‘I didn’t have a clue what I was doing on my debut’

FLASHY piano players, grunting piano shifters. Such are the vastly different descriptions for rugby backs and rugby forwards. Iain Henderson knows he belongs to the latter category, the latest confirmation arriving Tuesday when there was a media stampede at Carton House to hear from Joey Carbery, Ireland’s next big thing at out-half, rather than people staying put and listening to the second row’s ponderings about life in rugby’s engine room. Not that forwards don’t ever dominate the limelight. Five years ago this very week, Henderson (right) himself was firmly in the spotlight when Declan Kidney took a huge punt in handing a 20-year-old from up north his Ireland debut at a time when he wasn’t even an Ulster regular. ‘I was young, raw, inexperienced, and probably didn’t have a bit of a clue what I was doing,’ he now reflects. ‘I loved it at the time. It was fantastic. I had only really started playing for Ulster and thought it was very bizarre [to get picked by Ireland]. My opposite number was Marcel Coetzee [now at Ulster]. I had a good chat with him after and I have got his jersey in my house that I swapped with him.’ Ireland lost that day, but the Boks have been beaten twice since, Ireland winning in Dublin in 2014 and again in the Cape Town series opener in June 2016. However, South Africa wrested back that momentum, Allister Coetzee’s side striking to take the next two games and deny Ireland an historic first Test series victory in that neck of the woods. A starter in all three tour matches, he hasn’t forgotten the delirium of winning with just 14 players in the opener before subsequent matches slipped through their fingers. ‘The first game was fantastic, 14 men for a lot of the game, 13 for some of it and still to come out with a win. ‘We could have made history, being the first team to turn over South Africa down there. That’s something a wee bit annoying, something we realise. It was in our hands to take it and it slipped off.’ That sounds like Henderson’s general inconsistency at this level, good and bad intermingled even as recently as his 2017 Lions tour. ‘There have been a couple of performances where I have slipped off a wee bit,’ accepts the 25-year-old, a starter in just 14 of his 32 Ireland appearances. ‘It’s probably (about) getting more comfortable in your routine, more comfortable preparing for a game.’