THE BEIRNE IDENTITY
TADHG BEIRNE is happy to discuss a variety of subjects: his boyhood reverence for Roy Keane; how initially he hated rugby; how he gorged himself to make weight for the Leinster Academy; how he found love in Wales. These are all on the table. There’s just one thing he doesn’t want to talk about. The Lions.
Hmm. This is tricky. Is it something he has deliberately tried to keep out of his thoughts?
“Yeah, massively so,” Beirne says. “I suppose if you asked me this time last year would I be thinking about the Lions, it would have been no. But obviously there has been a lot of outside noise, something that you try to ignore and not get your hopes up.
“I used to read the papers a lot. As I’ve gotten older I realised that there is not much point. It’s probably more detrimental than beneficial. So I’ve been trying to
