Nick Timoney’s whirlwind journey from Belfast pays off

Nick Timoney awoke to a phone call from Andy Farrell at 8am on Sunday morning summoning him to join the Ireland squad in Dublin. He estimated a 15 minute time lapse from bed to car, racing out the door of his Belfast home and down the M1.

He smiled: “Yeah, it was a bit crazy alright, I was barely awake when I got a phone call from Faz (Andy Farrell) this morning. I got a croissant and a protein bar in a petrol station on the way down. I actually thought I had more time than I did but I left all my gear on Thursday in my parents’ house (in Dublin) so I didn’t have anything to pack.

“Luckily there was no traffic, it being a Sunday morning so I got down quick enough, packed up my stuff, headed straight for The Shelbourne and met up with the lads and went from there.”

He explained that he had been a little disappointed when travelling back to Belfast on Thursday not to have seen any game time during the Autumn Nations Series, a state of affairs that changed dramatically following Farrell’s phone call.

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Timoney was due to be 24th man but then Iain Henderson went down in the pre-game warm-up. He said: “For Hendy to go down, and me realise I was going to be on the bench and then get a nice chunk of time was a bit of a whirlwind. It was an unbelievable day, it seemed like a crazy turn of events from my point of view but I guess I loved it so it was a good day.”

He admitted that he was pretty relaxed on the drive down because he thought all that would be required of him was to do the warm-up. “I saw Hendy holding his hamstring a bit at the end of the warm-up and I said to Bairdo (Ryan Baird), ‘here maybe get ready because it looks like Hendy has pulled up with something’.

“His response was to point out that I’d better get ready myself because it looked like I was going to make the bench,” which Timoney admitted hadn’t struck him at that point. His teammates and the coaching team rallied around to help his focus on his new assignment.

“As soon as that happened I had Jack Conan, Tadhg Beirne, Paul O’Connell and all those lads saying, ‘listen, we understand you mightn’t have everything in your head because you weren’t expecting this’.

“But for the first 10, 15 minutes of the game I was just sitting with Jack (Conan) and he was just talking to me. It was stuff that you know but we were just running through it, just having that calm voice there talking you through stuff was unreal. From my point of view it was an unbelievable day to have a group like that to help you out.”

The call came on 60 minutes to replace Josh van der Flier to earn a second cap to follow a try scoring debut against the USA during the summer. The 26-year-old enjoyed two or three moments that reinforced his athleticism as a player, fitting seamlessly into the team patterns; a testament to his aptitude and the assistance of his teammates.