FORGET THE SIX Nations for a moment and run the clock back to November. It’s the autumn internationals, and Cian Healy is pissed off. He’s played in all three games, but left camp frustrated and angry. He was on the bench for all three Tests, playing 26 minutes against Japan and 23 against Argentina either side of a five minute cameo against New Zealand.
Now widen the lens to look at Leinster’s season. Healy is on 10 appearances, but only three of those have been starts. He recently moved down from an IRFU central contract to a Leinster one. He’s 34 now, so these things are all to be expected, but that doesn’t make them any easier to accept when they start to happen.
Focus back in to the present day, and Healy seems relaxed and upbeat. He’s sitting in a dressing room speaking on a Zoom call following an open session in the Aviva Stadium where the Ireland squad ‘had the legs ran off us’ by Andy Farrell in front of a couple of hundred enthusiastic school kids. There’s worse places to be, and there’s some big days on the horizon. Andrew Porter’s injury means Healy is now in a two-horse race with Dave Kilcoyne to play against England in Twickenham next weekend.
It was the same story last year, Kilcoyne starting the 32-18 win in Dublin before Healy replaced the injured Munster man after just 20 minutes.
“I’m in a spicy battle now with Killer for the week,” says Healy, as he gears up for cap 115 in green.
“Both of us have been in and out with each other in training and you back each other in that role of getting on top of plays, ‘where we should be?’ and ‘this is what we should be doing’. We’ve been working really well on that I think because we obviously get a bit less reps than the starting team would get, so we’ve been shouldering the burden on each other a bit and working through it and I think we’ve been doing that really well. It’s going to be a nice week for us to get going.”
As he puts it, packed stadiums on Six Nations days are what Healy “lives for”, which is why the bench role was such a difficult transition. For the 2020/21 international season Healy’s Ireland stats were eight caps, six starts. Then Porter moved across the frontrow, and immediately established himself as Farrell’s new first-choice No 1, with Healy’s minutes diminishing as a result.
“I struggled with it in November and I was getting a bit pissed off with coming on a bit later and stuff. But it’s probably from the structure at Leinster and understanding at Leinster that you’re probably going to get 50/30 (minutes) and that’s literally week-in, week-out. I had probably expectations of that instead of going in fairly open-minded about it.
I did have to take a step back and think about what the role is and what do I have to deliver. I was honest with myself, and I was letting it get at me, so I just parked it because if I’m thinking about what minute it is in the game and ‘Am I on yet?’ I’m not really thinking about what I’m supposed to be doing and I’m doing myself an injustice and the team an injustice.
“It was a hard enough sit-down but I enjoyed the process of ironing it out and coming to a decision on how I’m approaching it, and I think it’s done me fairly well so far, since then.
“I discussed it with my wife a bit, but it was probably just myself noticing that I was getting a bit bothered by it, and I shouldn’t be, because I play the game to play the game. I don’t play the game to train every day of the week and I want to enjoy every opportunity there is to actually play the game and not be thinking about minutes or any of that. It’s get in and get stuck into your job, like.”
As well as processing the transition mentally, he’s also changed his weekly routine in a bid to make up for the less physically demanding nature of his weekends.
“It’s been an interesting change, because the start of the season I probably didn’t have a plan in place of how to get that extra bit of fitness or that durability, and now I’ve got a nice structure for during the week,” Healy continues.
“I’m picking up extra fitness sessions or that on the ground, off the ground, up, down, roll-around… That sort of fitness that as close to mimics a game as possible.
“That’s pretty much been a steady fixture in my week, doing that. So I feel pretty fit and getting that run out for Leinster (last month), I felt pretty good. It felt like it was late enough into the game and I was getting off the line in defence and offering a bit in attack, so fitness-wise I think it’s alright.”
Other developments off the pitch have helped too, with Healy and his wife Laura welcoming their first child, Beau, last year, providing a new focus away from the demands of professional sport.
I don’t think it changed my approach to how I go about my business or anything but, yeah, probably downtime is a lot different and I can certainly switch away from it easier than I have before. If you come in off a bad day or a bad loss I’m not dragging that into a house with me. It’s nice.”
During the week, Paul O’Connell described Healy as a ‘secret trainer’, someone who likes to get his hands on some weights and add in a few extras away from the required sessions with Leinster and Ireland.
The same goes for Healy’s approach to recovery and mental preparation.
“I love that side of it. There’s something where you just kind of disappear and work on a few things for a while. It’s kind of like a few personal feel-goods, personal gains, and it benefits you for your sports.
“It is an easy enough thing to do, to set aside a little bit of time to work on A, B or C. You know, you’re sitting on your phone on the evening, looking at the TV, I’d be looking up different recovery strategies, different rehab strategies and not just on Twitter and Instagram for the night like.”
Healy’s latest Leinster contract will take him past the World Cup to the end of next season, by which time he’ll be 35.
“You think about it, like, you would be silly not to think about what you want to do after rugby, especially at this fine age I am. I think about it, it is in mind and I kind of flesh though a few bits. But my main focus is the game and to enjoy every minute in it.”
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