David Humphreys

He is the best coach.

The things that he's done, his ability to change, his ability to keep it fresh, his ability to motivate.

That's why there's lots of other teams who would have liked him.

And from our point of view, it was very important from the short term.

It was also very important from a longer term piece.

And I suppose...

confirmation that with what Andy has seen over his period of time in Ireland, the decisions that we're making now, which he's involved in, which have an impact on the longer term future of the game in Ireland, he's very supportive of and very much behind.

Maybe if I go back to 2024, when I was first, just to just come into the room, the first tour I went on was to South Africa.

And if you remember the first test, we played terribly.

The first 40 minutes, that first test, I think was as bad as Ireland had played for a number of... The South Africans won the game pretty comfortably.

On the Tuesday, in a school training facility in Durban, Andy had a team meeting where he had obviously all the players, the whole coaching support staff in that room, and the way that he talked to the players and...

It's hard to do it justice now when we're talking here.

But it was his ability to insult players in the nicest way by saying that they didn't hit the standards that they talked about.

They didn't hit the standards that the Irish team had set themselves over the previous years.

But saying in a way that they came away unbelievably motivated and driven to produce a performance that they produced in Durban to win the Test match.

I mean, absolutely incredible.

And again, Tommy, this year...

particularly during that Six Nations period, where there was a bit of pressure and a bit of heat coming on because of the disappointment and the expectation around that first performance in France.

You again saw that.

And people have said, what is it?