Healy meets challenges head on

IN this War of Attrition, it was The Battle of the Breakdown that ultimately proved decisive, a battle just shaded by the Leinster pack.

Fitting then that the first Leinster player to mount the rostrum in Murrayfield to receive his Heineken Cup medal was big Malcolm O’Kelly, Leinster’s oldest and longest-serving player having played a full part, all 80 minutes, in finally realising a great ambition.

Immediately following him, in a gesture as fitting and symbolic, was Leinster’s youngest – prop forward Cian Healy. While O’Kelly isn’t finished playing quite yet (he has another year on his contract) and Healy isn’t quite the finished article just yet, there is a sense of baton being passed, from folk hero established to folk hero in the flowering.

Facing Healy on Saturday across the line in the Leicester scrum for the first 53 minutes was vastly experienced and world rated Martin Castrogiovanni, a 6’2” 19st 3 mountain of a man, nicknamed ‘Samson’ by the Leicester faithful because of his long hair and his freakish natural strength.

After Castro was deemed to have exhausted himself by Leicester coach Richard Cockerill – a guy who, as a former England hooker, knows more than a thing or two about front row play – in came the redoubtable Julian White, even more grisly, even more battle-hardened, World Cup winner with England in 2003.

Against both, the youngster was outstanding, against neither did he take a backward step.

For four minutes, the 61st to the 65th, the baby-faced prop was forced to leave the field with a facial injury, had to be almost dragged off, but he came rushing back to the fray – if ever there was a guy custom-built for this position, it’s the youngster from Clontarf.

Because of the confrontational nature of the front row, and because they are likely to come across each other again and again, don’t want to concede any psychological edge, playing members of that exclusive club are rarely effusive in their praise for each other, but afterwards, a heavily limping Castrogiovanni did pay tribute to the Leinster youngster.

“He has a lot of future, he’s a young lad but played Heineken Cup final today – he has a good future going for him.”

White, however, is 36, thus less likely to be around in the coming years, and he was more forthcoming: “He’s a young guy, and it takes many years to establish yourself in the scrum, but he played well today, he’s obviously a great ball-carrier. He’s got bits of his game to work on but he’s obviously a great prospect.”

As expected, it was an attritional game, and as such, a game in which the likes of Healy, Castrogiovanni and White thrived. The breakdown was where the game would be decided, went the wisdom, and the breakdown was indeed where it was at for much of this game, an area where only those who are buried deepest have any idea of what’s going on.

“I don’t think even the referee really understood what was happening down there, but that’s the beauty of this game – we want to play as physically as we can, to impact on the other side as much as we can,” said Castrogiovanni.

Beauty, maybe, but it’s an ugly beauty. Bruising, bone-crushing, this was as old-fashioned as modern rugby can get, two powerful sides butting heads in a game of condensed, controlled violence. “It probably wasn’t a great game to watch, so attritional,” said Julian, “it was all about defence in the end. They defended outstandingly, got one break for the try and took it.”

In fairness to Castrogiovanni, the Argentinean-born Italian international came into the game under a bit of a cloud, already carrying the scars from the hectic end-of-season pile-up of big games that Leicester have had to endure: “I was injured last week but obviously I wanted to play in this game at any cost, and when you have an injury, that can be hard. I played as well as I could, but it was a little bit hard. In one way I feel sore now, but I also feel proud to be part of this team. It was a close game and at one stage I thought we’d win, but we didn’t. Leinster deserved to win because they played better – sometimes you have to accept defeat, we’re not the best team in Europe but we won the Guinness (English Premiership), now we must go forward from this.”

So, not a flashy classic then, not a match in which people will be going to the rewind button again and again, but a triumph nevertheless, a triumph for the Heineken Cup.

Given what happened last week in Twickenham, when a packed house saw another absorbing contest in the Guinness Premiership final, Leicester just denying London-Irish, given what happened a couple of weeks before that when a world record crowd in excess of 83,000 saw Leinster overpower Munster in Croke Park to reach Saturday’s final, and given again another packed major venue on that occasion, club rugby has now almost caught up with its international equivalent as a spectacle.

“I think rugby as a whole has gotten very strong, as you can see on days like this,” reflected White. “It’s fantastic to come to a stadium like this, in front of a crowd like this, to see the support in the city, in the stands. Rugby is going from strength to strength, and long may that continue.”

From strength to strength, definitely, but nowhere in this northern hemisphere at the moment is it stronger than in Ireland, and after this result, bragging rights most certainly rest with Leinster.

Cian Healy? I say this with absolute conviction – the guy could play for the Lions against South Africa right now, and come out on top.