O’Toole didn’t feature for Ireland in last year’s Six Nations. This year, he became an unexpected star
RAMSEY CARDY/Sportsfile
At the end of it all, we were sitting in a cavernous room in the bowels of the Aviva Stadium trying to make sense of Tom O’Toole — and this is hard because Tom O’Toole doesn’t make sense.
That’s been one of the themes of the 2026 Six Nations Championship. We’ve been fumbling around clichés like: you couldn’t make this up. Or: you couldn’t write this. And here’s the case in point: you couldn’t make up Tom O’Toole because no one would believe you.
In a vain attempt to explain what happened to him, O’Toole said that Andy Farrell, the Ireland head coach, had spoken to him “a few times one-on-one” through this campaign. That’s a hairs on the back of neck moment — the imagination settling on it and running away: what it must be like to have Farrell speak to you a few times.
Yes, “a few times”. And that doesn’t make sense either: a few one-on-ones and the Tom O’Toole that we knew — or barely knew — a few weeks ago is now this, the giant Tom O’Toole who might well have been awarded man of the match in the game that might have won Ireland the championship.
Even the most seasoned rugby watcher could not have predicted Carré’s exploits during this tournament
ALED LLYWELYN/HUW EVANS/SHUTTERSTOCK
Meanwhile, the Wales-Italy game had started. Wales were 14-0 up and that didn’t really make sense either. The TV camera flashed to a fan proudly brandishing a homemade sign saying “Keep calm and Carré on” which is a reference to Rhys Carré, another prop whose exploits you couldn’t make up. That try of his against Ireland has had more than five million views on TikTok alone.
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Back to O’Toole. He is primarily a tight-head; never in his entire career for Ulster has he started a game at loose-head. The stats show that before this Six Nations, he’d had 155 appearances for Ulster, Ireland or Ireland A and only ever started at loose-head once.
We know what happened next. Ireland had a weird loose-head epidemic that struck down so many that, eventually, when four of them were unavailable for duty, O’Toole was somehow the next in line.
Wales prop Carré gleefully scored his team’s first try against Ireland – and then it went viral on TikTok
PETER MORRISON/AP
This did not go unnoticed before the championship. At that point, Ireland were three men down in that department and it was Jeremy Loughman, the fourth choice, who was required to step up. Surely this would be the sinking of the Irish ship, at least so reasonable logic dictated. And the loose-head problem wasn’t the only issue; Ireland were a team both rebuilding and simultaneously suffering from injuries to a number of key personnel.
In a team meeting at their pre-tournament camp in Portugal, Farrell had said to the squad: “Everyone with ten caps or less — stand up.” At that point 11 men got to their feet; 11 out of 37, can you be any more sodden behind the ears?
I am intrigued by the psychology here. If you point out to a group of athletes that they lack experience, then the risk is that you persuade them they aren’t yet equipped to compete. When Farrell does it, he seems to achieve the opposite.
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One of 20 tackles O’Toole made against Scotland on Saturday
CHARLES MCQUILLAN/Getty IMAGES
The culmination was the first scrum on Saturday at the Aviva. O’Toole versus Scotland’s Zander Fagerson — a fifth choice with one start at loose-head in his entire professional career versus a Lions tight-head with more than 80 caps. Yet it was the fifth-choicer who won and it was this victory that earned Ireland the penalty from which they scored their first try.
This wasn’t even the most impressive part of his day. In his bemused turn in the post-match limelight, O’Toole said that the scrum penalty was “pretty pleasing”. What was never in the loose-head’s job description, though, was to make 20 tackles. That’s the second-highest in the team, and he was only on for 65 minutes.
On that, he said: “I guess it was pretty good, yeah, I kept myself busy.” Again, you couldn’t make it up.
The kind of language that commentators have for this kind of thing is: “He had no right to do all this.” Just like Carré had no right to score his 30-metre try. This is a reference to our understanding of performance. What we know about high-performance is that fifth-choice props don’t do what O’Toole did. Likewise, first-choice 100-cappers such as Maro Itoje don’t get yellow-carded for brainless acts like slapping a ball out of a scrum half’s hands.
It was a rollercoaster of emotions for all across the six weeks of these championships, although some (like Borthwick) seemed to experience more lows than most
David Rogers/Getty Images
In the same vein, a team like Ireland who are so short on experience shouldn’t be stitching together the kind of tries, built on multi-phase sustained technical excellence, that they did on Saturday. Likewise, a comparatively experienced England shouldn’t have been in retreat over the three previous weekends. Everyone’s looking for a perfect performance and knows it’s the nirvana they will never arrive at, yet Scotland nearly got there against France. That shouldn’t rightfully be happening either.
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It is all this that has left so many marvelling at the 2026 Six Nations Championship and wondering if it has been the the best ever. Above all and more than ever, you couldn’t write it.
Trying to understand the nonsense, I am with John Barclay who wrote in his column last week: “I’m intrigued by what the last few weeks may be telling us about the importance of emotion in the modern game . . . when everyone is there or thereabouts in terms of ability, my sense is that it plays a more significant role than ever.”
That is my sense too. It’s something to do, also, with the formula of rivalries being repeated annually over a neat little six-week window. You couldn’t sustain the emotion over, say, the length of a Premier League season. Italy couldn’t even sustain it over six weeks and were flat against Wales, who conversely took six weeks to reach their crescendo against Italy. Likewise, Farrell hasn’t transformed O’Toole for ever, though, for a few weeks, he made him a superhero.
Farrell found a way to reignite his squad after their dismal loss to France in week one
Liam McBurney/PA WIRE
I wonder, then, if Farrell would be such a great head coach in a club side over an eight or nine-month season. His ability to inspire performances from his players seems ideal for short international campaigns.
And this isn’t intended to be a column about the future of Steve Borthwick, because there may be no one in the world who understands better how the game works, yet, in the heightened emotional extremes of these six-week championships, does he understand sufficiently the people who play it?
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I also wonder what Rassie Erasmus makes of it all. He probably envies the noise, the circus of it all. But he might be quietly satisfied to see all these European engines running on the petrol of emotion. If there’s anything this incredible Six Nations has taught us, it’s that no one — not even Farrell — can keep the emotional levels constant.
But that’s all for another campaign. For now, we have Tom O’Toole still squinting in the limelight. What was Farrell’s reaction to him afterwards? “Andy just said, ‘Well done,’ ” he replied, “and I’m extremely honoured and extremely grateful to get that from Andy.”
Again, the mind boggles at what the prize of a “well done” from Farrell can do to turn a fifth-choicer into a giant. It doesn’t make sense. But rugby and the Six Nations, especially a Six Nations like this, wouldn’t be the same if it did.
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Owen slot
Magic of Six Nations is that emotion can mean more than ability
new
Has this championship been the best yet? Above all and more than ever, you couldn’t write it — the transformation of Tom O’Toole is a case in point
Owen Slot, Chief Sports Writer
Sunday March 15 2026, 6.50pm GMT, The Times
RAMSEY CARDY/Sportsfile
At the end of it all, we were sitting in a cavernous room in the bowels of the Aviva Stadium trying to make sense of Tom O’Toole — and this is hard because Tom O’Toole doesn’t make sense.
That’s been one of the themes of the 2026 Six Nations Championship. We’ve been fumbling around clichés like: you couldn’t make this up. Or: you couldn’t write this. And here’s the case in point: you couldn’t make up Tom O’Toole because no one would believe you.
In a vain attempt to explain what happened to him, O’Toole said that Andy Farrell, the Ireland head coach, had spoken to him “a few times one-on-one” through this campaign. That’s a hairs on the back of neck moment — the imagination settling on it and running away: what it must be like to have Farrell speak to you a few times.
Yes, “a few times”. And that doesn’t make sense either: a few one-on-ones and the Tom O’Toole that we knew — or barely knew — a few weeks ago is now this, the giant Tom O’Toole who might well have been awarded man of the match in the game that might have won Ireland the championship.
ALED LLYWELYN/HUW EVANS/SHUTTERSTOCK
Meanwhile, the Wales-Italy game had started. Wales were 14-0 up and that didn’t really make sense either. The TV camera flashed to a fan proudly brandishing a homemade sign saying “Keep calm and Carré on” which is a reference to Rhys Carré, another prop whose exploits you couldn’t make up. That try of his against Ireland has had more than five million views on TikTok alone.
Advertisement
Back to O’Toole. He is primarily a tight-head; never in his entire career for Ulster has he started a game at loose-head. The stats show that before this Six Nations, he’d had 155 appearances for Ulster, Ireland or Ireland A and only ever started at loose-head once.
We know what happened next. Ireland had a weird loose-head epidemic that struck down so many that, eventually, when four of them were unavailable for duty, O’Toole was somehow the next in line.
PETER MORRISON/AP
This did not go unnoticed before the championship. At that point, Ireland were three men down in that department and it was Jeremy Loughman, the fourth choice, who was required to step up. Surely this would be the sinking of the Irish ship, at least so reasonable logic dictated. And the loose-head problem wasn’t the only issue; Ireland were a team both rebuilding and simultaneously suffering from injuries to a number of key personnel.
In a team meeting at their pre-tournament camp in Portugal, Farrell had said to the squad: “Everyone with ten caps or less — stand up.” At that point 11 men got to their feet; 11 out of 37, can you be any more sodden behind the ears?
I am intrigued by the psychology here. If you point out to a group of athletes that they lack experience, then the risk is that you persuade them they aren’t yet equipped to compete. When Farrell does it, he seems to achieve the opposite.
Advertisement
CHARLES MCQUILLAN/Getty IMAGES
The culmination was the first scrum on Saturday at the Aviva. O’Toole versus Scotland’s Zander Fagerson — a fifth choice with one start at loose-head in his entire professional career versus a Lions tight-head with more than 80 caps. Yet it was the fifth-choicer who won and it was this victory that earned Ireland the penalty from which they scored their first try.
This wasn’t even the most impressive part of his day. In his bemused turn in the post-match limelight, O’Toole said that the scrum penalty was “pretty pleasing”. What was never in the loose-head’s job description, though, was to make 20 tackles. That’s the second-highest in the team, and he was only on for 65 minutes.
On that, he said: “I guess it was pretty good, yeah, I kept myself busy.” Again, you couldn’t make it up.
The kind of language that commentators have for this kind of thing is: “He had no right to do all this.” Just like Carré had no right to score his 30-metre try. This is a reference to our understanding of performance. What we know about high-performance is that fifth-choice props don’t do what O’Toole did. Likewise, first-choice 100-cappers such as Maro Itoje don’t get yellow-carded for brainless acts like slapping a ball out of a scrum half’s hands.
David Rogers/Getty Images
In the same vein, a team like Ireland who are so short on experience shouldn’t be stitching together the kind of tries, built on multi-phase sustained technical excellence, that they did on Saturday. Likewise, a comparatively experienced England shouldn’t have been in retreat over the three previous weekends. Everyone’s looking for a perfect performance and knows it’s the nirvana they will never arrive at, yet Scotland nearly got there against France. That shouldn’t rightfully be happening either.
Advertisement
It is all this that has left so many marvelling at the 2026 Six Nations Championship and wondering if it has been the the best ever. Above all and more than ever, you couldn’t write it.
Trying to understand the nonsense, I am with John Barclay who wrote in his column last week: “I’m intrigued by what the last few weeks may be telling us about the importance of emotion in the modern game . . . when everyone is there or thereabouts in terms of ability, my sense is that it plays a more significant role than ever.”
That is my sense too. It’s something to do, also, with the formula of rivalries being repeated annually over a neat little six-week window. You couldn’t sustain the emotion over, say, the length of a Premier League season. Italy couldn’t even sustain it over six weeks and were flat against Wales, who conversely took six weeks to reach their crescendo against Italy. Likewise, Farrell hasn’t transformed O’Toole for ever, though, for a few weeks, he made him a superhero.
Liam McBurney/PA WIRE
I wonder, then, if Farrell would be such a great head coach in a club side over an eight or nine-month season. His ability to inspire performances from his players seems ideal for short international campaigns.
And this isn’t intended to be a column about the future of Steve Borthwick, because there may be no one in the world who understands better how the game works, yet, in the heightened emotional extremes of these six-week championships, does he understand sufficiently the people who play it?
Advertisement
I also wonder what Rassie Erasmus makes of it all. He probably envies the noise, the circus of it all. But he might be quietly satisfied to see all these European engines running on the petrol of emotion. If there’s anything this incredible Six Nations has taught us, it’s that no one — not even Farrell — can keep the emotional levels constant.
But that’s all for another campaign. For now, we have Tom O’Toole still squinting in the limelight. What was Farrell’s reaction to him afterwards? “Andy just said, ‘Well done,’ ” he replied, “and I’m extremely honoured and extremely grateful to get that from Andy.”
Again, the mind boggles at what the prize of a “well done” from Farrell can do to turn a fifth-choicer into a giant. It doesn’t make sense. But rugby and the Six Nations, especially a Six Nations like this, wouldn’t be the same if it did.
Sport Rugby union Six Nations
Six Nations 2026
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