{"id":30497,"date":"2026-06-06T00:28:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T00:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/andy-farrell-easy-decision-to-sign-new-contract-says-ireland-head-coach\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T00:28:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T00:28:31","slug":"andy-farrell-easy-decision-to-sign-new-contract-says-ireland-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/andy-farrell-easy-decision-to-sign-new-contract-says-ireland-head-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Farrell: Easy decision to sign new contract, says Ireland head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Andy Farrell said signing a new Ireland contract was an easy decision after he penned a four-year extension to lead the team until 2031.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 51-year-old&#8217;s previous deal was due to expire after the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia, but his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c1k2k0vejdwo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">extension will take him up<\/a> until the end of the tournament in the United States four years later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since succeeding Joe Schmidt in 2019, Farrell has led Ireland to two Six Nations titles, including the 2023 Grand Slam, and a historic Test series win over the All Blacks in New Zealand. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Yes, it was,&#8221; Farrell told IrishRugby TV when asked if it was an easy decision. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;To be asked, it means a lot because it means a little bit of what you do is appreciated. But to get to this point, there&#8217;s so many people that have helped us get to this point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Farrell had been linked with Saracens and England before committing his future to Ireland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Farrell&#8217;s side have Nations Championship fixtures in July and November before attempting to reclaim the Six Nations title next year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After that, Farrell hopes to lead Ireland past the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time having suffered an agonising last-eight exit at the hands of New Zealand in Paris three years ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If you look at what we&#8217;ve got coming ahead, a summer tour to the southern hemisphere [to face Australia, Japan and New Zealand in July],&#8221; he added. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s some of our lads who&#8217;ve been there, obviously, but there&#8217;ll be a lot of lads boarding that plane who won&#8217;t have had that experience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of firsts that are constantly going to happen, the Six Nations and then into the World Cup. What a year, what an 18 months that&#8217;s going to be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/ckgpg9wd363o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andy Farrell said signing a new Ireland contract was an easy decision after he penned a four-year extension to lead the team until 2031. The 51-year-old&#8217;s previous deal was due to expire after the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia, but his extension will take him up until the end of the tournament in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30499,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30497\/revisions\/30499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}