IRELAND TEAM MANAGER Mick Kearney has backed Jamie Heaslip’s nomination for the World Rugby Player of the Year award, claiming the Leinster No 8 is a “a great player and fully deserving” of the honour.
Ireland vice-captain Heaslip is one of six players shortlisted for the award, along with New Zealand pair Beauden Barrett and Dane Coles and English trio Owen Farrell, Maro Itoje and Billy Vunipola.
The winner will be announced on Sunday and Kearney was delighted to hear of 32-year-old Heaslip’s nomination.
He’s a great player and he is fully deserving of that honour,” said the Ireland team manager. “He is one of the real leaders on the team. He’s grown into a leadership role over the last couple of years in superb fashion, I would say.”
Heaslip has racked up 89 caps for Ireland, bagging three tries in his nine international appearances this year.
Having made his senior international debut 10 years ago, Heaslip has gone on to become a mainstay of the Irish team while he was previously shortlisted for World Rugby Player of the Year in 2009 before New Zealand’s Richie McCaw picked up the award.
Kearney said: “He is an incredible example to not only the younger players but to everybody in the squad in the way he looks after his body. There is his nutrition, his rest, his recovery. It is absolutely at a world-class level.
He turns up for work every day. He turns up for work every Saturday. He plays 80 minutes. That is absolutely invaluable, that you know you have somebody you know is going to go out and play 80 minutes consistently,” added the Ireland team manager, who admitted that head coach Joe Schmidt is likely to make changes to his starting XV for Saturday’s match against Canada.
Ireland are due out at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium one week on from their historic win over New Zealand last week.
Schmidt unveiled a revamped 39-man squad on Monday and it seems highly likely that the Ireland coach will shuffle his cards after the thrilling but draining win over the All Blacks in Chicago.
We may well rest some of the people who played on Saturday against New Zealand because of the fatigue factor from the match and the travel on top of that,” said Kearney.
“It is really going to be until Tuesday afternoon before we get out on the [training] pitch. It will be a couple of days before Joe makes up his mind on the selection.”
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