BACK WHEN HE was first thundering onto the scene and earning his place as the clear first-choice loosehead for Ireland, Cian Healy probably didn’t expect to be where he now finds himself at the age of 29.
The Leinster man is an important part of the picture for province and country, but Jack McGrath – two years younger than him – has pretty much had the number one shirt nailed down for the last two seasons.
Injuries, of course, have played a central role in Healy’s career.
Dating as far back as a thwarted Lions tour in 2013, the Clontarf man has had to deal with serious ankle, hamstring and neck issues as his body has been battered.
But this season, Healy has shown consistent form and fitness to the extent that Joe Schmidt is happy to rotate him into the starting Ireland team for today’s clash with Italy in the Six Nations [KO 2.25pm], despite McGrath being fully fit.
Though Healy has been through tough times, he has never fully shed the mindset that he should be wearing Ireland’s number one shirt.
“I’ve got the jersey for a week,” says Healy. “It’s not ‘get the jersey and sit on it’.
“Even last year, when my form was fairly brutal, I was still pretty pissed off that I wasn’t in. It’s good to keep that mentality that you should be up there, as well as the same work mentality that got you there.
“A good combination of both has kinda dragged me through. It didn’t really help at times when I was playing bad, because I was backing myself when I wasn’t capable of it, but that’s the way I went about it and I had to stick to it.”
Healy has always had genuine confidence in his quality as a player, with some of that belief founded on his sheer physical power.
But the Belvedere College alumnus admits that he suffered dips in the confidence department last season. That he was struggling physically makes it easier to see why.
“I just wasn’t getting enough runs to get fit enough,” says Healy. “My skill set wasn’t in a good enough place and I suppose confidence took a bit of a knock, so I had to put it on the back burner, ignore that and try to build it up as much as possible.
“It took the break at the end of last season to get everything right and I put in some serious hours of skill work, technical work and rehab stuff to iron everything out.”
Healy is referring to his long-term rehabilitation from neck surgery in May 2015, an operation that put his involvement in the World Cup in serious doubt and also led to some fears that his career might be over.
Even after Healy got back playing, he suffered problems with his arm, but he says all of that has been remedied now.
“The neck and nerves are fine. I don’t get any pain and they are as strong as ever. Neck strength is better than it was before. I never really focused on neck weights or rehab or anything like that, so now that I have that, it is stronger than ever.
“The only extra thing I did was extra forearm and extra tricep work because the knock-on of that [injury] is that you lose the bulk of the muscle and you have to work on that to build it back up. That is the one work-on or extra I’ve had.”
It’s easy to say that Healy has changed as a player because of the toil his body has been through with the aforementioned injuries, but the man himself believes that it is the sport that has changed.
That he doesn’t regularly make the kind of defence-splitting and defender-boshing runs he was known for in his earlier years is a sign of how rugby has shifted, according to the loosehead prop.
“It was a different game back when I started out,” says Healy. “Defences weren’t as well structured and you could beat one and there was a whole open field behind it.
“Everyone’s after getting better in terms of defensive structures, so you need to play to a system, whether it is pods or around the corners or whatever. If you make that linebreak, then it is a chance to do what you can.”
Back in Ireland’s starting loosehead slot today, Healy is determined to show that he can still have a major impact on Test rugby.
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