In large part it’s been enforced by injury, but of the 38 players currently in Portugal with the Ireland squad, quite a few are getting their first real taste of Six Nations preparation.
Billy Bohan, Jude Postlethwaite and Edwin Edogbo are in the main squad for the first time, and Ulster back row Bryn Ward has been training as a development player.
Michael Milne, Darragh Murray and Tom Farrell have caps, but are still getting used to their surroundings, while scrum-half Nathan Doak has been involved in squads before but is still waiting for his Test debut.
Sam Prendergast was in that boat in 2024, brought to Portugal as a development player for the Six Nations training camp, at that stage still very much a rookie through 10 games of his Leinster career.
Two years on, the out-half is now part of the furniture, more than 40 Leinster games and 13 Ireland caps to his name, but by no means “comfortable”, given the growing queue for gametime in the Ireland 10 shirt.
“I’d like to think I’ve changed a decent bit,” he tells RTÉ Sport, reflecting on his first taste of an Irish camp.
“It’s funny, it’s still a daunting experience just coming into [camp], when you’ve spent maybe, what is it, 10 weeks together [at Leinster], seeing the lads from other provinces, so I would never say ‘comfortable’, I’d say it’s still quite daunting.
“I’d like to think I’ve changed a lot, but in two years’ time, I’d hope that I’ve changed a lot as well.”
When he toured with Ireland in the summer of 2024 in South Africa, Prendergast (above) had the benefit of his older brother Cian to lean on.
Now, it’s his turn to offer advice to rookies, one in particular being his fellow Kildare native and Newbridge College alum, Bohan, who has found himself fast-tracked to an Ireland squad at the age of 20.
“I think Faz [Andy Farrell] always says it himself, it’s just important to be yourself. I think that’s something that’s preached in here a lot.
“There’s no hierarchy because you have a certain amount of caps, or if you don’t have that many caps, you can’t say certain things.
“I think it’s a really good environment in terms of that. And you can’t really be at your best if you’re not being yourself.”
Prendergast knows Bohan’s older brother Tom from his school days, and while he’s been aware of the loosehead prop’s fast rise at Connacht through his own brother Cian, he’s been blown away by how the prop has settled into professional rugby.
Sam Prendergast (r) in action for Ireland alongside his older brother Cian
“I would have known about all of them [the Bohans] coming up through Newbridge.
“He’s probably just playing well and then Stuart and Connacht was probably like, ‘Geez, this lad’s got a bit about him in training’, and then he plays and he gets his opportunity.
“Rugby’s quite a fickle game. It can catapult you to the highs and then you can come crashing down. That’s probably a prime example of like, just a snowball effect,” Prendergast added.
That sentiment does a good job of summing up the 22-year-old’s last 12 months.
After starting the Six Nations in flying form, he was spoken of as a probable British and Irish Lion, but missed out off the back of Ireland’s sluggish end to the championship, and Leinster’s shock defeat in the Champions Cup semi-final to Northampton Saints.
He and Jack Crowley have had to deal with the toxic social media narrative that has developed around their competition for the 10 shirt, while there has been a magnifying glass on his defensive work, something his head coach rebuffed back in November, but which Prendergast admits needs to get better.
Jack Crowley (l) and Sam Prendergast at an Ireland training session at The Campus, Quinta do Lago
“Of course it is [something he has to work on],” he says of his defensive game.
“I’m probably not where I want to be, but, yeah, I’ve been working on it. I need to keep working on it. I need to keep getting better.
“You want it to be consistent and that’s kind of what I’m chasing with all my all-around game.
“You’re always trying to keep that even keel and I suppose it just comes down to the personal development element of it.”
By his own admission, he’s grown better at “zoning out” from the wider narrative and placing a greater weight on the opinions of his coaches and team-mates.
And while rival supporters sling mud across provincial lines on social media, Prendergast and his fellow out-halves are happy to stay inside their buddle.
“We always just laugh because everyone thinks we all hate each other,” he says.
“If you were to look at the 10s; myself, [Jack] Crowley, Harry [Byrne] and [Ciarán] Frawley, the amount of time we spend together as a group and as a result of training as well, you do so much kicking together.
Ireland head coach Andy Farrell addressing his half-backs, including Sam Prendergast (r), on Thursday
“Everyone just pits you against each other, but the only time we hear about it is in media and then we just have a laugh about it because everyone seems to think we hate each other, but we don’t.”
While much of the online commentary has verged into anonymous abuse, he does understand why there is such a focus on just one of the 15 jerseys in the Irish team.
As an out-half, the glamour position carries the extra scrutiny. It’s an occupational necessity. Take it or leave it.
“If you want to be the Leinster out-half, the Irish out-half, it just kind of comes with [the territory],” he says, adding that he and his fellow 10s have some expert advice on hand in camp.
“There’s no better man to talk about it than Johnny [Sexton], really. He’s experienced the highs and lows of it and, I guess, as I was watching, I maybe only saw the highs of it. He was, in my opinion, just so good.
“I don’t think anyone was ever going to question him at that stage, but even towards the end of his career, people were saying ‘Oh, should he be left on or not?’
“And, like, you’re looking from the outside, this is one of the best players in the world. So, yeah, he’s a great man to talk with. Thick skin is required.”
Prendergast speaks to RTÉ Sport’s Neil Treacy
Whoever does get the nod to start at Stade de France next Thursday will have to deal with that scrutiny, as Ireland head to Paris as considerable underdogs after an underwhelming November campaign, and in the midst of an injury crisis.
Prendergast started last year’s heavy defeat to Fabien Galthie’s side, but Ireland’s previous trip to France in 2024 came before his debut, with Crowley wearing the 10 shirt that night in Ireland’s record 38-17 win in Marseille.
And after getting a taste of the French atmosphere in Champions Cup games, Prendergast is ready to embrace the full Paris experience if he gets the opportunity on Thursday.
“It’s so cool seeing it on TV. I’ve experienced it a couple of times away in Europe, and it’s pretty special.
“They make it quite a spectacle, and they make it somewhere where you want to play and you want to go over and kind of put your game on them.
“I’d love to be playing. We’ll have to wait and see how the next week goes. But yeah, I’d love to be playing.”
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