Heineken Cup / Pool Five Interview: Johnny Watterson on laid-back but determined 21-year-old Jamie Heaslip's rapid rise to prominence
There is a switch in Jamie Heaslip's head. When it's up, he's up; when it's down, he's down, chilling. He's playing "poker, golf and a little Black Jack". He's kicking around the city centre with his friends. He's body boarding in San Diego for his summer break. He's in a Californian body-piercing parlour having a stud skewered through his tongue.
"No real reason to get it done," he says flicking the metal instinctively. "It was in my head to do it. Maybe also to piss my dad off, him being an Army man and all, he wouldn't be a great fan of it. As long as I didn't get a tattoo he doesn't mind too much. Just called me a gobshite. That was it. My mum can't even look at it. Still."
Heaslip is not so much an outrageous rebel as a fella who appears to know what instincts to trust and whose declaration in May of this year that "I am frustrated because I just want to get out there and show people what I can do" has, given the speed at which he has translated aspiration into action, become a mildly comic assertion.
Since the summer Heaslip has moved from being the talented former Trinity backrow with an underage World Cup runners-up medal to the 21-year-old holding down a first-pick place as the Leinster number eight.
His career path has yet to slow down from a blur.
Bringing a physical simplicity to the way he plays the game and a certain clarity to the way he sees it splicing with his life, Heaslip has been gifted with an opportunity to excel in the sport he loves but also realises his time in it is limited.
Even at the journey's beginning, he understands the end is in sight.
"The rugby could end tomorrow. It could end in five years or 10 years. But it will end. It can't be the be all and end all so that when it does end you need to know what to do with yourself," he says.
Friends off the pitch are those he picked up along the way towards his degree in medical mechanical engineering from DCU. His two housemates are not professional rugby players. The choice was deliberate. Not because he needs no companions in the game. The disassociation is for his head alone.
"The two guys I live with are guys from back home (Newbridge). I kind of made the decision I didn't want to live with rugby players. Rugby, rugby, rugby . . . you know. I wanted to separate the two," he says.
So here he is rolling his tongue stud and swinging his legs off the stool in a Blackrock coffee shop killing time before the next Leinster session. Only Heaslip's in-your-face 6 ft 3 in frame gives truth to the suggestion he's something other than another student in an over-sized sweat shirt and denims. To label him a Big Easy character would be to default to cliché. Heaslip is more astute. When he leaves the sheds and crosses the whitewash, the mild manner is surrendered for a purpose and attitude altogether more antagonistic to those around him. That has been Heaslip's route to coach Michael Cheika's heart, one that beats with a cold, pragmatic Australian thump.
"The last few years have been a bit of a blur. It's been fast. Not as fast as Rob Kearney," he says. "But since the end of the World Cup, the pace has gone up dramatically. I'm lovin' it. I don't want to drop this pace. In fact I want to pick it up a notch or two. I love getting my hands on the ball and running at people. Love it. Can't get enough of that. Smashing into people. I love the defensive side as well. There's not an aspect of the game that I don't like. I relish the opportunity of getting on the ball and running, running at the forwards and trying to beat a man one on one.
"The World Cup is next season. I wouldn't mind being involved. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't," he adds in an almost unguarded stream of consciousness.
"I tend to be laid back about playing. That works for me. Then when it needs to be on, you turn it on. A lot of fellas in Trinity thought I was an oddball when it came to matches because they'd be getting psyched up and I'd be sitting in the corner. I wouldn't get myself pumped up at all.
"But when you get on to the pitch you do your thing and that's it. You do it when it comes to game time. When you are on that pitch you've just got to be ruthless. You've almost got to be a bit bi-polar. Some people are just insane on the pitch and that works for them. But you have to have a small bit of control, a clear mind to make the right decision. Yeah, a clear head sometimes but if you see your mate on the ground and he's getting stamped all over, there's no second thought, you're in. That's the way I play it anyway."
There is still some boy in the young man. When he reaches Anthony Foley's age, smashing around comes strictly by necessity not a preferred option. But Heaslip's infectious willingness last week earned him man of the match against Cardiff at the RDS. The performance arrived after the low of the previous week, when a Munster backrow shredded Leinster and ran in five tries. Perhaps teams too can be bi-polar.
Cheika, who played Australian underage and Super 12 at number eight, would have a critical eye for his favourite position but Heaslip lining out against Bath today in his first European Cup match may never have materialised had the then teenager taken up an offer from Mark McCall to join Ulster just after the 2004 Under-21 World Cup.
That tournament ended with the Irish player losing out to New Zealand's Jerome Kaino for the IRB Young Player of the Year award.
"I nearly finished up college after that World Cup," he says. "Mark McCall wanted me to come up to play. I looked at it. It was a nice idea but it just didn't work."
By then Leinster manager Ken Ging had the student engaged to the province but at the periphery rather than the heart. After Matt Williams departed to Scotland, Gary Ella came and went as did Declan Kidney, then this summer Cheika arrived. If there was anything with a quicker pulse than the beat of Heaslip's career it was Leinster's turn over of managers. His view is this is the new order, the new rugby reality. Managers come and go and Heaslip landing in on Cheika cracking the whip has been something of a result.
"Chek has changed the way we play. It's now more of an open, quick game," says Heaslip. "We have set plays but after that you react to what you see. I think we are becoming more efficient and are making less mistakes.
"It suits my game. I like to roam around, get into good positions and run the ball. I like the fact that once the ball is kicked off, it doesn't matter what number is on your back. It doesn't matter if you're near a ruck, you hit that ruck no matter if you're a scrumhalf or a winger or flanker.
"I like that. Everyone's accountable. You can't just say 'that's not my job'."
At 17-years-old when he first arrived to play for Trinity from Newbridge College, Heaslip, taking the advice of his father, Richard, a former Shannon player, opted out of the hard senior grind and played with the under-20s. A hulking, soft teenager, it took him 12 months to become the athlete and begin to make an impact. He was 18-years-old and a prospect.
"A huge taste for hard work," is how director of rugby Tony Smeeth remembers his number eight. "He can run through a player or around a player. He has size, he has talent and he has work ethic."
Even now, at the beginning of chapter one of the Heaslip story, small talk is of a possible summer tour with Ireland. It's not just the media penchant for devouring and discarding talent as it peaks and troughs, outsiders also see Heaslip's intensity and range.
"If the player is good enough to play, then he is old enough to play," he says sliding back, his arms thrown wide. At that point you catch a glimpse of the player, not the student. You see the competitive number eight, the growing knuckles of muscle, the wing span and the flashing tongue stud. All this and the passing thought that the switch inside his head is still flicked down.
