weeks with Ireland.

Had Furlong and Porter not been around at the same time, this wouldn’t even be a talking point, but with the latter having first broke onto the scene as a barnstorming loosehead, the powers that be at Leinster and Ireland soon set about ensuring the depth chart was deep enough in both positions.

Eyebrows were raised when Porter initially made the switch, yet given Healy’s age profile, there was always a sense that his team-mate would eventually revert back to loosehead.

What most people didn’t see coming, however, was Healy filling in at tighthead for Leinster at the start of this season, before he moved back to loosehead more recently.

“When I heard he (Healy) was going to tighthead, I was like, ‘Here, what’s going on?’” Furlong admits. “I think I was still on the Lions Tour, or maybe on holidays after I came back, and I was just checking on the Hudl account, where you can watch all the training footage remotely, and it just looked weird at the start, to be honest with you. He’s been a loosehead all his life, but he got up to speed to be fair to him. He was winning scrum penalties when he came on to beat the band. I’m not sure, you’d have to ask him what he really felt about it.

“He’s been picking my brain a small bit, but he’s one of those people who, if they put their mind to it, they go gung-ho at it. I thought he did really well. He’s so strong, he can get into those dynamic positions.”

When attempting to address Ireland’s power, or lack thereof, against the bigger teams, Andy Farrell and his coaching staff identified starting Porter and Furlong in the same Ireland front-row as one way to close the gap.

We have already seen Leinster beginning to move in that direction this season, and as much as Healy still has plenty to offer, at 34, his best days are behind him, with Porter (25) still to hit his peak as an international prop.

“He’s got a grasp of it very quickly, to be fair to him,” Furlong (28) says of Porter. “It’s not easy at this level to switch over the way he does. Obviously, there’s a good breeding ground at Leinster to practise, and in training.

“He’s done really well, all things considered, because it’s not an easy thing to do. Granted he has a history with the position, but he’s done really well so far.”

With Rónan Kelleher and the uncapped Dan Sheehan of a similar ilk in terms of their powerful carrying and ball-handling skills, this November window is seen as hugely important in terms of the 2023 World Cup.

Japan are first up on Saturday and although the Brave Blossoms may not provide the same kind of test at scrum time as New Zealand will next week, Porter and Furlong will be central to getting the edge on the visitors up front.

“Across the game now, I suppose the opportunity to have an impact as a front-row has never been as much,” Furlong adds. “There’s never been as much expected of you in terms of open-field, the opportunity to get hands on ball, run good lines, carry hard, ruck, defence, maul.

“There’s so much asked of a prop now, so to have someone of his (Porter’s) calibre there is great. He was selected as a British and Irish Lion. He’s a hell of a player.”