‘I wouldn’t be the loudest on the pitch... I try to lead by my actions’
FURTIVE is not a word usually associated with player interviews in modern rugby, especially ones conducted via video call. But when Robbie Henshaw is asked about his post-World Cup activities, he smiles and halfstarts a sentence.
He’s not trying to hide the details of some debauched sting, in fact quite the opposite.
As part of his dealing with a tournament that saw him floored by two hamstring injuries, he flew to Doha and spent a week in a cuttingedge sports rehabilitation hospital called Aspetar.
Incidentally, it is a place where the IRFU rehabilitation physio, Einar Einarsson, spent a decade working, but Henshaw’s initial awkwardness and muttering implies that it was a trip taken under his own steam, at a time when his bosses might have preferred to see him with his feet up on a distant beach.
‘Eh yeah, let’s call it a holiday, a work-holiday kinda thing,’ he eventually smiles.
‘Just got really good work done, got a different set of eyes on me and did some testing and had a strict programme that they got me to work on. Thankfully, it’s been good.’
In fact, it’s been more than that. Henshaw has been in sensational form this season. So good that if, as the Irish camp has insisted, Bundee Aki and Garry Ringrose are fit for selection ahead of the Wales game next Saturday, they will be competing to play alongside Henshaw, and not to replace him.
Good for Leinster, he has been terrific in Ireland’s opening two matches of the Six Nations.
If that week in Doha is one of the reasons for it, then it was one of the smartest decisions Henshaw could have made.
And his desire to try a different tack was understandable, too, given the extent to which injuries, and hamstring complaints in particular, have stalked his career.
They ruined the last World Cup for him, and they significantly disrupted his two previous ones as well. Yet he won’t turn 31 until June, and if he could get his body to stay true, there is a path to a fourth World Cup open to him.
Before then, there is the matter of remaining fit, and the glories that could follow that, domestically, with Ireland and, in less than 18 months’ time, with the Lions, too.
‘For me it’s been always about getting back-to-back games, about building that game confidence and every week you play, you get more and more confident,’ he says.
‘I think I’ve been building nicely. There’s still plenty more to get better at, to work on, I think there’s definitely more in me.’
He will win his 70th cap against the Welsh in six days’ time, a significant achievement despite all the disruption from various injury setbacks in the 12 seasons since making his Test debut, on tour against the US in June 2013.
That was a trip overseen by Les Kiss as Ireland transitioned between the Declan Kidney and Joe Schmidt eras.
Henshaw has been around a long time. More significantly, he has kept coming back.
‘It is tough, yeah, because it’s such a fast-moving sport,’ he says of the resilience that rugby at this level demands.
‘We were finished at the World Cup and then we were on a plane home, an then we were off for a couple of weeks and we’re straight back into Leinster.
‘You have to turn the page quickly and it’s the same with games here — you have to move on quickly and get over disappointments, and get over big wins as well.
‘It’s the nature of the sport. We’re always challenged in the jersey, and you have to always get back up and keep going.’
Gonzalo Quesada marvelled at the Irish team’s relentlessness in their saunter to victory against Italy a week ago. He reached for a comparison with the All Blacks at their finest, as Ireland reminded him of a team that never relent in pursuit of victory.
That ruthlessness is not coached explicitly, says Henshaw. Instead, it is a product of an environment where striving to be better seems the most important principle.
‘The way we prepare and the way we play the game, we’re expected to take our chances when we can,’ the Leinster centre admitted. ‘“Ruthless” isn’t plastered on the board in front of us here, but the coaches expect us to be ruthless to take those chances and go after teams when we can, and just to not let up, I suppose.
‘I wouldn’t say ruthlessness is plastered around the place in here. ‘But the expectation of this team is to be the best we can, and we want to take every opportunity.’
Henshaw speaks quietly, and that fits with the impression of a man who appears shy off the field.
On it, he is a veteran, not a man linked with the long-term captaincy, but a proven part of Andy Farrell’s plans, a centre playing so good that the irresistible AkiRingrose partnership of the World Cup is now under intense threat.
‘I think leadership comes in different forms,’ he says, ‘in terms of leadership by action, leadership by voice, by words.
‘I wouldn’t be the loudest player but when I take the pitch or in training, I try to lead by my actions, and I hope most of the group would know that.’
He reveals that Jacques Nienaber has been quizzing him about aspects of his play that Leinster’s new defence coach analysed when he was in the Springbok camp, specifically parts of Henshaw’s game on display on the 2021 Lions tour.
It seems more and more likely, with each breathless testimony, that Nienaber will be a foreign coach who enters the Irish system and makes a profound impact, of the sort that Schmidt and Stuart Lancaster have had.
‘It’s always exciting to learn off a new coach so he’s been brilliant, and his energy on and off the pitch is what has stood out to everyone in the group.
‘He’s really a breath of fresh air in terms of his voice, his energy, how he gets on with the players as well. He’s brilliant.’
The appeal of such a tough, smart player to a South African defence coach is obvious, and it’s clear that Henshaw’s attitude and fortitude appeal greatly to Farrell as well.
His form this spring has been an understated triumph for a quiet man, a player marked out for brilliance from his teenage years, and a warrior who has had to face down multiple betrayals by his own body.
Henshaw is a Westmeath man, not noted for its rugby productions, and he showed enough talent as an underage footballer to make a senior career in the maroon of his county a certain alternative had rugby not worked out.
But it did, and it continues to do so.
‘Yeah, pending selection, I’ll get to 70,’ he says of the honour that awaits.
‘It would be a nice achievement for myself, personally.’
No trumpets, no swagger. He’s been undone by unexpected setbacks too often for that.
But when he is fit, Robbie Henshaw remains world class. That has been the clearest message to emerge from Ireland’s blistering start.
‘THERE’S STILL PLENTY MORE TO GET BETTER AT, TO WORK ON ...DEFINITELY’
‘THE COACHES EXPECT US TO GO AFTER TEAMS... TO NOT LET UP’
THESE are grim times for rugby in Wales. This time last year, the national team avoided strike action at the 11th hour of a Six Nations clash with England. A temporary reprieve. The four regions in the country (Cardiff, Scarlets, Ospreys and Dragons) are in dire straits financially and are saddled with debt.
After yesterday’s URC action, the Ospreys were the highest-placed Welsh side, occupying 10th in the the league standings. Meanwhile, not a single region has progressed into the last-16 of the Champions Cup.
These are hardly new developments. The struggles of the Welsh regions has been a familiar tale since the game’s power brokers decided to merge a host of clubs into franchises in 2003.
Overnight, hallowed clubs such as Newport, Swansea, Neath and Pontypridd were dissolved, making way for the regions. Suffice to say, it’s not been the most successful of experiments. One Pro12 title – claimed by the Scarlets in 2017 – is effectively all the clubs have to show for their efforts across the past 20 years or so.
Thing is, all this domestic upheaval rarely had an effect on the Welsh national team. Players who looked decidedly ordinary when they rocked up on club duty at venues like Thomond Park, the RDS and the Sportsground were a different animal when they ran out at the Millennium Stadium.
Former Munster and Ireland lock Donncha O’Callaghan once likened the Welsh to Clark Kent when they played for the regions. They become Superman when it came to international duty, however.
In Warren Gatland, they had a canny coach who was able to galvanise a group and get them to another level. During the Kiwi’s first trophy-laden stint as head coach, he guided them to three Six Nations title – all Grand Slams – and two World Cup semi-final appearances.
There was a sense that Gatland would infuse this youthful squad with the same steel when he arrived back for a dramatic second spell in the gig. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. A host of generational players have since retired or called it quits. Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric, Ken Owens, Dan Biggar, Rhys Webb and Leigh Halfpenny is a lot of experience to lose in such a short space of time. It was instructive that Gatland named 21-year-old Exeter Chiefs lock Dafydd Jenkins as the new Welsh skipper, the second youngest player to lead his country behind the great Gareth Edwards.
Jenkins has led a young and inexperienced crew through this championship. Understandably, they’ve struggled. They will pitch up at Lansdowne Road next Saturday winless after losses to Scotland and England in the opening rounds.
The visitors are being written off as cannon fodder for an Ireland team in an ominous vein of form.
Mike Ruddock has seen both systems up close. The former Leinster, Lansdowne and Ireland U20 coach arrived on these shores in the early days of professionalism in the 90s – a time when Leinster used to do their weights sessions in portakabins and Ireland were a laughing stock in the Five Nations. When he left Dublin in 2020 to take up a backroom role with the Ospreys, the transformation was stark. The Irish game is now a well-oiled juggernaut, with world class pathways and world class players in abundance.
Ruddock, who now resides in his native Swansea, has seen the exact opposite occur in his native land. He remembers the great days of the ’70s and ’80s when rugby was religion. He guided Wales to a Grand Slam in 2005.
Now, he sees the professional game on its knees. And the knockon effect it has had on the long-suffering fanbase.
‘I’ve noticed a big change in Wales coming when I did in January 2020,’ he said.
‘It seems to be less forensic debate around Welsh rugby and the Welsh team that there would have been 20 years ago or probably 10 years ago. There are so many other things going on in people’s lives.
‘When I grew up as a boy in Wales, you couldn’t have a conversation with anybody in the shop or in the street without rugby coming up in the subject. Now, it doesn’t feel that way. It doesn’t seem to be as prioritised as before.
‘When I went to Ireland first, everyone talked about gaelic football and hurling over there. There was none of this multi-platform coverage you see now around rugby. So the scale has sort of tipped the other way.
‘You can feel the vibe around rugby in Ireland, with the success which has been generated by the provinces and the national team. Whereas in Wales there is a bit more apathy around what’s going on with the game here.
‘There’s been a lot of headlines recently that probably don’t make people all that excited about rugby. The regions have taken massive budget cuts. That’s meant that players have either moved on or retired.
‘The public have had to live through that so they’re not overly excited about the prospects of the Welsh team.’
Gatland’s loaves and fishes act with Wales has run its course by the looks of it. The dire state of the club game was going to take its toll eventually. Ruddock serves as a nonexecutive director on the Ospreys board these days and while the current outlook is grim, he believes that Wales – despite all the current challenges – have some talented players coming through the ranks. They just need time. Dublin next week might be a rough outing, but it will stand to them.
‘I think everyone that is engaged with Welsh rugby are quite excited about the youngsters in the team,’ said the 64-yearold.
‘They recognise the potential in the team over the next couple of years but they also realise that the lack of experience is costing them dear.
‘The big thing that the Irish provinces and the Irish team have got which the Welsh team is missing is consistency.
‘I don’t think anyone is crit- ical of the effort levels or the reality around the processes. The likes of Alun Wyn Jones are gone so they’ve got to go with the youngsters.
‘Daffyd Jenkins is now the captain. Everyone understands that process and they know that it will improve over time
The big thing that the Irish provinces and team have is consistency