Platform to platform said a weary Cian Healy this week explaining his painstaking road to recovery. Injuries are injuries he added of his slow climb back towards Test rugby.
It has been incremental and tiresome and has tried his patience. But for as long as it took Leinster to hold Cardiff from their try line at the weekend, Healy’s name has emerged as a possible contradiction in being both behind Jack McGrath and with Mike Ross a possible saviour of the Irish scrum.
“We have a good partnership with what we do,” he says of McGrath. “Coming from injury my goal was to come back in to that partnership and get back to working with Jack. Then you deal with the challenge to win the shirt.”
It has been a tough year for Healy, who prior to injury was one of the best loosehead props in the world. There is ground to gain to get back there with a bench place this week in Twickenham a significant step towards achieving that goal.
“It’s been a progressive step up in training through Leinster and then into here,” he says. “It has been pushing the fitness in the right direction. It’s more evident because I was out injured and went from not running to running with Leinster and then here. It’s just platform to platform, building up all the time.
“You kinda know yourself where you are with your fitness levels. It wouldn’t have been good for the squad to come in undercooked so I had to get that extra blow-out with Leinster to know I was in that right position to come in here.”
England’s scrum is good and with captain and hooker Dylan Hartley behaving himself, it’s an area to which he pays special attention. Against Italy, England won seven of their scrums and lost none. Against Scotland, they won 11 and lost one.
Since New Year’s Day Healy has played in two matches for Leinster for a total of two hours and eight minutes of competitive rugby. Against Cardiff at the weekend he lasted for 68 minutes. It’s a bonus he’s back but given the expected set piece and breakdown battles and the fact he was not required against France, what can Joe Schmidt realistically ask.
“The two of us (himself and Ross) are in a good position. Coming in, scrummaging against the guys who have been doing it since the start was pretty tough,” he says. “We were dead on our feet after and then continuing on training. It’s put us in a good place.
“A lot of what I am doing is maintenance work so after training, I will always look a bit banged up because I have ice packs on everything. At the moment the body feels very good. Running wise I have got a lot of miles under the belt the last few weeks so I am happy enough.”
England are also dangerous if they can get the ball to their wide runners Jonathan Joseph, Anthony Watson, Mike Brown and Jack Nowell.
But there’s an expectation that Eddie Jones’ drive to get his team to play ‘honest’ English rugby, the sort that won them the World Cup in 2003, there’s also likely to be an element of car crash rugby to the contest. Right up Healy’s street.
“That’s the type of game I like,” he says. “I like the big hits and the slow game. If you get a chance you get out and have a run in some open space but I’m built for that physical contact and I kind of know my strengths at this stage. It’s the type of game I would look forward to.”
For the first time in some months he’s likely to get what he wants.
