Josh van der Flier has his own, fairly unique, rugby back story. Although of Dutch origin on his paternal grandparents’ side, his dad, Dirk, played wing for Old Wesley, both school and club, and was his first coach. Even so, van der Flier’s journey from Wicklow and the local club’s under-8s to the British & Irish Lions was not exactly plotted out.
Ask him of his first memories of a Lions tour and it’s clear the team was a relatively remote concept when he was growing up.
“We didn’t have the channels in my house. My grandparents lived across the road so we would go in there and watch the Lions. I just have a vague memory of it. I would have been quite young,
“I distinctly remember, I think it was 2005, we had a family video and we taped over it by mistake. It was Lions against New Zealand that year, would that be right?” he asks, unsure, as he would have been 12 at the time.
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“We used to watch that over and over again. We didn’t have the TV channels at home, it was just cassettes. It was either that or Star Wars or something,” he remembers, laughing. “So, I ended up watching a lot of 2005 Lions games.”
Even then, the concept of one day playing for the Lions didn’t even register with him.
“Gosh, I didn’t really know that rugby was a job when I was younger. It probably wouldn’t have been something I verbalised, but I used to watch an Irish game or a game on TV and then go out to the garden and pretend to be someone who played for Ireland or the Lions.
“It’s probably the pinnacle. It’s hard to compare with playing for your country, but it is a very hard thing to do, so it’s pretty cool.”
Although this is his 10th season of international rugby, van der Flier missed out on both the 2017 and 2021 Lions tours, when Tom Curry, Hamish Watson and Justin Tipuric were all preferred, as was Josh Navidi after Tipuric was injured in the warm-up win over Japan.
Van der Flier’s career then went into overdrive with that stellar 2021-22 season, which featured the world rugby player of the year award. With him turning 32 last April, becoming a Lion this year appears to have been close to an obsession in the last year or so.
May 8th was the fateful squad announcement and he didn’t want to be with his Leinster squad-mates.
“We finished training at 1.30 or something and the announcement was 2. I didn’t even bother showering, I was straight out the door because I didn’t want to be there in front of loads of lads if guys didn’t get picked or if I didn’t.
“So, I just went home. My wife [Sophie De Patoul] actually facetimed me so we watched it together. It was a long wait. Last time I had a vague memory of the announcement just popping up and that was it. This time it was like 30 minutes of TV before it got to it. I was sitting there sweating on the couch.”
A surname beginning with the letter ‘V’ didn’t help, especially as the names of Tom Curry, Ben Earl, Jac Morgan and Henry Pollock all preceded him.
“You have a good idea of how squads are made up, so you need specialised lineout back rows, maybe one or two sevens, and then there was like four sevens and my name hadn’t been called and you think ‘oh no’ but I made it in the end.”
That was five days after Leinster’s crushing loss to Northampton and van der Flier resolved to park the Lions and focus on the URC. He was not unduly concerned about the first hamstring twinge of his career, which forced him off against the Scarlets and ruled him out of the semi-final against Glasgow before he returned for the final against the Bulls.
“People were asking me what the story is with tickets, wondering what my plans were, and I was literally saying ‘I’m not even thinking about that until I’m finished’. Winning the URC was brilliant, so it was ignore it until I was there.”
His first week in camp wasn’t exactly how he imagined living with the Lions. Not that it wasn’t without its advantages. Staying in the Shelbourne, he could meet Sophie every day for lunch and training at Belfield Bowl brought back memories of playing with UCD in the AIL.
“Seeing John Hammond [father of Lions video analyst Vinny], who would have been the team manager when I was here as well, it was very special.”
This week in Perth feels more authentic in advance of his likely Lions debut against Western Force, two decades on from rewatching the video of the 2005 tour. He’s come a long way, with the chance now to leave his own legacy.
