ROBBIE HENSHAW IS one of those fellas who never have to stress when called on for a party piece. His musical talent means he’s always covered.
Henshaw has played the box accordion live on TG4 at the Fleadh Cheoil. He more recently played with his family’s band, The Ramblers, at the RDS after a Leinster game and his latest performance took place in front of the Ireland squad.
The highly-acclaimed Irish violinist Greg Harrington visited the team hotel recently and knew all about Henshaw’s ability on the box. New York-based Harrington asked Ireland team manager Mick Kearney to get Henshaw up to perform Sharon Shannon’s Blackbird with him.
“After Mick begging me, I eventually agreed and we had a bit of craic,” says Henshaw.
“He had a string quartet with him as well, so he had two cellos with him. They put something nice together. It sounded good thankfully, I didn’t get laughed at or booed.”
Harrington performed for Ireland once before. That was the night before the 2016 win over the All Blacks in Chicago. Good omens for the World Cup perhaps. Either way, Henshaw has been enjoying Ireland camp since they started pre-season training back on 19 June.
The Leinster centre is “enjoying the pain” of being pushed hard and welcomed the focus on rugby from the start, as opposed to a more traditional beginning to pre-season that would involve lots of conditioning without a rugby ball.
Henshaw is feeling fit, which is important given what happened to him at the last two World Cups.
In 2015, he picked up a hamstring the week before the opening game against Canada and wasn’t fit until Ireland’s third pool match. In 2019, it happened again. Another hamstring injury the week before the opening game against Scotland. Henshaw only got back for the final pool fixture against Samoa. Ireland were going home a week later after their quarter-final defeat to New Zealand.
So you can understand how Henshaw feels he’s due some luck for this World Cup.
“My goal is to be fit for round one hopefully if selected,” he says. “Those last two World Cups, I got injured the week before. Hopefully, I won’t have that.”
Henshaw had to deal with more than his fair share of injury frustration last season too, with hamstring and wrist issues limiting him to just three appearances for Ireland across the November Tests and the Grand Slam campaign.
So he’s been putting more focus than ever on switching off from rugby whenever he gets the opportunity, keen to stay in a relaxed headspace.
“It’s massive, even our S&C coaches are highlighting a big thing is the importance of recovery and having time away,” says Henshaw, “switching your head off from rugby and overthinking things.
“That can feed into loss of sleep, anxiety, things like that which can contribute to injuries.
“Studies have been done on it which is very interesting, how stress-related injuries can happen. It’s interesting, the week my grandmother passed away before Toulouse, I picked up a quad injury out of nowhere on the Monday in Leinster and they reckon that was a stress-related injury.”
For Henshaw, switching off means walking his dog, a black Labrador named Luna, going for a nice coffee, and enjoying his music.
“I have to play more, I left the accordion down for a while but I’ve taken it back up now so I’ll have to continue.”
He has been keeping an eye on the Rugby Championship in the Southern Hemisphere though, noticing Joe Schmidt’s fingerprints on some of the All Blacks’ play. Henshaw is eager to get back into action himself, with Ireland’s warm-up schedule beginning with a clash against Italy in Dublin on 5 August.
Henshaw’s most recent memory at the Aviva Stadium is a tough one, with Leinster having lost the Champions Cup final to La Rochelle there back in May. He has moved on but feels there are lessons that can inform what lies ahead with Ireland.
“I think speaking in here to coaches and getting other people’s feedback is good, opinions on what went well and what we could have done better.
“You could have something similar in the World Cup when you get into the knock-out stages so it’s taking that bit of learning from those fine margins towards the end of the game.
“One, how you manage the game. Two, our exits in that game weren’t good enough in the second half and gave the team easy access into our half. We kinda got strangled down the end of the pitch for a long time, similar to the year before. It’s learning from that, cutting out those simple errors we failed to execute when usually we would.
“It will be similar come France or come even South Africa in a World Cup. It’s probably good that we’ve experienced that coming into what’s around the corner.”
