MEDALS DO CAP IT ALL
Healy only interested in team honours
YOU won’t find Cian Healy celebrating the fact he is set to join Ronan O’gara in second place behind Brian O’driscoll in Ireland’s caps race.
Medals mean more to the veteran who is Ireland’s most decorated player with two Grand Slams, four Six Nations titles and three Triple Crowns to his name.
That’s apart from the 12 senior titles he has won with Leinster.
“I take a lot more pride in what we have won with Ireland than caps,” Healy insisted. “Come the end of my career I’ll count medals not caps. That’s the number one thing to me.”
Yet Healy, as long as he comes on for Andrew Porter at some stage at Twickenham, will make his 128th appearance for his country, just five shy of O’driscoll’s record total.
The laidback prop added: “What comes, comes. I’m just doing what I do and enjoying it. I’m just trying to make use of the minutes I get.
“Ports is a physical freak and he’s being used as much as possible and I get that. I’m just trying to be waxed on to everything I can to try to be of some value when I come on. Any game is a buzz.”
Healy will be 37 in October but don’t count against him overhauling his fellow Clontarf man O’driscoll. In fact, he’s in discussions about a new Leinster deal for next season. “Yeah, working on it at the moment,” he smiled.
Famously the loosehead was on the verge of retiring in 2015 when he suffered nerve damage in his right hand.
And he could have walked away after his plans to play at a fourth World Cup in France were blown up when he suffered a calf injury against Samoa in a warm-up Test in Bayonne.
He insisted: “Before I was on the flight back I was thinking about how the rehab was going to happen and how I was going to make myself available again.
“And then it was day by day by day, working for each next goal. So there was no further down the line thinking than that.
“I know I have the ability to recover from things a little bit quicker than most and then I also know a lot of protocols that I have to put in place when I am doing that.
“The missus was slagging me off a bit and saying she’s never seen me so selfish but that’s what had to happen at that time.”
Meanwhile, Healy says Ireland are working hard to produce a “whopper” performance at Twickenham.
Remarkably, he has faced England on 17 occasions already – winning eight and losing nine of those encounters.
So while Ireland have won their last four meetings with the Red Rose, Healy won’t be counting his chickens. Having the bit between the teeth for getting a lot right is us at the moment,” he said. “We’ll try and put out a whopper performance.”