Hickie shaking off the past and moving ahead
Leinster’s Heineken Cup hopes had just been mortally wounded by Sale Sharks at Lansdowne Road. To make matters worse, Ireland were facing into an uncertain Six Nations bereft of on-field general Keith Wood and low on confidence after a traumatic World Cup exit to France in Melbourne.
And then there was the injury that cost Hickie almost a year of his career.
It had seemed innocuous enough. The Leinster winger went into a ruck approaching half-time but failed to get back up. When he did it was merely to limp off with a snapped Achilles tendon.
Missing out on Ireland’s historic Triple Crown success was harsh enough but then his projected six-month lay-off stretched to seven, eight, nine and finally 10 months, leaving him sidelined for Ireland’s Tour of South Africa as well.
Understandably, it’s not a time he likes to dwell on now deep in the midst of another campaign that promises much.
“It’s a distant memory at this stage. Everything is fine and I’m just getting on with things again. I wasn’t involved at all last year, so I don’t really look back on that time at all. I was just looking forward to getting back this season and everything has gone really well so far. Hopefully that can continue.”
The perennial worry with Achilles injuries is that the victim will lose a yard of pace. Any worries were dispelled in his first game back, a Celtic League tie against Munster last September when he was in contention for man of the match honours after an early introduction as substitute.
“I’m relatively happy with my form, there’s a lot of things I still need to work on but the important thing for me was to get back playing. That was the first step and then after that you have to keep the level of performance up, like everyone else. The speed? I wasn’t as surprised as some others that it was still there.”
If Hickie’s problems of last January seem a lifetime ago then so do those of Leinster and Ireland. Declan Kidney seems to have fashioned a sterner backbone for the province and a win at injury-riddled Bath today would secure them top spot in Pool Two and a home tie in last eight.
Lose that, and they still have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card with the visit of Benetton Treviso for the group finale a week further on.
“You can’t look at it that way. You have to take every game individually. Bath gave us a hard time of it in Lansdowne Road and it took a few late tries to take us clear. Treviso have done really well in the group and again that was a tricky opener to the Heineken Cup for us out there.
“You always expect the Italian teams to start well but they’ve kept up the pace all the way through.”
As for Ireland? Well, Hickie has heard all the excited talk already, about how, with England and France travelling to Lansdowne Road, this could be the best ever opportunity of claiming the elusive Grand Slam.
“The only thing with that is, when you play Italy in Italy it’s much harder than playing Italy in Lansdowne Road, Wales in Wales are much harder than Wales at Lansdowne Road, Scotland the same.
“So, all those games become a lot harder than you would expect them to be. On top of that, you still have to play England and France who are consistently the two best teams in the northern hemisphere even if you’re expected to win your home games. When you look at it like that, it could be a harder season in a lot of ways.”
Hard? Certainly. Long? Longer than usual for over 40 of Britain and Ireland’s best players, with Clive Woodward spearheading the Lions’ tour of New Zealand once provincial and international duties are put to bed for the season.
Four years ago, Graham Henry’s exclusion of Hickie from the tour of Australia was criticised and completely castigated when Dan Luger’s withdrawal wasn’t followed by a belated call-up. Thoughts of the famous red jersey are few and far between for him at this stage however.
“It’s not a factor at all at the moment. There’s far too many other things to be worrying about.
“Whoever the Lions comes around for will be great but players won’t start thinking about that until post-Six Nations. No Lions team is picked just after Christmas and players just concentrate on playing well week to week and everything else looks after itself.”
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