Tadhg Beirne has come a long way since being dispatched to Llandovery after the Drovers’ team boss Euros Evans asked the Scarlets for the ‘last second row in your pecking order’.
That was in 2016.
Within a year, Beirne had won a PRO 12 title with the Scarlets. Twelve months later he was playing in a Heineken Champions Cup semi-final before subsequently walking off with the Guinness players’ player of the season gong at the PRO 14 awards.
Had he stayed in Llanelli for another campaign he would have been eligible to play for Wales on residency grounds and could potentially have been part of Warren Gatland’s 2019 World Cup squad.
But it wasn’t to be, notwithstanding that Wayne Pivac did try to encourage the lock or backrower to stay.
Such an attempt was doomed to failure, though, as the multi-skilled forward revealed this week.
“I only ever wanted to play for Ireland,” Beirne, who’s set to line up against Wales in the Six Nations opener in Cardiff on Saturday, told The 42.
“That was the reality.
“I think when it became a talking point that there was an opportunity to play for Ireland, the only thing I wanted to do was come back and play for Ireland.
“So I didn’t have a conversation with Warren but I did have a conversation with Wayne before I left Scarlets and he tried to encourage me to stay because he did say the World Cup was the following year and I’d be qualified for it and all that but I think I’d made my decision before that, that I wanted to wear green for the World Cup not to be in red.
“So it didn’t really cross my mind too much, to be honest, because I wanted to play in green. If I felt I didn’t have a chance maybe it would have been a different conversation.”
It is no exaggeration to say Beirne’s time in west Wales helped shape his life on and off the field, though. His wife Harriet is Welsh and he never looked back after breaking into the Scarlets side, with his first Ireland cap arriving in the summer of 2018. Just three months ago, he was named in World Rugby’s dream team at the end of a year in which plaudits have kept coming, with his remarkable display for Ireland in the third Test against New Zealand in the summer seeing him dubbed the 'difference maker'.
Not bad for someone who’d been cut loose by Leinster before pitching up at the Scarlets and having to start at square one in west Wales. You can read more here about how star went from pizza delivery man to Lions Test winner.
Llandovery boss Evans was to recall a conversation he had with the Scarlets’ Jon Daniels about the possibility of a lock being sent their way in 2016: "I said to him 'give us the second row who is the last one on your pecking order' because I hoped we’d see a lot of him whoever he was.
"Jon said: 'There is a boy coming over from Ireland. We don’t know much about him, so you can have him'. It was perfect for us, but Tadgh only played two games."
He played just twice because it was obvious he was good enough to play at a higher level.
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Straightaway he’d turned heads at the Drovers when he arrived at the club with a notepad and pen to write down details of lineout calls and assorted plays. This was someone who was a bit different. Then he won man of the match against Cardiff by ‘turning over the ball all over the park’.
Beirne was on his way.
But, to his immense credit, he didn’t forget his short spell at Church Bank, staying in the Llandovery WhatsApp group until he left the Scarlets.
“Things like that go a long way,” commented Evans.
Munster forward Beirne himself has travelled a long way since those defining days of seven or years ago.
Wales will need to carry beyond the gainline in their Six Nations clash with Ireland on Saturday and play the Munster man off the ball to stop him turning over their possession.
It’s not impossible.
But the former Scarlet is one of Ireland’s biggest threats.
And every Wales player will know it.
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