Van Der Flier: Returning To UCD Bowl With Lions Was Special

Josh van der Flier’s first week as a British & Irish Lion had a lot of familiarity to it. The proximity of the team hotel to his wife Sophie’s workplace allowed him to meet her at lunchtime, and the Lions’ Dublin training base brought back some fond memories.

Van der Flier knows the UCD campus like the back of his hand, having studied there and played with UCD RFC, and he made it his workplace with Leinster Rugby’s high performance facility and headquarters also on site in Belfield.

So it was quite a treat for him to come back to the UCD Bowl last week as a member of the British & Irish Lions squad, and fresh from winning the BKT United Rugby Championship with Leinster.

Roll back to 2011 and his Leaving Cert year at Wesley College. With dreams of playing professional rugby with his home province, he took up a Diploma in Sports Management course at UCD where his brother Johan was playing.

Josh’s progression from Leinster’s sub-Academy to their Academy coincided with him playing All-Ireland League rugby for ‘Collidge’, alongside Garry Ringrose, and their fellow 2025 Lions, Andrew Porter, Hugo Keenan, and James Ryan, have also worn the students’ St. Patrick’s blue jersey.

Van der Flier’s origin clubs, Wicklow (where his dad Dirk coached both Josh and Johan) and UCD, remain close to his heart, and on returning to the Bowl last week, he said: “It was incredible, we trained here on Tuesday and it’s very cool coming out into the changing rooms.

“It was my first time properly here since playing for UCD. Seeing John Hammond (whose son Vinny is Ireland and Lions head of analysis), who would have been the team manager when I was here as well, it’s very special.

“It’s very easy when things are going from one thing to the next to get used to where you’re at. To be involved in the Lions is incredible and you come to the UCD changing rooms for the first time since a few years ago, it’s special.”

The 32-year-old flanker, who went on to add to his diploma with a Bachelor’s degree in Sports Management and a Master’s degree in Business Administration, was speaking at a community engagement event held by the Lions on the day of their 1888 Cup match against Argentina.

He was a travelling reserve for the historic encounter at the Aviva Stadium, retreating to a seat in the stands to watch Andy Farrell’s men lose out 28-24 in an exciting six-try shootout.

When playing for the Lions became a possibility, he would have never envisaged that the city he lives and works in would be where he spent his first few days with the world famous touring team.

It felt like a regular international week for the Ireland star, including the traditional send-off from the supporters at the Shelbourne Hotel. Before the squad’s 20-hour journey from Dublin to Perth via Doha, he was clearly keen to get to embrace the full touring experience with the Lions.

“In a funny way, it doesn’t feel like we’re on tour yet. For a lot of the other lads, say like the Scottish, English or Welsh lads, they’re on tour now.

“They’re away from home, away from their families, whereas we’re like, ‘They’re only five minutes down the road!’. But yeah, it’s been great, really good.”

Getting to this point has been a tough road for van der Flier, there is no denying that. He missed out on Lions selection in 2017 and 2021, but used the disappointment as fuel to further improve his game, becoming the World Rugby Player of the Year just over 15 months after the tour to South Africa.

He was also the EPCR Player of the Year in 2022 before helping Ireland to a historic series win in New Zealand and back-to-back Guinness Men’s Six Nations titles, including the 2023 Grand Slam, along with drawing last summer’s series with the Springboks.

As the Lions D-day loomed last month, he took an ‘if it happens, it happens’ approach, although watching the live squad announcement at home on May 8 was an ordeal in itself.

Coming right near the end of the alphabet, the Wicklow man’s surname – a proud link to his paternal grandparents from the Netherlands – meant that he was the last of the 21 forwards to be called out by Ieuan Evans, the Lions Chair and tour manager.

“We finished training (with Leinster) at half one or something, and the announcement was at two o’clock,” he recalled. “I didn’t even bother showering, I was straight out the door because I didn’t want to be there in front of loads of lads if guys didn’t get picked or if I didn’t.

“So, I just went home. Sophie actually FaceTimed me so we watched it together. It was a long wait. Last time (in 2021) I had a vague memory of the announcement just popping up and that was it.

“This time it was like 30 minutes of TV before it got to it. I was sitting there sweating on the couch!

“You have a good idea of how squads are made up, so you need specialised lineout back rows, maybe one of two sevens, and then there was like four sevens and my name hadn’t been called and you think, ‘Oh no’, but I made it in the end.”

Van der Flier’s form in the lead up to the Lions debut has been very impressive. He has started Ireland’s last 14 Tests in the number 7 jersey, playing the full 80 minutes on seven occasions, and scored tries against New Zealand, Fiji, and Australia.

In Leinster blue, he has continued to cross the whitewash, bagging a brace but missing out on a late match winner in the Investec Champions Cup semi-final defeat to Northampton Saints. He finished their season with his fifth league winner’s medal, and a run of five tries in six games.

There was some concern when he was withdrawn during the first half of their URC quarter-final win over the Scarlets. The hamstring injury kept him out of the following week’s clash with Glasgow Warriors, but he returned with a try-scoring performance in the final victory over the Vodacom Bulls.

“I had never hurt my hamstring before, but it didn’t feel too bad, to be honest. I had no reference point, though.

“It ended up being a small little thing, I got a knee in the back of it, I think. But the unknown was still…I was hoping it was alright. Thankfully it was.”

Looking at what awaits the Lions over the next few weeks, van der Flier knows full well how difficult it is to beat Australia. He occupied the openside berth for Ireland’s hard-fought triumphs over the Wallabies in 2022 and late last year, both by three-point margins.

He has never played them on Australian soil before, though, as a cruelly-timed anterior cruciate ligament injury ruled him out of the 2018 tour when Ireland, then coached by current Wallabies boss Joe Schmidt, claimed a memorable 2-1 series win over the hosts.

Pulling on the Lions jersey for the first time will take him back to Wicklow town some 20 years ago, and how his grandparents’ decision to subscribe to Sky Sports paid off handsomely in the long run for a sports-mad kid whose passion for rugby was just about to take off.

“We didn’t have the channels in my house. My grandparents (Johannes and Johanna) lived across the road so we would go in there and watch the Lions. I just have a vague memory of it. I would have been quite young.

“I distinctly remember, I think it was 2005 (the tour to New Zealand), we had a family video and we taped over it by mistake. We used to watch that over and over again.

“We didn’t have the TV channels at home, it was just (video) cassettes. It was either that or Star Wars or something. So, I ended up watching a lot of that 2005 Lions game.”

He added: “Gosh, I didn’t really know that rugby was a job when I was younger. It probably wouldn’t have been something I verbalised.

“But I used to watch an Irish game, or a game on TV, and then go out to the garden and pretend to be someone who played for Ireland or the Lions.

“Playing for the Lions is probably the pinnacle. It’s hard to compare with playing for your country, but it is a very hard thing to do, so it’s pretty cool.”