‘We want to offload – but you have to win the collision first’ – Henshaw
AS THE last teenager to be capped by Ireland back in 2013, Robbie Henshaw could be forgiven if he was impatient to get to the 50-cap mark.
But for injury, he’d be well on his way to the century but the Athlone native has had his fair share of issues over the years and thus he makes it to 50 in Rome today.
Now 27, he’s come a long way from the callow youth who looked overawed by the jersey when he started at full-back against the United States in Houston all those years ago.
A Lion in 2017, he’s scored winning tries against England and New Zealand, starred at the World Cup and produced the most impressive individual moments of Andy Farrell’s time in charge.
His move from Connacht to Leinster showed a single-mindedness that his coach must tap into if he is going to get the best of his backline.
And, considering the message from the coaches this week that the players must take responsibility for Ireland’s struggling attack, the inside centre knows it’s time to seize the day.
“I need to challenge myself how to play,” Henshaw says of his role within the team. “With defences being so good lately, how do impose yourself, how do you find space and, I suppose, how do you find gaps?
“The thing with Joe (Schmidt)’s set-up, it was very planned in the first three or four phases. It is probably an individual thing for me, it is how can I get better, how can I create something that is not planned so that is probably the difference I suppose.”
“It is huge. I think every player needs to play heads-up rugby, particularly at this level because defences are so much better, players are so much better. The time and space you have is reduced.
“So heads-up rugby is great because that’s what I was coached when I was younger in the Connacht Academy with Nigel Carolan; he was a big believer of heads-up rugby and playing to where the space is.”
Against France in October and Wales earlier this month, Henshaw managed to find space amid the claustrophobia by cutting back against the grain. He scored in Paris, while in Cardiff his break led to Tadhg Beirne’s try.
“It was just off-the cuff, off a spiked ball at the lineout, really unstructured, wasn’t planned,” he explains of the scores. “Again I don’t even think I had said it to Johnny, he had just caught my eye as I cut.
“That’s a feeling on the pitch that just works, you just kinda work off each other’s body language . . . Johnny just has such great spatial awareness and peripheral vision and he just cut under and it kind of unfolded there that the French lads at the one-out had knocked off and had started going towards where they think the ball was and then I just had to get through.
“So, again, that’s as unstructured and it was just about being able to find the gaps. If they knock off, just for a second, then you can just sneak through.”
Unstructured
Ireland, Henshaw says, are preparing for unstructured play through their training and despite a rate of just one offload in every 54 possessions in this tournament to date, he says they are being encouraged to execute that skill.
“It’s great to be able to offload. There’s less rucks if you offload. The ball is kept going and you keep defences questioning.
“Do we want to offload? 100 pc, but I think firstly it’s about the individual with the ball. If you don’t win the collision in your carry, you can’t offload the ball, or if you’re hit by two men at once, you can’t offload the ball.
“So the big chat is about where we find the space and the holes.
“You have to find the space between the defenders or around the defenders, to get your hands free to offload. We do want to play that brand of rugby and definitely reduce the amount of rucks because as you saw when we played France and they got a few of those unbelievable offloads for their first try, it shows you how hard it is to defend. We have an onus on trying to build that and to up the stats.”
Today seems like the perfect place to start and the man hitting the halfcentury is determined to be at the forefront.