Stuart McCloskey is 33, a recent Six Nations player-of-the-tournament nominee, and - as the Belfast pub he met the For The Love Of Rugby team in this week was happy to remind him - increasingly comfortable being called the King of Belfast. He sat down with the show's hosts at his local in Belfast for a long-form conversation that touched on Ireland's shifting rivalries, what Andy Farrell is actually like behind closed doors, and why the Springboks adopting Zombie crossed a line.
The rivalry question was the one McCloskey leaned into hardest. With New Zealand's grip on Ireland's collective consciousness loosened by recent results and the URC's South African expansion, the Springboks have moved into the role England used to occupy.
"Now it feels like South Africa are the main rivals," he said. "It's a weird one. Obviously with them being in the URC now, you see a lot more of the South Africans. There probably is a lot more beef and grittiness there. I think South Africans just hate the Irish. I don't know if we hate them as much, but I think it's pretty cordial. There'd be good craic between the fans. We've got to like fighting them yet. But it was obviously - we were the top two teams in the world coming up to that World Cup, and South Africa went on and did it. We came up short, but had beaten them in the pools, and that probably even stoked it a bit more."
Then, almost as a throwaway, the line that has already done laps of Irish rugby Twitter. "And also they stole the song. Of course - Zombie is now they do Razzy version. That's not playing on. It's not really craic either. One thing is having a rivalry. You don't nick the song. That's your own craic."
The English game was the other tactical case study he was asked about. McCloskey's intercept and chase-down on Marcus Smith - one of the moments of the Aviva blowout - he treated with self-deprecating reluctance. "I just think Marcus could have been wrecked from backfield cover and all that. I don't think I get him most times. I think it was just on that day I got lucky. He's the fastest-looking slow bloke you'll ever come across, Marcus. He looks rapid because the air moves and the head bobs."
The broader read on that England performance, McCloskey said, was that the squad knew it was coming but knew they needed luck for it to land. "England actually started that game - which no one remembers really well - put us under a load of pressure for about 20 minutes. We managed just to sit in there and absorb it a bit. They got a bit deflated after that. We barely made a mistake after about 20 minutes, scored three tries, and it looked amazing - but that game could have gone the other way if England score one of those opportunities."
Andy Farrell's hold on McCloskey, after a decade fringing the squad, drew the most reflective answer of the conversation. "I'm 33 there. I've been pinging on that squad for the guts of probably eight or 10 years, and he's kept me motivated to keep coming back. He's keeping me motivated. He's doing a good job that part."
On whether Farrell's behind-closed-doors voice matches his media voice, McCloskey was careful but direct. After the loss to France in Paris that opened the campaign, Farrell publicly questioned the players' intent. "I think we all sort of - it feels ages ago now - I'm pretty sure he did mention intent."
The Ulster centre's wider point, though, was that the Irish camp under Farrell has shed the cliquishness he saw as a younger player. "There's no point coming out with all the bravado sometimes. We're pretty confident in what we do, and we've earned that over the last five or six years - a bit of respect from people. We don't need to go shouting and beating our chest in the media."
Ireland's summer Test schedule lands later this year. South Africa is not yet on it. McCloskey's verdict suggests that, when it does, the Razzy version will not be doing him any favours.
