Hickie back to his feet, back to his best and back to his future

THE JOURNEY home was long, arduous and painful. At least Denis Hickie and Alan Quinlan had each other for company, but their World Cup was over and their rugby futures under a cloud.

As fortune would have it, Quinlan recovered from his dislocated shoulder to play towards the end of last season. Hickie’s efforts to recover from his ruptured Achilles tendon have been rewarded - almost 12 months to the day he picked up the injury - with his 45th cap against the Springboks at Lansdowne Road on Saturday.

There were times when the St Mary’s flyer wondered if all the effort would be worthwhile, but he comes from the soundest of rugby stock. People like his father Tony and uncle Denis battled hard for the cause of club, province and country, invariably giving the lie to suggestion that they might be “Dublin softies”. The leading member of the next generation is in very much the same mould, a point Denis has emphatically demonstrated by fighting his way back into the national side against all the odds.