Earlier this week Munster defence coach Denis Leamy spoke about the props on the tighthead side under his tuition and how they have evolved towards the modern game of movement and mobility.
“Just watching them moving around the pitch and watching them day to day, their ability as tighthead props to move around the pitch, their catch, pass, their ability with their footwork, is really, really impressive,” said Leamy.
John Hayes might have been the first pick on the Irish team 20 years ago but the one and three shirts have upped, equipped themselves with greater mobility, an athlete’s cardio system and changed the nature their role since then.
Graduating from the Irish Under-20 Grand Slam-winning team, Josh Wycherley, the younger brother of Munster lock and backrow Fineen, plays on the loosehead side of the scrum, and for the 23-year-old covering ground has never been an issue as he played full-forward in both hurling and football for his local club side St Colum’s, not far from where he grew up in Bantry.
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On Wednesday, Wycherley was also selected as part of Andy Farrell’s 35-man Emerging Ireland squad that will travel to South Africa in late September. The team will have a three-day camp in the IRFU’s High Performance Centre in Dublin before flying to Bloemfontein to face three Currie Cup sides, the Griquas, Pumas and Cheetahs.
“If I got the chance to get into camp or play those games, you’d tear the arm off for it,” he said earlier this week. “You have chats with the coaches here and stuff like that, so the information gets trickled down. It’s all intertwining, and we can keep working on things we need to keep working on. Hopefully at some stage, when you get that chance you are ready to go.”
Farrell, at least, believes that Wycherley is ready “to go” as he has been ticking the boxes since he made his 2020 Munster debut against Cardiff as a replacement for James Cronin. He again faces Cardiff, this weekend in Wales, in their delayed opening United Rugby Championship match on Saturday.
“I made my debut against Cardiff at Thomond Park,” he says. “Luckily, I got a good stretch of games last season and it’s kind of exciting to push on from there this year, you know.
“I think your first cap, you won’t forget it. Mine was in the middle of Covid so I don’t think there were any fans there, which I remember was a bit of a disappointment. But running out at Thomond Park, I remember it like it was yesterday, the buzz at getting that call that you are on the bench and you are going to get your first run out.”
The club debut impressively carried forward in a similarly upbeat vein and later the same year Wycherley made a second debut for Munster in their historic away win against French side Clermont in round two of the Champions Cup in December.
Coming back from an early Clermont blitz and four tries down to win the tie 39-31 was a glimpse into the Munster past. It was after that match the then 21-year-old earned widespread praise and attention for his performance against the veteran French prop Rabah Slimani.
“It was great,” he says of his significant 77-minute shift against Clermont. “The day before I was told that I was going to start. In that way I was lucky in that I didn’t have time to think about it.
“It was just ‘this had to be done’ and yeah, it was a shaky start but I kind of came around in the end. It was probably a bit of a confidence booster at the time. But you have to keep pushing on every time you get a chance to play.”
Short term, everything is motoring with Wycherley hoping to get as much or more game time than he did last year, where he competed well with Jeremy Loughman and Dave Kilcoyne, who was injured long enough to miss the international Autumn Series.
But the selection by Farrell is, at a basic level, confirmation that everything he has being doing is, career-wise, facing him in the right direction. Nor could the South African tour have come at a better time, ahead of a new season and one with a Rugby World Cup at the end.
“I suppose through injuries and that I was lucky to get a lot of game time, particularly towards the backend of that season,” he says. “I think you come into a fresh season, with a few new coaches, just buzzing to kick on again.”
So, Cardiff on the plastic surface in The Arms Park once again for the first time. These days starting out has never been so frequent for Josh Wycherley.
