Simon Easterby is expected to be confirmed as Ireland’s head coach for the 2025 Six Nations in the next couple of weeks in advance of him fulfilling that role on the forthcoming Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa for a second time.
Andy Farrell will continue as head coach for the upcoming four-match Autumn Series against New Zealand, Argentina, Fiji and Australia before taking a sabbatical at the turn of the year in advance of leading the British and Irish Lions to Australia next summer.
As the most experienced of the Irish assistants, it was always anticipated that Easterby would take over the reins as interim Ireland head coach for this season’s Six Nations.
Having been a player-coach towards the end of his career, Easterby stepped straight into coaching upon retirement in 2010 when cutting his teeth for two seasons as the Scarlets’ defence coach. He is also the only one of the Irish coaching ticket outside of Farrell who has been a head coach, having performed the top job with Scarlets for two seasons from 2012.
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In what has proven to be something of a masterstroke looking back, Easterby was lured on to the Irish coaching ticket in the summer of 2014 as a replacement for John Plumtree. Over a decade later he is still there.
After 6½ seasons as Ireland forwards’ coach with first Joe Schmidt and then Farrell, Easterby became defence coach in January 2021 when Paul O’Connell was co-opted on to the ticket. Hence this is his 11th successive season as part of the Irish coaching team after 10 seasons as an Ireland international, during which he was capped 65 times dating back to his debut in the transformative 44-22 win over Scotland in 2000.
True to type, Easterby parked his ego and went to work assiduously in making the transition seamlessly. He readily concedes that it helps to have a head coach who has previously been a famed defence coach.
“It’s a huge part of this team,” Easterby once said of Ireland’s defence.
“It helps when the head coach is massively into defence as well and knows how important it is. It spreads through the group.”
Even so, in Easterby’s five championships as defence coach, Ireland conceded the joint-least tries in 2021 and had the best defensive record in each of the last three seasons, conceding just 27 tries in that time overall.
By comparison, under renowned defensive guru Shaun Edwards, France have conceded 41 tries over the last four Six Nations, with Scotland on 50, Wales and England 54 apiece and Italy 99.
In the 10 campaigns in which Easterby has been an assistant coach to Schmidt and Farrell, Ireland have won four Six Nations titles, including two Grand Slams.
Easterby led the 2022 Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa in Farrell’s absence, when assisted by O’Connell, Ireland scrum coach John Fogarty and the recently departed Mike Catt. The latter will be replaced by the incoming Ireland backs’ coach Andrew Goodman for the Emerging Ireland tour at the end of this month.
The IRFU’s new high-performance director, David Humphreys, intimated that Easterby was the natural stand-in for Farrell when speaking to the media last July.
“It’s a very exciting opportunity for someone to step in,’ said Humphreys.
“You talk about coaching succession, this gives us a chance to bring someone else in at a very important time and test them. Andy will be very much involved in that process of who’s going to come in. After [the tour to] South Africa, we’re planning to sit down and look at how we’re going to run the next season.”
In his own low-key and stealthy way, Easterby has built up quite a coaching CV and, while his interim promotion is as inevitable as it is well deserved, to lead Ireland into a Six Nations campaign will constitute quite a milestone for the 49-year-old.
To put this into context, Easterby will be just Ireland’s sixth head coach to lead the team in 28 editions of the championship since Warren Gatland replaced Brian Asthon after just one round of the 1998 Five Nations.
Including that one, Gatland oversaw four championship campaigns, Eddie O’Sullivan the next seven, Declan Kidney the next five and Joe Schmidt six, with Andy Farrell in charge for the last five.
Such continuity is both a reflection of, and contributory factor to, Ireland’s much-improved performance on the pitch since the turn of the millennium, and the last three head coaches have all presided over Grand Slam campaigns.
By stark contrast, bookended by Jimmy Davidson’s reign extending into 1990 and Gatland taking over at the end of the decade, Ireland had six head coaches in the 90s.
There have been other interim head coaches since the turn of the millennium. Michael Bradley filled the role for the 2005 two-Test tour to Japan as well as the two-Test tour to New Zealand and Australia in 2008, while Les Kiss led the Irish team on their two-Test tour the USA and Canada in 2013.
But Easterby will be the first to do so for a Six Nations.
Farrell will be a tough act to follow as Ireland seek to become the first team to ever win three outright championship titles in a row and Easterby will therefore hope that he can emulate Rob Howley, who led Wales to the 2013 Six Nations title when Gatland took a sabbatical from coaching Wales.
Against that, Wales finished fifth under Howley in 2017, when Gatland took a full 10-month break from coaching Wales for his second tour as Lions head coach.
Ireland head coaches in the Six Nations since 2000
2000-01: Warren Gatland
2002-08: Eddie O’Sullivan
2009-13: Declan Kidney
2014-19: Joe Schmidt
2020-24: Andy Farrell
2025: Simon Easterby
Ireland head coaches in the professional era
1995-97: Murray Kidd
1997-98: Brian Ashton
1998-2001: Warren Gatland
2001-08: Eddie O’Sullivan. (Michael Bradley was interim head coach for 2005 tour to Japan and 2008 tour to New Zealand and Australia)
2008-13: Declan Kidney (Les Kiss was interim head coach for 2013 June tour to USA and Canada)
2013-19: Joe Schmidt
2019-: Andy Farrell (Simon Easterby interim head coach for 2025 Six Nations)
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