Cronin is willing to bide time
IN normal circumstances, Sean Cronin could have sat down and enjoyed his Christmas dinner this year. He knew that he wasn’t required for Thomond Park on St Stephen’s Day, but the mouth injury he sustained against Exeter – a couple of his front teeth were knocked out in a clash with Don Armand – meant that he had to be extremely careful.
‘Eating turkey out of the side of your mouth is not ideal,’ Cronin said with a smile. ‘Some of the lads have been slagging me, saying I look bit better with the new ones. One of them is still loose so I don’t know what is going to happen there. The other one isn’t too bad.’
That sickening clash with Armand’s shoulder was the one blot on Cronin’s recent form. Having been overlooked by Joe Schmidt for the November internationals, the Limerick man used it as a spur to copperfasten his place in the Leinster team with decent performances against Dragons and Treviso.
It didn’t take long for his Ireland omission to be mentioned in UCD on Thursday afternoon and it brought a wry smile to the hooker’s face. ‘How did I know that this was going to come up?’ he wondered
‘I haven’t spoken to Joe since November. At the time, it was just that he thought I didn’t hit the ground running at the start of the season, which was probably fair enough. I felt that I was coming back after basically nine months injured after I did my hamstring and had my neck problem. I probably wasn’t given much wiggle-room.
‘But the only thing is that it gave me a chance to get a bit fitter and to get some gametime with Leinster, which got me ready and got me in for the Champions Cup games. There were positives. It gave me a bit of a kick that I needed and being away from camp gave me the opportunity to get the minutes that I missed out on last season.
‘We will see what happens. I need to play well over the next few weeks to get back in contention. My phone is always on if he wants me back in.’
Having been controversially omitted, Cronin was then forced to watch Ulster’s Rob Herring go over for a try on his debut against Fiji. It didn’t compel the affable hooker to fly into a rage.
‘No, not really. I am probably too far down in my career now to be throwing a telly out the window at this stage,’ he said. ‘I did watch the internationals, of course. I wouldn’t be that bitter. I wouldn’t be watching the Coronation Street omnibus when the Ireland matches are going on.
‘But again, I am going to use it in a positive way. I got some game-time, got fitter. And deep down, at the end of the day, I think I am good enough to get back in. I know if I can play well, and I can put in the performances for Leinster, I think I can do enough to get back in. And hopefully that will happen.’ Schmidt has proven in the past that he will bring players back into the fold after they had been discarded and Cronin hopes to be another name on that list. He knows if he is playing well for a Leinster side firing on all cylinders, it will be harder to ignore his claims. In past, Cronin has the suffered from the perception that he is simply an ‘impact player’. But he feels he has gone some way to putting that to bed over the course of this season.
‘I have said this hundreds of times but it [perception of being a bench player] has worked in my favour a lot in my career too, when it has been touch-and-go when I got into squads, that aspect has gone in my favour. It has worked against me too, but it is hard to get too pissed off about it.
‘At the start of this season, it is something the coaches had a word in my ear about, to prove that I am not just a bench player. As the season went on, I got the couple of starts and I think I am proving to the guys here at Leinster anyway that I am not just an impact player and that I can start big games and do a job for them.’
And if Cronin continues to prove that he can do a job for Leinster in the coming weeks, there may yet be a phone call from Joe Schmidt (left) before the Six Nations kicks into gear.
Deep down I know I am good enough to get back in