JAMIE HEASLIP MAY be forced to have another procedure to rectify the troublesome back issue which has kept him out for the last six months, but Leo Cullen insists the Ireland international will return from the injury.
Heaslip, who has been left out of Leinster’s Champions Cup squad, has been sidelined with the disc problem in his lower back since March and having returned to training earlier this month, suffered a relapse which set him back in his comeback.
The eastern province have downplayed the seriousness of the injury but fears have been growing over the number eight’s fitness ever since he admitted the damage was worse than first feared.
With a cloud of uncertainty still hanging over the situation, Cullen today moved to add clarity to the whole thing by apologising for the vague updates Leinster have been issuing on Heaslip and insisting everybody needs to be patient with an injury of this kind.
The Leinster head coach was, however, unable to give any specific timeline for the 33-year-old’s return and admitted it depends on whether Heaslip will have to go under the knife for a second time.
“It’s just difficult, with the injury such as that…I remember I had an injury very, very similar, and I remember I was picked in a team, so similar to what happened to Jamie, and it was the day before the game, it was at home, and I think I traced it back to an exercise I did in the gym earlier in the week,” Cullen said at the RDS this afternoon.
“And I had this stiffness in my back that was gradually building up and I was literally lying at home watching rugby…we were playing on the Sunday and we hadn’t had a team run as we normally do on the Saturday after training on the Friday.
“I remember ringing Arthur Tanner, who was our doctor who has now passed away, and I rang him on the Sunday morning of the game and said, ‘Arthur, I can barely move my back here’, and that’s how suddenly it had come on for me’.
“I didn’t have surgery on it, and I still feel the effects of it now – and that was back in 2005. So it’s what, over 12 years ago and I still feel the effects of that. So they’re tricky injuries.
“Even this morning I was reading about Mike Sherry being out for a year with his back and now he’s back involved, so they can be slow.
“So apologies for vagueness, but it’s very difficult for us to give definitive answers on an injury that is grey.
“And yeah it’s a difficult time for Jamie because of that uncertainty, so that’s the way it’s going to be unfortunately.
“We would have loved to have seen Jamie maybe back now, we thought originally the surgery would be straightforward, that’s what we would have hoped for, but it hasn’t been as straightforward as we would have liked.
“I was in this situation whereas I didn’t have surgery at the time, I made my way back and still feel the effects of it now 12 years later.
“So that’s just the nature of the injury and everyone just needs to be patient and understand it’s a complicated injury that Jamie has.”
When asked whether Heaslip would be able to make a full return from this layoff, Cullen replied: “Definitely, yeah. Definitely confident. The thing about Jamie is that he’s had so few injuries — amazing physical resilience that he’s shown.
“He’s working his way back and I’m not sure how long it will be, he just needs to get himself sorted and we’ll leave him in the hands of the medics. But it’s grey in terms of return to play at the moment.”
Although Heaslip has been left out of Leinster’s initial 40-man squad for their Champions Cup campaign, the province were quick to point out EPCR rules state a club may make three player swaps during the pool stages of the competition.
But, again, when asked if Heaslip is looking at a return this side of Christmas, Cullen was unable to give a definitive answer.
“I’m not so sure. I’m not sure. It will depend if he has to go for another procedure or not. Okay so, he has to weigh that up with the surgeon and the specialist that he’s seeing.
“That will be the decision he’ll have to come to himself and with the help of the medics as well.”
Although Cullen was unsure if Heaslip sustained the injury in training or during a match, the problem stems back to the Six Nations game against England when he pulled out of the starting XV after the warm-up. The IRFU initially described it as a ‘rolled ankle.’
“So he had a disc problem with his back, he had a disc problem with his back, you have a disc leak when you have a microdisectomy I think they call it now,” Cullen explained.
“I remember at the time sitting down and I went in to see someone about the injury and it was quite a dark picture that was painted, but then I went on a course, a rehab programme, and I was back in 12 weeks.
“But I definitely had issues and if I was to have my time again I probably would have opted to have this microdisectomy procedure, but there have been huge advances even since I was playing the game and sports medicine is changing all the time.”
While it remains to be seen how long it will be before Heaslip is back running out at the RDS, Cullen will have four of his five Lions back in action against Edinburgh tomorrow night.
Johnny Sexton, Jack McGrath, Sean O’Brien and Tadhg Furlong all start against the Scottish side while Scott Fardy and Devin Toner return to the second row having missed the trip to South Africa.
Having declared his availability for selection last week, Robbie Henshaw suffered a minor setback in training this week and will have to wait to make his seasonal bow.
“He’s pretty close, he’s pretty close,” Cullen said of Henshaw. “We erred on the side of caution with him but he’s likely to come into the frame next week [for Munster].”
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