Tadhg Beirne touched familiar bases this week when asked about taking over the captaincy of Munster. The Irish lock isn’t brand new to the role and has worn the armband before. He knows the landscape.
But in his first season starting as club captain, he spoke of pride and honour and the legacy left by those names that came before him.
Beirne referred to Peter O’Mahony’s leadership to as natural, naming the flanker as the player who continues to easily fall into that guiding figure around the squad. He mentioned other leaders without naming them and presumably had flanker Alex Kendellen in mind, currently captaining the Emerging Ireland side in South Africa.
“There’s a lot of leaders in this group that, you know, I’ll be leaning on in that area,” said Beirne. “But my job is also to make sure I lead by example on the field and off the field.”
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Beirne’s experience tells him captains have always played an outsize role in rugby. He must communicate effectively to the referee. He calls the plays to kick for touch or go for goal, evaluates how the match is shaping and changes game plans.
He is the link between the coach and the team, must be mentally strong, emotionally disciplined and have self-confidence as part of the bigger package. Beirne also knows he must meet every expectation he has of the players around him. But most of all the captain must lead.
O’Mahony, the player he replaced, was handed the Irish captain’s armband at the beginning of 2024 by Irish coach Andy Farrell. Farrell explained why he chose him to follow the retired Johnny Sexton.
“There are certain people that walk into a room and they make the room feel right,” said the Irish coach. “It’s pretty important around the place, and certainly on match day, that you have that type of person in the dressingroom.”
So, presence among peers is a quality Farrell looks for, whether in the changing room, on the pitch or in the face of the referee.
Brian O’Driscoll, with the most caps, most tries and most matches as captain of Ireland, had the armband from 2002 to 2012 and led the team on 83 occasions. Talking about it in an interview five years ago, he explained oratory was not what he understood to be his greatest asset. But he knew what was.
“I never saw myself as captaincy material but similar to Pete [O’Mahony] someone saw something else in me and leadership is absolutely what you do rather than what you say,” said O’Driscoll. “That’s how you get respect, by doing not saying.”
It was put to Beirne that captaining Munster was like overseeing a rugby institution with the strong characters of the past, such as Paul O’Connell, Anthony Foley, Mick Galwey and O’Mahony, resonating with values that align perfectly with Munster culture.
But climbing into that kind of personality does not necessarily come easily, or instantly.
“I would say it’s been a gradual process,” said Beirne. “Pete’s been a captain his whole life with every age grade he’s gone through. Because it probably comes very naturally to him.
“Since I’ve been given my first opportunity, I’ve probably had to learn fast in terms of speaking, being a little bit more vocal and saying the right thing. I certainly still don’t always say the right thing. But I’m learning as fast as I can.”
Given last week’s defeat in Parma, his captaincy is central to the immediate fix in Munster when Ospreys visit on Saturday. As Sexton found out four years ago as he was resuming the role of Irish captain after an eight-month hiatus, much as he loved the role, it could be as lonely a place as it was prized.
Often, he was the player most held to account to explain why things didn’t pan out.
“It hurts more when you are captain because you are the guy who is meant to be leading by example and putting in the performance that shows the way,” said Sexton. “If you don’t do that, it can be a hard place to have to stand and talk, and to try to lead.”
Sexton later made the distinction between wearing the armband occasionally as Beirne has done and being the embedded team captain over time.
“Being made captain for a campaign is slightly more special than filling in for Rory [Best],” he said of the hooker who captained Ireland 38 times.
That’s the shift of position Beirne has taken in Munster, from filling in to being captain for the entire season.
The feeling is that he knows he will lead by example with turnovers and tackle counts benchmarking him among the very top of impactful players.
In that aspect Munster’s newest captain is more than halfway there.
