IF CIAN HEALY gets on the pitch against Argentina on Friday, the prop will move level with Brian O’Driscoll as Ireland’s most-capped player on 133 Test appearances.

It’s a remarkable achievement given Healy’s career path, which included a well-documented near-career ending injury neck injury in 2015. If Healy does match O’Driscoll’s record, and likely surpass it a week later against Fiji, you can be sure Andy Farrell will make a point of marking it within camp, with the Ireland head coach making a conscious effort of celebrating milestone moments for his players. 

Just don’t expect Healy to be leading the celebrations.

“I would try and separate from this as much as possible,” he admits.

I kind of find any of the personal stuff adds more stress to my week than any of the group stuff. 

“Like 100th-cap week was probably the worst week of my career for how I felt but there was loads of nice things said and done. Whereas something like a Grand Slam weekend I can live it and thrive and enjoy it far better.

“I don’t know if I have, over time, built myself so much into ‘group’ and hating ‘personal’. I don’t know what it is. It’s where my mindset goes with it.”

With that in mind Healy might not have appreciated being sent forward for media duty this week. The loosehead has no interest in being the centre of attention and even feels his Test record doesn’t carry the same weight as O’Driscoll’s.

“It’s very different between Drico and me,” he explains, adding that the pair were recently at a friend’s wedding together, but didn’t touch on Healy’s impending milestone.

“I wasn’t ever and will never be the player that he was so it is separated in that immediately.

Healy at work in the gym. Billy Stickland / INPHO Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO

“I take pride in the durability and being able to show up. That’s something I do hold myself to a bit, not missing training sessions and enjoying the hard work of week in and week out, year in and year out. I have enjoyed that.”

At 37, Healy is now the oldest member of the Ireland squad but is still getting his kicks from playing at the highest level.

“I do love it and I suppose I am in a place where I can’t picture myself anywhere else and that’s a nice place to be, because you can go through the years debating whether you should have done X, Y or Z but I can look at all of mine and say I was exactly where I wanted to be.”

Healy pays particularly close attention to his recovery sessions. When it’s put to him that some players in their 30s dedicate extra time before and after training to work on their mobility, he instead points to the work he does away from the squad.

“Those players probably don’t spend enough time at home doing it then. [I] Try and get out early, get going. It’s more what you do at home and in your spare time that makes it easy to show up and easy to warm up.

“If there is anything bugging me I don’t sit on it. I have a pro-active approach to it. All of that then works into a routine for me which winds me down for the evening, to get to sleep. There’s a whole combination of flexibility and working on my body, wind down and stuff.”

Healy played the closing seven minutes as a replacement in last week’s defeat to New Zealand on a night when Ireland’s bench struggled to make a positive impact on the game, with Farrell feeling his team became guilty of overplaying and forcing things.

“When I was on we didn’t have an awful lot of opportunity, we were defending quite a bit. As desperation goes, maybe that can come in trying to play a play that wasn’t on or how we are going about our business there.

“But there has be some sort of change to get yourself back into it, it’s silly to think, ‘do the same thing, get a different result’, so maybe a lift in the intent of collisions and going about it in that manner is where we need to pick up, and look to win more contact battles, get two men on one ball-carrier, things to put us on more dominant phases of the game.”