IT’S BEEN A season of candour and positivity from Cian Healy. And that’s quite aside from his brilliance on the field.
Ahead of the new campaign, he changed up a variety of aspects around his training and diet regime and came back from his summer break a lighter, leaner animal in the number one jersey for club and country.
He has given the impression of a man with less weight on his shoulders in a figurative sense too. Take Healy’s December press duty before Leinster’s Champions Cup home meeting with Exeter: he could easily have kept the two-year-old door to an extremely worrisome injury firmly shut.
Instead, he happily went into detail about a scary part of his life when it seemed a neck problem would stop him from playing again. ‘The papers were signed to retire,’ but he went on holiday and his body found a way to heal instead.
So watching Healy indulge in some hard-earned celebrations following Ireland’s Grand Slam success was a heartening sight. Who could begrudge him a few early-morning beers two and a half years after he came so close to hanging up his boots?
This is too busy, too pivotal a point in the season for Healy to sit and contemplate the full depth he has slogged through to reach a career pinnacle like Twickenham, however.
Besides, Healy always makes himself ready for another peak.
“I haven’t taken a break for the satisfying moment,” says the 30-year-old prop,”I’ll probably look back at the end of the season or whatever, but I’m really enjoying it and I’m loving what I’m doing.
“I’m very thankful to have ended up in the starting position for a lot of it and get to play some good ball.”
Healy sat down to speak to the assembled press on Monday, his first proper day back in Leinster HQ after a week off and a family wedding. Getting back to business hasn’t been an issue. His own house, his own bed and his own routine are back in place after hotel hopping from Paris to Portugal — and Carton House never too far away.
“It’s a difficult one, living out of the hotels, so I look forward to getting back into here all the time.”
And the return to ‘normality’ this week comes with all the more energy and enthusiasm when Healy can put his immediate focus into a Champions Cup quarter-final at home to Saracens. There is no runway to build up a head of steam before the next season-defining match comes along.
Healy wouldn’t have it any other way. He has faced down the alternative to professional rugby and now he loves the carnage when he’s in the thick of it, loves the smell of napalm in the morning.
“The knockout (stage) is where the rugby drags the best out in players. Even how you are playing moves, you have to be that bit more accurate to get through defences. Everyone is a little bit more highly attuned. It’s fun though.”
Sorry Cian, did you say ‘fun’?
Rugby where you’re under the most stress and pressure to perform and everything’s high-octane, that’s far more fun than a league game. You can’t approach a league game as knockout rugby.”
He adds: “the pool stages, once to get through that you are alright and are into knockout rugby; people become different beasts in that end of the game. We have to start like we’re at the bottom, slog away and get as structurally sound as we can and as get prepped as we can.”
“Mindset and all is bang on for it. We’re switched on and want a follow-on success, bring as much from what we had in the past into this.
“It’s just the mental side of it then, getting your head around all the calls and getting back into the systems and stuff. So a good bit of evening study for the next few days to have myself in a good space where there’s no mistakes.”
“We’ve looked over a bit (of Saracens analysis). We had a look last week on Tuesday, we came in for a bit of video work just to plant the seeds and look over the threats and their general structure. You don’t want to go a cold week with no rugby and then try and overload it, so we’ve had stuff in the back of their minds for a few days now.”
Healy is one of those decreasing numbers who came to see medals and trophies as seasonal essentials in Leinster. So after five years of seeing Toulon and Saracens dominate Europe, he is intent on pushing Leinster towards the final and sampling the sweet taste of success as a provincial prop as well as an international one.
“You smile after it. That’s the moments that you play for, for those 40 minutes or an hour in the changing rooms after having the craic.
“With this, okay you do that (win) but it’s not done. So you’re not on the beers in the changing room, you’re just enjoying yourself and move onto the next one.
“Come, hopefully, Bilbao we’ll get a few beers in the changing room then.”
