There is no substitute for experience and when it comes to playing for The British & Irish Lions, Tadhg Furlong has it in bucket loads.
The Irish prop is just one of three players given the nod by head coach Andy Farrell to have been an original call-up for the two previous Lions Tours. Alongside captain Maro Itoje, Furlong is the man with the most Lions caps – six in total - stepping on the plane bound for Australia.
The only thing missing from his time in the famous red jersey is a series win, and the tighthead will be gunning to put that right this summer.
Genes for rugby
Born in 1992, Furlong grew up on a farm in Horeswood, County Wexford where his father James, who played as a prop for New Ross RFC, looked after approximately 30 cows across 60 acres.
Furlong combined his early rugby pursuits with Gaelic football and hurdling until his mid-teens while he attended Good Counsel College and turned out for Horeswood GAA club.
However, with his father playing rugby regularly during his formative years, the sport was never far away during Furlong’s childhood.
“My father used to go into the mart on a Saturday or a Sunday, and he played in New Ross for years and coached at mini-level and a few age-grade teams,” he said to The Irish Times in 2014.
“He had all his buddies there and he used to throw me in with the under-eights. I used to tag along with him to his training sessions too.”
Despite working on the family farm during his upbringing, Furlong joked his size, strength and power comes from his genes rather than his workload, and that was always going to see him end up on the rugby field.
“My body shape probably lends more to rugby than it does to hurling. That’s just the fact of the matter,” he admitted.
Different margins
Furlong’s first foray into professional rugby came in November 2013 when he made his Leinster debut against Dragons, playing eight minutes of the Dublin side’s 23-19 victory that day.
He has not looked back since, winning four league titles and the 2018 Champions Cup at domestic level.
His exploits in blue meant the chance to play in the green of Ireland soon followed, and he became a senior international in August 2015 in a World Cup warm up match against Wales.
"The margins are that little bit smaller," Furlong explained to Irish Independent about making the step up to international rugby. "The intensity is definitely higher, it's very fast and you have to work hard.
“Initially you have that early feeling of nerves with stuff running through your mind and the added pressure of playing for your country for the first time."
Furlong did enough to earn a place in Joe Schmidt's final squad, where he played once against Romania in the pool stage at Wembley Stadium.
“I'd have told you you were cracked if you'd told me I'd be in this situation [this time last year], but I worked hard for it," he reflected.
His Ireland career has only gone from strength to strength from that point, winning three Six Nations titles, including two Grand Slams in 2018 and 2023, and attending another two World Cups.
His place at the top table of world rugby has also been recognised by three appearances in World Rugby Men's 15s Dream Team of the Year in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Conquering the All Blacks… and then doing it again
Beating three-time world champions New Zealand is a feat that many greats to wear the Irish shirt have failed to achieve. However, Furlong did so at the first time of asking in November 2016.
Starting alongside Jack McGrath and Rory Best in the front row, Furlong helped Ireland to their first-ever win over the Kiwis at Soldier Field in Chicago.
Then, eight months later on Lions duty, Furlong repeated the feat when Warren Gatland’s side won the second Test 24-21 in Wellington to level the series.
Those wins left Furlong feeling humbled at the fact he had trodden ground no other Irishman had done before him.
"I'm incredibly lucky,” he reflected to the Independent in 2017. “I'd refer back to when we were playing New Zealand in Chicago with Ireland and lads had lost to New Zealand five or six times and I’d never played against them.
“They'd talk about their experiences and what works and what doesn't work. Like, I didn't know what to expect.
“To beat New Zealand in my first game playing them, knowing so many people had gone before, played them five or six times and never beaten them, legends of the game, you feel incredibly lucky in many ways, privileged, and to do it twice, even more so.”
Alphabet-based anxiety
Having been selected in 2017 against the backdrop of Leinster’s preparations to face Clermont in the Champions Cup semi-final – a match they ultimately lost, Furlong admitted he wasn’t in a position to fully take that selection in.
However, in 2021, he had no such distractions and revealed the nerves he felt during the announcement, especially when he didn’t hear his name called where he expected it to be.
“I was absolutely bricking it,” the then 28-year-old said. “It’s hard to think what it was like four years ago because we were in Leinster in the canteen and you kind of miss a lot of the build-up. We were training and you kind of just get to the names part whereas this time you were sitting down watching the intro and the whole build-up to it.
“I kind of had it in my head, ‘Right, if I’m going on this thing my name is coming out after Toby Faletau, on the alphabetical order jobby: Zander Fagerson came out and I was like, “Fa… Fu…’.
"You’re doing all that stuff in your head and next thing you get called out and it’s just like, ‘Thank God’.
“It’s a mad feeling. It’s class but then it’s so far away and you just don’t know what to think really.”
Charity ambassador work
In 2023, Furlong returned to his former college to speak to students as part of Rugby Players Ireland’s Tackle Your Feelings programme, which for which the Ireland international is an ambassador.
The programme was designed to encourage those taking part to create support networks for themselves so they would always have someone to talk to.
And speaking about the initiative, Furlong recognised the importance of speaking out rather than bottling feelings up.
“I’m very proud to be a Tackle Your Feelings ambassador and really enjoyed the experience of returning to a place which represents such a happy time in my life, Good Counsel College,” he said in 2023.
“In rugby there used be a thing where if you’re not really sick in the stomach and so nervous there was a fear you wouldn’t play well. Now we want to go out to the pitch and show the best version of ourselves and play it as well as we can, and to do that we have to be free, and we have to be confident.
“We work a lot on if you are feeling boxed in, if you’re feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, if you’re worried about who you’re going to scrummage against, who you’re coming up against, are you worried about not playing well on the big stage; it’s about talking to your teammates. It makes a massive difference.
“I think it’s important to encourage young people to find that one good person to reach out to during times of struggle. Hearing the challenges that students face in comparison to my time in school just reinforces the importance of having a strong support network and feeling comfortable enough to open up and talk to someone you trust when not feeling ok – it makes all the difference!”
