LEINSTER’S 21-16 DEFEAT of Munster on Saturday saw the province welcome back another two of their World Cup stars, with Robbie Henshaw and Jack Conan both lining out for the first time since returning from France last month.
The home side were a little rusty in some areas of their game but Conan settled back into club duty well with a busy outing at blindside, making some effective carries and producing a big turnover late in the first half.
It was enough to earn the 31-year-old the official player of the match award and speaking after the game, Conan admitted it was good to finally get back in blue after the disappointment of the World Cup.
“The first week at home (after France) was miserable, absolutely miserable,” he said.
“We came back, it was lashing rain, horrible. You go from being around the lads 24/7, having unbelievable craic to being back on a Monday and you wake up on Tuesday.
“My wife had gone to work and then you’re all alone. You are by yourself and it’s so strange to not be in that environment anymore. The only way to fix it is get back among the lads and I’m lucky that so many lads live around and you are able to share that misery and pick it apart and spend time in each other’s company. The only real fix is to get back into the environment, playing, back in blue and enjoying your work.
“The first week was brutally tough. Then we got away for a week to Dubai in the sun. A few of the lads were out there as well. It was nice to spend a bit of time with them again. It was tough at the start and then you kind of normalise with the standard of life back home, it helps sooth the pain a little bit.”
Some of his fellow Ireland internationals have been easing themselves back into URC duty over the last couple of weeks but Conan’s return came in front of 50,000 fans and a host of familiar faces.
“Myself and Tadhg Beirne sat on the bus every single day (at the World Cup), every trip, and then you go from being really close and spending so much time together to trying to take each other’s head off and whack each other. But then you have a bit of a laugh at the bottom of the ruck, you know, there’s never any nastiness.”
Conan took the field with the number six on his back, representing his first start at blindside for Leinster since 2017.
It’s been a while. Rightly or wrongly you see stuff in the media… People are like, Caelan (Doris) and Jack, they are playing six and eight. Realistically I’ve been playing six for the last few years anyway.
“I might have had eight on my back for scrums, but 80% of the ball you get is lineouts and I’ve been doing that six role in lineouts so it’s not like this big transition.
“It’s not like I’ve been playing eight and doing nothing in the lineout. For the last few years I’ve been playing with Caelan I’ve been doing the six role in the lineout and he’s been in the eight role in the lineout and you get way more ball that way than you do from a scrum, so it’s not a huge change.
“Myself and Caelan have had loads of chats about it over the years, we are both happy to change and do both. Probably a bit more used to doing the lineout stuff but he’s well capable of doing it as well.
“The only thing is around the scrum stuff. You don’t get a whole lot, even that, the way we play a lot is eight isn’t in the first ruck so you are both coming around the corner in the second phase, so it doesn’t make a huge difference. You are probably just holding a lot of width in defence.
“You probably get a little bit less ball at six than you do at eight because at eight you’re involved in starter plays off lineout and things like that. It’s probably harder to get a lot of work into the game. You’ve got to make sure you are contributing to carries.
“A lot of time you can end up in the periphery and the game can pass you by if you don’t put yourself into it. I was definitely guilty of that in the past, whether it was with Ireland or Leinster. Letting the game go a little bit and not force myself on it so now I tell myself, ‘don’t wait for the game, just find an inroad’. Whether it’s going around the corner early and putting someone else out there in a first ruck or off kick-receive, just making sure you are working infield when you can.”
This weekend Leinster head to Galway for another URC derby meeting with Connacht. Jacques Nienaber is expected to start his new role with the province this week and Leinster will make the trip in a strong position as their Champions Cup opener away to La Rochelle looms into view. Leinster have now won five from six in the URC but will look to improve on what was a disjointed performance against Munster.
“We were fairly poor for large parts of the game, didn’t click at times,” Conan added.
“Some of our shapes and realignment, getting set into attack wasn’t good enough. We always know that any time we play Munster we get it really hard at the ruck. We weren’t as accurate as we needed to be there, gave away a lot of silly penalties where we get marched back twice.
“It was great to be back playing, a joy to be here in front of a full house, back in blue, seems like years since I played a game for Leinster. I kind of had a disjointed last few months with injuries so to get a good 80 minutes under my belt was a real joy. We’ve massive games coming up so hopefully that will stand me in good stead.”
