You wouldn’t describe the rare migrations from one side of the front row to another as a one-way street, but there is definitely one direction of travel that throws up less obstruction than the other.
Peter Clohessy always said that the switch from tighthead to loosehead was the easier of the two. How much easier, though? Is it a case of sitting a pass maths exam after studying the honours paper? It’s not simple to quantify.
“I don’t know,” said Tom O’Toole with a laugh after his first start for Ireland at loosehead last Friday.
“It was maybe a difficult transition at the start because there was a lot going through my mind. Once I simplified it, and once I talked to the right people, I kind of found it then.
“Once I narrowed it down, then I found it maybe a little bit easier to get the flow of it. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s easy, but it’s certainly different, which I’m kind of enjoying at this stage of my career, to be able to play both sides now, which is really promising.”
Ireland’s squeaky win against Wales at the Aviva Stadium three days ago wasn’t just his first start in the No.1 shirt for his country. It was his first in the Six Nations too. All told, the Ulsterman has started just three times in 21 Tests.
This was an education in more ways than one.
O’Toole, an Ulster tighthead, has now featured four times on that side for Ireland. It didn’t start great with his knock-on at the base of a ruck costing Jack Conan a try that would have made it 14-0, but things got better from there.
He’s 27 now, no rookie, and he found comfort in the guys around him all week and on the night. Alongside him in that front row were a pair of Lions in Tadhg Furlong and Ronan Kelleher. Three of the five behind them at the set piece were Lions too.
Add in his clubmate Nick Timoney and captain Caelan Doris and O’Toole had a solid and strong support network. And he had picked the brains of everyone from Cian Healy, Andrew Porter and Angus Bell in a bid to find a soft landing.
Porter and Healy had both made the same transition. Bell is a 50-cap Wallaby who packs down with O’Toole at Ulster the latter lines out at tight while doing the stint on the far side in training.
The last time O’Toole featured at loose in a game for Ulster was against Benetton last season when he moved over to accommodate Scott Wilson off the bench. Ireland have been hothousing the idea since he played there against Fiji in November of 2022.
“It’s something that’s always been in the pipeline a little bit. Around that Fiji game a little while ago when I was playing loosehead. Andy just said, ‘look, just don’t think about it too much, you’re loosehead now, that’s the way you have to think’. So just try not to give myself any excuses, or any tap-outs.
“The Fiji game was a really good learning for me. I gave away a couple of penalties, but it was a good learning. We got a good couple of successful scrums as well. But it’s something that I definitely wanted to show that I’m capable of. I had the belief in myself that I could do it, and the right people around me had belief in me as well.”
Timoney spoke last week about how he wasn’t over-thinking anything as he broke back into the squad and the team after a long absence. O’Toole clearly took Farrell’s advice on board and approached it in much the same way. A ‘just do it’ approach.
The head coach must be pleased as punch with the results.
Farrell has started no less than five men in that No.1 jersey going back to the last summer tour: Porter, Paddy McCarthy, Jack Boyle, Jeremy Loughman and now O’Toole. Michael Milne has come off the bench four times in the same spell.
If the scrum hasn’t exactly been a weapon in that time, then it has held its own after the trauma of the demolition job suffered at the hands of the Springboks in September, but this is a case of looking forward more than back.
Only 15 months stand between now and the start of the squad’s preparations for next year’s World Cup. O’Toole might be fifth in the depth chart at loose now, but a versatile player’s value multiplies when it comes to the global gatherings.
“Certainly. It’s a funny position now with the amount of injuries we’ve had. Never really in the last few years, especially with such a specialist position, have we had that many injuries.
“But it’s given me an opportunity to put my hand up and to start a big game like that, and to kind of be able to perform hopefully that will leave me in good stead for the future.”