Wales host Ireland at the Principality Stadium on Saturday and, while the hopes and expectations of fans for the match have been drastically reduced, there have been some fiery encounters in the past
Wales’ Gavin Henson takes on Brian O’Driscoll(Image: Huw Evans Picture Agency Ltd)
Ahead of Wales playing Ireland in Dublin on Friday, the discourse between the two teams has been calm and respectful. It wasn’t always this way.
Supporter expectations surrounding the fixture have transformed dramatically over recent years as Wales have struggled. It’s all a far cry from one of the most intense rugby rivalries in the game that grew and grew during Warren Gatland’s tenure. In 2009, Gatland famously told the media: “Of all the teams in the Six Nations, Welsh players dislike the Irish the most.”
Whilst suggestions of inherent animosity between the nations have since been downplayed, these matches undoubtedly contained a real edge, with psychological warfare and on-pitch confrontations abundant throughout.
We take a look back at some of the most infamous verbal exchanges between the Welsh and Irish.
Gavin Henson makes Brian O’Driscoll accusation
One of the most intense battles between Wales and Ireland actually occurred before Gatland’s time when they faced each other in Cardiff on the final weekend of the 2005 Six Nations, with the home nation requiring victory to secure their first Grand Slam in 27 years.
Given the enormous pressure, tensions ran high on the pitch with the Welsh side determined to triumph and the Irish equally committed to spoiling the occasion.
That afternoon, attention focused heavily on Welsh rugby’s emerging star, Gavin Henson, and it became apparent the opposition weren’t particularly keen on him – especially the iconic Brian O’Driscoll, who made his sentiments towards the fly-half abundantly clear.
Following a powerful tackle on Henson by Ireland centre Kevin Maggs early in proceedings, O’Driscoll moved in attempting to secure the ball. However, according to Henson, “he also decided to pull my hair and tried to gouge my eye for good measure”.
“‘How do you like that, you cocky little f****r?’ There was a real flash of anger in his eyes,” he wrote in his book, My Grand Slam Year. “It may have been something I’d said in the build-up.
“I’d probably been asked the question: ‘Do you think you’ll beat Ireland?’ To which I’d probably said: ‘Yes.’ Whatever it was, Brian seemed to lose it.”
Henson also claimed that later during the match, O’Driscoll ran past him calling him a “f*****g w****r!” following another on-field incident involving the Welshman.
Whilst the pair were hardly close, the Irish centre was swift to “vehemently deny” Henson’s accusations of gouging.
“I certainly did not gouge him,” O’Driscoll stated following the publication of Henson’s autobiography. “I think that’s one thing that disgusts me on the rugby pitch because I’ve been on the receiving end of it. For someone to purposefully go out and try to maim an opponent – there’s no place for that in sport.”
‘Mike, I’ve had enough!’
Despite Mike Phillips and Ronan O’Gara developing a strong friendship away from rugby, the former Wales scrum-half took great pleasure in antagonising the Irishman during matches – sometimes even managing to irritate his own teammates in the process.
The rivalry worked both ways, though, with each player attempting to provoke the other. In a 2018 piece for the Western Mail, legendary winger Shane Williams observed that “the suspicion used to be that Ronan O’Gara would see Mike Phillips as a paraffin lake just waiting to encounter a burning match,” noting Phillips held similar views about the Ireland fly-half.
“They got on well together off the pitch, especially after touring with the Lions in 2009,” Williams continued. “But once they looked over the halfway line at each other, the verbals could be relentless. [They] liked nothing better than to try to wind each other up.”
O’Gara was renowned for his sharp wit and certainly knew how to dish it out as well as take it.
Mike Phillips is prominent in a disagreement during Wales’ 2014 Six Nations clash with Ireland(Image: Huw Evans Agency)
“He famously responded to some chat from Matthew Jones, then only about 20 and playing for the Ospreys against Munster, by telling him something along the lines of: ‘There’s an under-12s game over there. Go and play in it’,” Williams added.
However, Phillips was a master at the wind-up and, on one particular occasion, went so far that even his own teammate told him to stop.
“I always used to love playing against Ronan. We used to sledge each other loads,” the former scrum-half wrote in his WalesOnline column in 2020. “When I was a youngster, playing for the Scarlets against Munster, I was giving it to him all day.
“Every chance I got, he was having it. Paul O’Connell tells the story that Robyn McBryde, who was obviously on my team, lost it during a stoppage in play and yelled: ‘Mike! I’ve had enough of it. It’s got to stop!’
“O’Connell was laughing his head off but I only used to try and get into O’Gara because I knew he was a good player and if I could put him off his game it would be a massive bonus for us,” he added. “I shrugged it off and gave him some back. This is before the game had even started!”
‘Have a good day, son’
Dan Biggar vs Johnny Sexton is one of the best individual rivalries that Wales v Ireland has produced over the years, with the two British & Irish Lions fly-halves full of respect for each other but also not afraid to make a dig here and there.
The ref mic was always worth listening to when those two shared the pitch and that proved no different during the 2017 Six Nations, when Biggar was heard making a cheeky remark towards his opposite man that proved the spirit of sledging was still alive and well between the two sides.
Moments before Sexton was sent to the sin bin by referee Wayne Barnes for killing the ball near the Welsh try-line, the Welshman made a beeline for his rival in order to bid him farwell.
“Cheers Johnny boy,” Biggar was heard saying after walking over from the middle of the field. “Have a good day son.”
After Sexton returned, he nearly helped Ireland turn the game on its head, but Biggar held the bragging rights as Wales emerged 22-9 winners in Cardiff.
Dan Biggar of Wales and Jonathan Sexton of Ireland in discussion
‘Bring the rest of The Beatles with you’
It’s not just on the pitch or in newspaper columns that wars of words have taken place between the Welsh and Irish over the years.
One of the more bizarre clashes saw that man Mike Phillips (again) joust with One Direction singer Niall Horan, after the hitmaker took issue with the fly-half’s on-field behaviour during Wales and Ireland’s meeting in the 2014 Six Nations.
Phillips had just been involved in an angry confrontation with several Irish players after Paddy Jackson’s late try had helped Ireland to a 26-3 victory, and Horan was less than impressed by what he’d seen from the Welshman.
“Mike Phillips is like a child throwing his toys out of the pram!,” he wrote on Twitter. “His attitude is terrible, looks like a right arrogant idiot.”
It didn’t take long for Phillips to hit back in style, as he wrote: “Come down to training in the week big boy. Bring the rest of The Beatles with you.”
The exchange saw the Wales star gain tens of thousands of followers on the social media platform, but he also faced messages from countless One Direction fans demanding him to leave the Irish singer alone.
However, the pair soon kissed and made up and met up with each other in a New York pub later that year.
“I was on holiday and Johnny Sexton told me he was there and said we should meet up for a beer,” Phillips explained. “So I met up with him in, ironically, an Irish pub.
“He’s a top guy, really down to earth. He’s organised tickets for my niece and nephew to see One Direction and helped out with some charity stuff. I’ve met him a few times since and we always have a bit of banter.”
‘A tub of Flora’
In 2015, Warren Gatland had his team talk written for him after former Ireland second row Neil Francis remarked in a newspaper column that the coach had “the intellectual properties of a tub of Flora”.
“Gatland has had Wales for eight years – you would have thought he might have gotten time off for good behaviour,” Francis wrote of the former Ireland coach. “Unceremoniously dumped by the IRFU back in 2001, the Kiwi has been a significant factor on the other side of the pitch, whether for Wasps or Wales and once again he, rather than Joe Schmidt, is the key factor in this game.”
“Is Wazza a smart coach? Personally I think he has the intellectual properties of a tub of Flora, but he has instinct and the rudiments of a game plan and he is a winning coach.
“Two Grand Slams, a Lions series and a Heineken Cup doesn’t lie, but Ireland have over the last few seasons figured him out and he will only cause us trouble if he is able to reconfigure.”
Predictably, Francis’ comments came back to haunt him as, while Ireland ultimately won the championship title that year, they were beaten 23-16 by Wales in a gripping encounter in Cardiff.