David Humphreys

Great to have you with us.

Go on, Humph, you beaut.

Listen, just remember that I know a lot more about you boys than you know about me, so let's be gentle.

Have you had nobody else?

Is there nobody else?

Goodness, Tommy, that's a question that probably we could spend the whole next half hour talking about.

I obviously came into this role, I came from a role that I was thoroughly enjoying in the cricket world, very different to what this was.

And when the performance director role came up,

for me it's something that probably was a reason that i left ulster in 2014 to try and get experience elsewhere then move into a different role in a different sport and to get a broader understanding what high performance sport was so that when this job came back up again um you might have been in a slightly better position or better qualified to put your name in the hat so now that i'm in there it's probably um

I wouldn't say very different, but Irish rugby has changed a huge amount in the 10 years that I was away from it.

So coming back in, the initial period was about getting to know how the system worked, the changes that have been made, obviously based on a huge amount of success over the last decade, particularly at an international level.

So it's been a pretty steep learning process.

And I guess whenever you ask me, what is the job?

It literally from day to day can be very different.

I suppose in theory, if you take a look at it, it's about the short term, which is ensuring that Andy Farrell, Scott Beeman, Andrew Brown with our Irish under 20s, we're putting the right support around them to give the coaches and the players the best opportunity to perform every time they put on a green jersey.

And then there's a longer term piece, which is ensuring that while we want Ireland under Andy Farrell competitive in 2027 and 2031, we also want to make sure that we're putting in place the right...

that's doing the right work in the pathway to ensure that in 2035, 2039, Irish rugby is still in the strong position that it's in today.

And you were saying about being busy at the minute.

We've spent a lot of time in schools over the course of the last month.

We spent a lot of time in Limerick with the Limerick schools in Cork.