It wasn’t all bad on Saturday said Luke Fitzgerald yesterday. What the Irish winger didn’t say was that one of those parts that wasn’t all bad, or, was sometimes good, was Fitzgerald himself.

A bag of tricks on skates, Fitzgerald’s form has been eye-catching in recent games, forever looking for the half gap with an ability to burn almost any player. Wasn’t it always thus? Well, yes and no.

George North, Wales’ god of the wing (or centre on Saturday), felt some of the heat in Aviva after one of Fitzgerald’s blazing strikes in an otherwise sterile offensive Leinster game.

To some extent the lack of Leinster line breaks highlighted the few that cut deep. And it was Fitzgerald’s name that may have hung in the Northampton-silenced stadium as fans wearily drifted away.

Without going through each frame of the match and charting the yardage of the bigger men, his foot prints were on a larger chunk of opposition territory than most.

It has taken some patience on the player’s part. But his game appears to have come back from the two serious knee problems and a neck injury that threatened to cut short his playing days. One of the oldest truisms in the game also fell on his lap; frequent injury softens confidence.

"I feel like I'm in a good place," he says. "I feel dangerous whenever I get the ball so I just have to get my hands on it as much as I can. Obviously a few areas where I would like to improve, like everyone in the team this week, so I'll focus on them and hopefully keep the other stuff going."

Healthy place
A healthy place is always a good place to be and Fitzgerald hopes that his ill-fated recent past has earned him some good karma for the present and future.

“That’s the key,” he says. “Continuity really does help you in terms of thought processes on the pitch. It speeds up all those things. You see more opportunities. Your fitness will be a big part as well so it does all add up.

“I kinda feel like I haven’t been playing too badly. I have had a few stop-starts. I made my way back into the Irish team the last Six Nations before I got injured out of nowhere.

“I made my way into the November internationals having been injured as well so it went well for a while apart from being injured. I went through a poor enough patch, I think it was in 2011 and I kind of feel like I’m paying a little bit for that now because all I hear is ‘oh, you’re back, you’re back’, but injuries have had a big part in that and I do feel as though I am definitely playing well.”

Over the past few years other winger and centre names have crept in at Irish level, Simon Zebo, Dave Kearney, Craig Gilroy, Fergus McFadden, Stuart Olding and Robbie Henshaw. Familiar to him are Tommy Bowe, out of favour Andrew Trimble and Keith Earls. And like Earls, Fitzgerald can fit into the 13 shirt.

Whole story
Joe Schmidt knows the whole story and now too does Matt O'Connor, with Zane Kirchener also lending his Springbok shoulder to the selection issue. But a hat-trick in the match against Northampton in Franklin's Gardens, Fitzgerald's first in five years, has further stoked the fires.

“I thought I came back quite well last year,” he says. “I was pretty happy with that. Like I said, I made my way back into the Six Nations team, having not been included initially and I did the same this year with the November internationals.

“Unfortunately, I have got used to the rehab process and I didn’t have to do much thinking in terms of doing anything different with the (physiotherapy) guys. You can see how quickly they get everyone back. It isn’t an easy process. You do have to put in the hard work but I feel I did that and I am in a really good place.”

This week’s challenge is former Ulster coach Alan Solomons and an Edinburgh team that is laced with South African players.

Solomons has maybe turned a corner with Edinburgh, who are eighth in the table and like Jim Mallinder did, so too will the Scottish team coach sell his players the story of a wounded European lion even if it will be a greatly changed side. There Fitzgerald offers caution.

“It is very dangerous to be letting frustrations out on to the pitch,” he says. “It is important we are calm at this point. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here.

“We just have to work on the basics and get them right. I can’t emphasis that enough. I think they are three out of four in PRO12 as well so they are going really well.”