IN THE IMMEDIATE aftermath of Leinster’s Champions Cup semi-final defeat of Northampton Saints, Cian Healy found himself the centre of attention. It’s not the way he likes things, but it was an unavoidable aspect of a day where he came off the bench to become the most-capped player in the history of the Champions Cup.
There was a pitchside presentation from tournament organisers EPCR and Taoiseach Simon Harris, before the Leinster squad also acknowledged the achievement back in the sanctuary of the dressing room. Healy admits the moment was ‘nice’ without offering too much by the way of detail.
“I’d take a medal instead,” he says.
Healy often keeps his answers short and sweet but even then, it’s easy to get a sense of the competitive nature that still drives the 36-year-old, who has just signed up for his 19th season with Leinster.
“I have a very driven house at home, my wife is very driven in work and I’m very driven in here and I think it feeds in naturally at home, we support each other in that. So home-wise there was no question about it.
“You see a lot of people saying ‘when you know, you know’ and I can’t relate to that yet, I don’t know when I will relate to it, if I will, if the body will tell me something before that, who knows? But I love it.
“You’re coming into a building with 50 mates. It’s class, it’s deadly, it’s the environment and the buzz you have. Even first thing in the coffee room having the chats, and it’s like a switch flicks and it’s into work mode, you’re in the gym or you’re in a walk through or you’re into something and I love that ebb and flow of how serious it gets to tone down to chill out, then serious again and how people can just switch from business mode to relax mode.”
To put Healy’s longevity in some perspective, consider how old some of his current teammates were when he debuted for the province for 2007. There is much excitement in Leinster around the potential of young looseheads Michael Milne, Jack Boyle and Paddy McCarthy. Milne was just eight years old when Healy won his first Leinster cap. Boyle was five and McCarthy was a few weeks shy of his fourth birthday.
Healy looks at those rising talents and sees a world of difference compared to when he was the young buck trying to push his way through.
“They have got so many more questions than I ever did when I was young,” Healy says.
They would come with a clip or a ‘what do you think of this?’. And they might catch me for a second and I’m going ‘fuck, I don’t know! Give me a few minutes and I’ll come back to you on it.’
“They are very eager to learn and without singling any of them out for anything too personal they’ll ask you about shape or evening stretching sessions. It’s broad what they’re going for. Half the time I think one of the coaches has teed them up ‘go and ask him, he’ll tell ya’, because their questions are top end.”
Milne (25) has impressed across his seven appearances this season while Boyle (22) and McCarthy (20) will both step up to senior contracts next season. Naturally, the three have been keen to soak up as much information as they can from Healy and Andrew Porter, the province’s two senior looseheads.
“They’re all their own people and they all have strong opinions, but they’ve all come to me and asked me for something and, like, I can’t tell them what’s right because everyone’s feel is different.
“But what I would say would be like, ‘Here’s something I have done in the past that was shit, didn’t work. You can try it, but it didn’t work.’ Or ‘Here’s something that worked really well for me.’ But then I’ll say ‘What you’re doing looks well, does it feel good?’ And have a conversation like that.
“Ideally with prop, you don’t want to be writing with your left hand, you want to be in a scrum feeling as natural as possible, and that’s how I try talk to the lads about that, how to make them feel as natural as possible in there, and that usually ends up looking good. You can see if someone feels comfortable in the scrum.
“So that’s my take on how I deal with them, but they have an awful lot of talent and a good few years ahead of them. It’s exciting and things like that, spending time with those guys are what makes going again such an easy thing to do.”
Yet as Healy admits, the leadership side of things has never really appealed to him.
“I don’t do a lot of it in that way and I’m not in the senior leader group or any of that. I stay away from those things and never put my hand to them.
It’s not my vibe. Every shepherd needs his sheep and I’ll be a sheep there.
“I probably prefer one-on-one, very relaxed chats about things as opposed to meetings about intense topics.”
The 36-year-old has played 10 games for Leinster to date this season since recovering from the calf injury which ruled him out of the World Cup.
He clearly remains a highly valuable asset for Leinster, but there have been opportunities to take his talents elsewhere over the years. Around the mid-2010s – when Healy was coming back from a career-threatening neck injury, teams in France and England tried and failed to prize him away from his home province.
“There was a couple of very spicy offers back in the day, yeah,” he admits.
“If anything they were just there though, I never wanted to leave. I never had ambitions of not playing for Ireland or Leinster. I knew I wanted to be here and living away from my family and friends doesn’t greatly appeal to me.”
All these years later, there’s still nowhere else he’d rather be.
