I get fed up being out injured... it can test my love of the game

IT’S an unfortunate development at this stage in Rob Kearney’s career that goals for the season are now marked out in minutes, rather than trophies.

For the past few years, the 31-yearold has been dogged by injuries.

Currently, he is nursing a hamstring problem that forced him off the pitch in Leinster’s recent win over the Cardiff Blues.

At the time, Kearney was only feeling his way back into things after a trio of injuries ruled him out of for most of last season — a campaign that saw the Louth man start more times for Ireland than Leinster, such were his injury troubles.

In the past 12 months, Kearney underwent successful surgery on a bicep problem, recovered from a broken ankle and rehabbed a PCL knee issue, before being struck down once again just two weeks into the new season.

It is the latest in a long line of hamstring problems for Kearney, which he attempted to remedy by going under the knife in 2012, a procedure in which he had a portion of a disc in his back shaved away to ease pressure on a nerve and the sciatica that ran down his leg — the string of knee issues is a separate issue.

‘It is massively a mental challenge,’ he says of this latest blow.

‘The ankle and the bicep and the knee, you can take those because they are part and parcel of rugby. It is collision stuff.

‘We do it for playing and the buzz you get from it on a Saturday afternoon. That is the whole basis of our week from when we get up on a Monday morning to the Saturday.

‘It’s all about playing. When you are missing out on that buzz and the adrenaline every single week, that is the hardest part.’

The problem is all the more troubling given that after a long battle with hamstring problems, Kearney felt that those issues may finally have been a thing of the past.

‘I have one of the strongest sets of hamstrings in the club,’ he explains. ‘Two years ago, I had four (hamstring injuries) in the one season. They weren’t strong enough, so I strengthened them up.

‘I didn’t have one hamstring last year, even an incident or a tightening. It was brilliant.

‘I just picked up three bad enough rugby injuries. You accept those because it is part of the game.

‘I broke a small bone in my ankle, I ruptured by PCL and my knee, both on the left side.

‘Then what happens is your running mechanics start to be altered and you don’t move exactly like you did beforehand.

‘You couple that with another bad knee incident, a surgery I had back in 2011 and hip trouble and your lower back. It all leads to ensuring I don’t run as good as I used to, I suppose.

‘There are so many different intricate things I need to stay on top of on a daily basis.’

In a bid to stay in contention in a Leinster squad packed with young talent, Kearney will often find himself in the gym at 6.45am, working away on keeping himself in the right shape before the rest of his team-mates arrive.

It’s a gruelling slog, and while there are dark days, there have been no thoughts of hanging up his boots.

‘I haven’t been there yet,’ he says about considering retirement. ‘It is tough. The first week is torture, especially this season coming back at the start. I felt good and I was ready for this run of games I’ve been seeking for a couple of years now.

‘You’re just fed up. You go through everything that happened the last few years. I was looking forward to getting away to South Africa for a couple of weeks and having a bit of craic with the lads and getting a few more games under the belt. Five days later you’re home, with three or four other lads, rehabbing another injury.

‘It tests your mental resilience for sure. It does test your love of the game. If you are in rehabbing the following day it shows you still want it and getting back on a Saturday afternoon shows you still have a love of doing that.

‘It’s probably the best test of your love for the game if you can still get back up and go again.

‘The difficult thing for me is that I have a huge amount of faith in my own ability and I would be pretty realistic about it too. I know that I still have a huge amount to give and once I believe that then that’s the only spur that I need to keep getting back and going again.’

Still, if the curtain was to come down sooner rather than later, the three-time European Cup winner admits he’d be fairly happy with his lot.

‘There have been a few things here and there but, in saying that, I’ve been hugely lucky to play in a huge amount of hugely important big games.

‘I started all the Grand Slam games, all the championship games. That All Blacks game (in Chicago last year) was something that I really wanted to do. I’d played them 10 or 11 times and I really wanted to be in that first team that beat them.

‘I have 190-odd Leinster caps and 80 internationals, I haven’t done badly.’

And if all goes to plan, he isn’t done yet.