Veteran Ireland tighthead Tadhg Furlong has defended the antics of Henry Pollock, insisting he is ‘not a bad kid’.
The divisive 21-year-old England back-rower burst on the international scene last year, going on to tour Australia with the British and Irish Lions.
Pollock’s performance in Northampton’s elimination of Furlong’s Leinster in the Investec Champions Cup semi-final was the final piece of evidence that convinced Lions boss Andy Farrell that he should select the then Test rookie who had just a single appearance as a sub with England to his credit.
Furlong, who was on his third Lions trip, got to know the brash Pollock on the tour and has now offered his support to him.
Appearing on What The Ruck, the talkSport Ireland show, co-host Dave Kilcoyne quipped that Eddie Hearn would be making a move to represent Furlong now that he has started his rugby recruitment drive by becoming Pollock’s agent.
“Not for me,” joked Furlong. “I just don’t want to be in front of it all. I don’t have enough love for being out in front of everyone. He [Pollock] is made for that kind of craic.
“He gets a hard time of it…”
“He is a good kid; he gets a hard time of it, but he is not a bad kid, to be fair to him. I know he puts himself out there, and he probably doesn’t care about some of the stuff he gets. He is a real marmite kind of character.”
Furlong is now considered a Lions legend having been the starting Test series tighthead on their three most recent tours to New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. His reflections on those trips?
“2017 was really good craic. South Africa in covid, it’s not the same without the fans. It was a bit of a mess with the covid outbreaks and all this kind of craic, but at the same time it forced you to be around the lads and have a bit of craic. I was playing as well, which always helps.
“And the summer gone was unbelievable craic. Maybe you go into it trying to savour it all in, or take it all in, because it is going to be your last one. It was great craic, good time, real good group of lads.”
It was then put to the 33-year-old Furlong that he might potentially become a Willie John McBride, a Brian O’Driscoll, an Alun Wyn Jones or an Owen Farrell in 2029 and tour for a fourth time with the Lions. His reply? “I’m not going on a fourth tour.”
Furlong’s start in last month’s Triple Crown win over Scotland was his 86th Ireland Test cap, 11 years after he made a 2015 debut under Joe Schmidt in a Rugby World Cup warm-up match.
The prop had Schmidt as his international head coach through to the end of the 2019 World Cup and while the Kiwi’s tenure ended badly, Furlong doesn’t allow that ending to colour his view of what Schmidt overall achieved during his time in charge.
“Joe gets a tough rap sometimes,” he said. “He was unbelievable. I still do stuff in the game or still think of some aspects of the game through Joe’s eyes… like when you hit the deck, what do you do with the ball? Body ball, we used to call it.
“Like, I just still hear Joe saying it. I still hear him moment by moment, battle by battle. I can still hear all that stuff. I know it went a bit skewed at the end, but he did a hell of a lot for Irish rugby.
“He took the team to the 2015 World Cup and when you think of the team from the 2015 to the 2019 World Cup, there is a lot of changes there. He pretty much did a good rebuild. 2018 was a good year. 2019 was poor, very poor, but he did a lot for us.”
Andy Farrell succeeded Schmidt after the 2019 finals in Japan and Furlong still remembers a conversation with the coach from around that time which encouraged him to start becoming a greater influence in the Irish set-up.
“Under Joe, I just used to be worrying about my own job. He made the game quite simple for you, to be fair to him. Worry about your own job, next job focus, react to what was in front of your face, don’t let the team down, it just made it simple for you to deliver,” he said.
“When he left, I remember Faz [Farrell] talked to me when he took over. He was like you’re a senior player, people look for stuff from you and he said I want you to talk more. In a roundabout way, he said that, and he really drove it with the leadership group that time and really pushed us.
“When you start talking in team meetings, you get woefully self-conscious. If you think you are talking too much, you are not talking half enough, so he kept at us, and we became comfortable. If you have a point, you feel selfish if you don’t say it… He backs the players to be themselves and be comfortable doing it.”
Furlong has had his troubles with injuries in recent years, and a persistent calf injury meant he missed the start to the 2026 Six Nations, a match that Ireland were to lose 36-14 to France in Paris.
The front-rower didn’t see that defeat coming as he felt Ireland were well-prepped, and neither did he buy into the doom and gloom public consensus that materialised after they struggled to beat Italy in round two.
“I wasn’t involved in the France group, I wasn’t training or anything like that. But I was looking in at training, looked at the captain’s run and all that and I thought the boys were flying, thought they were ready to go and they just didn’t get a performance out on the pitch,” he said.
“I suppose Faz would have broken down; we simplified the game a little bit (after that). There are certain aspects of the game you have to perform in, or you need to put maximum effort into, and we kind of came off the back of that into the following week and we grunted it [the win] out.
“I remember the press conference afterwards, someone asked me if the review was tough on Monday after that game and I was no, because some of the stuff we said we wanted to do in the game we did it, just basic physicality, basic work rate, some of the big blocks of the game which you can’t win a test match without.
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“So we built it on, stripped the game back, aerial contests, work rate, physicality, being a better carry, play at the line and it just ramped up from there then.”
That ramp-up featured wins over England, Wales and Scotland, matches in which Furlong was restored to the No.3 jersey after playing off the bench versus the Italians.
This run of wins pushed Ireland to the top of the table before the tournament finale, which saw the title favourites France hosting an England team that had lost its way under Steve Borthwick and had been beaten by Scotland, Ireland and Italy.
No one, not even Furlong, gave the English a chance of pulling the shock Stade de France result that would have left Ireland winning the title. In the end, the outcome was determined by a last-gasp Thomas Ramos penalty.
“I got to the bar about 30 minutes in and was just chatting away to lads and I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t see it coming,” said Furlong. “Honestly, I didn’t. I thought France would pony back up after a tough result the week before (at Scotland). As the game went on, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing and then obviously it’s cruel at the end of it.”
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