How the Irish rugby team are preparing for the Six Nations in Portugal

Thursday

The Paul McGinley Golf Academy welcomes us at the modest entrance at Vilar do Golf. This is Quinta do Lago, a vast and sprawling place of worship to golf. Sweeping greenery, it is exactly what you expect it to be. Across the fairways some 3.5km away the Irish rugby squad are starting their day. It is 9am.

The room in Vilar will be ready at 4pm says the kindly Carlos at reception. It is sunny and warm but with swampy grass verges and deep ochre coloured puddles after a night of biblical rain. Three things. The phone says Almancil is 18 degrees, the smell of pine and locals wearing puffy warm jackets. The laptop bag is peeled off. Never having learned to dress for destination and not departure, a diagonal band of sweat runs from left shoulder to right hip. The order of business is to locate The Campus, a cathedral to exercise excellence with its Desso Grandmaster Hybrid pitch, clay and hard tennis courts, padel, plunge pools, swimming pools and lavish weights room. Ireland rugby’s bolt hole.

Joe Schmidt first took the Irish team to The Campus before the Six Nations Championship when he was coach in 2019 and again in August of that year before they faced the humidity and heat of the World Cup in Japan. And each year since the Irish squad have returned. Tomorrow Paul O’Connell, James Ryan and Andrew Porter will talk. On Monday IRFU director of rugby David Humphreys will speak about how the Irish rugby world is spinning and on Tuesday a coach and four players will air their hopes and aspirations ahead of the opener against England in the Aviva Stadium. An outside morning coffee at the golf club. In January, that’s sweet.

Conor Murray during an Ireland training session on Saturday. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho

Friday

James Ryan and Andrew Porter wander in past Danos restaurant from the training pitch at The Campus. Ryan has grown his beard fuller and Porter appears to have acquired more tattoos. His body, the canvas, has little space remaining, his arms and legs swirling with ghostly figures. Of all the players in the squad, the Irish prop is the beast. The muscles, the bulk, the aggression on the pitch, the ears pumping blood during matches, his eagerness for confrontation and contact – Porter is the guy you want in the hand-to-hand of the breakdown. Today he is again asked about his honesty in front of the Netflix cameras for their series Full Contact where he spoke about the loss of his mother, Wendy, to cancer when he was a child, mental health struggles, and finding his place in the world.

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“It reached a broader audience, of people who are maybe struggling with their mental health. Yeah, I’m glad I did it, in the hope that I could shed light on how I dealt with things and what I went through,” he says. “Hopefully people can use that to improve their mental health or seek help if they need it. It resonated with a lot of people because it doesn’t just have to be people who are big into rugby.”

In vulnerability Porter has found strength. The vibe he gives is one of durability and courage and the accomplishment of something emotionally difficult. It is impossible to know if he fully understands what a fine and generous thing it was to have opened up and spoken so articulately. He skips away saying that he’s teaching some English to French prop Rabah Slimani, who he calls Mon Cherie. “But not all the right words,” he quips going out the door.

Ireland scrum coach John Fogarty (left) awaits a ball from Cian Healy. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho

Saturday

A low grey sky hangs over Quinta do Lago. On the patio the sun loungers look pathetic and pointless as heavy gobs of rain splash on the smooth tiles making them ice rink lethal. When it rains here surfaces are potential killers. Even the South Course 10th tee box some 50 yards from the breakfast venue at cafe Noa is dank, abandoned and golfer-free.

The Uber taking us to watch the squad training passes rental outfit Bikers, who will get no custom today. We arrive at The Campus, statuesque pine trees and spaceship shaped houses lining the route. Backing on to the pitch, the great wide doors of the gymnasium are flung open to a perfect green surface. Stationary bicycles have been pulled outside, towels draped over the handlebars. A working place.

Some players sprint from the gym, others saunter along slowly. Jamison Gibson-Park hits a few drop kicks. John Fogarty leaps on to a pair of steps as Cian Healy and Rónan Kelleher torpedo him with lineout balls. Caelan Doris, strapped into a harness is running across the pitch with a trainer trying to hold him back like a runaway horse.

The pitch is a tiny hive of industry; folk of all shapes and sizes doing their own things alone or in groups. Sam Prendergast runs on the same turf Harry Kane did with Bundesliga club Bayern Munich when they came here. Conor Murray walks the same stretch as Kylian Mbappé and Bruno Fernandes. Celtic, Rangers, Paris St Germain and Kerry GAA have come and gone. So too Ronaldo and the Portugal national football team, all of them here for one thing only. They are looking for the percentages.

Tadhg Furlong during an Ireland training session on Saturday at The Campus, Quinta do Lago, Portugal. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho

Sunday

This warm weather training lark is gaining traction with the fourth estate as we run among the Stone Pines barking evening dinner venues at each other. In a weirdly awkward choreography, we keep ending up in the same restaurant as the Irish squad. The Cheeky Pup gastropub is one direction from the apartment village towards the Quinta Boutique Mall.

For Haute Couture in The Fashion Clinic or TG4 for Galway v Tipp on pub TV, it’s where you need to be. The GAA meets Hackett and Pour Moi. In the other direction down Avenue Andre Jordan past The Four Seasons and The Wyndam Grand Algarve is a bridge and a promenade and the sea.

There was a time when the Ireland rugby team stayed in the Killiney Castle Hotel and after training you could find Irish secondrow Malcolm O’Kelly immersing himself into the cold Forty Foot at Sandycove and emerging apparently better than when he went in. Now plunge pools have entered the lexicon.

In this dreamland corner of Portugal, it is sport, money, sunshine, food. For Irish tighthead prop Tadhg Furlong all those things – the plunge pools and the wellness therapies – can do many things but not miracles. A dull, grim day of warm aerosol rain sweeping across the fairways and a deathly quiet resort meets with the lousy breaking news of his departure home and the arrival of Dan Sheehan, James Lowe and Jack Boyle. Rugby’s endless cycle of loss and renewal.

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