Scaling those Dizzee heights

WELL, we might as well get the big question out of the way early doors.

What’s it like being the country’s most famous Florence and the Machine fan, Jamie Heaslip?

“Ah come on, get it right – it’s Dizzee Rascal.”

Oh dear. A touchy matter, with Heaslip is still living down an incident at the Meteor Music Awards... best let him explain.

“I am a big Florence and the Machine fan, but the Dizzee Rascal thing... he’d just performed at the awards, and I thought he was great, I came on stage and said ‘How good was Dizzee Rascal?’

“A few tumbleweeds rolled through the crowd at that, so I was thinking ‘okay, time to pass the microphone on’.”

Come off it. You don’t really like Dizzee Rascal (once addressed by Jeremy Paxman on BBC’s Newsnight, with a straight face, as ‘Mr Rascal’). Honestly?

“Are you talking down Dizzee Rascal?”

Talking down? Sorry, is this Jamie Heaslip or Ali G?

“Look, I’ve seen him a couple of times live, and he’s been very good. He did a duet with Florence and the Machine at the Brit Awards, too.”

Well, at least I’ve heard of Florence and the Machine.

“See, you’re keeping up. That’s good.”

Smart aleck. We’re still hip, daddio – what about the Fleet Foxes?

“The who? From Seattle? You’d probably like Mumford and Sons, have you heard of them?”

The quicker we get onto the rugby the better.

HEASLIP put an end to the Ireland-England game last Saturday when he kicked the ball into touch after he and his teammates had kept England’s last attack at bay. Is it an anti-climax to finish the game like that?

“I was giddy at the thought that I’d finish the game by booting the ball out,” he says. “I think Geordan was near me and I said ‘get out of the way, I’m kicking that out’. It might have been an anticlimax for other people, but I was delighted. It was one tough, gruelling game.

“I rolled my ankle with about 10 minutes to go and it ballooned up afterward, but it was just a precaution that I haven’t trained – I’ve been walking around without crutches for a few days now.”

Ireland will need him against Warren Gatland’s Wales next Saturday at Croke Park. The men from the valleys have been conjuring up dramatic finishes in this year’s tournament, but they haven’t helped themselves with sluggish starts.

“They’re a very dangerous side always, but I think the way the Six Nations has gone for them they’ve shot themselves in the foot the way they’ve begun those games. They’ve still finished the games unbelievably strongly, getting tries from all over the pitch. If they address the problems they’ve had with starting games, they’ll be a huge handful, because they can score tries.”

Shane Williams’ late try against France was a fair example of that. Is his side-step off the left foot the best-known attacking gambit in world rugby?

“You know what’s coming,” says Heaslip. “But it’s a very tough job stopping him – one on one, he could get past you in a phonebox.”

Is the Leinster man happy with how the tournament’s gone so far?

“Yes and no. We’re a little annoyed we let France get away so easily, but in general I think we’ve shown good character, good belief, and that we can be very efficient with the ball. And without the ball, we’ve done pretty well too, particularly in the last game.

“We’re happy enough with that but obviously you’d prefer to have three wins from three.”

A feature of the English win was the already-legendary stat of 99 tackles made by Ireland in the game, with only one missed (“I haven’t been asking any questions about that,” he says, “I’ve been keeping my head down, there’s every chance it could have been me”). Heaslip shares the credit for that achievement with defence coach Les Kiss and forwards supremo Gert Smal.

“The work they do with us is unbelievable. Les does great defence work, in particular some great one-on-one techniques for defending, as well as work on the overall defensive system that we use.

“You have Paul (O’Connell) and Leo (Cullen) working on the lineouts because they run them during games, and Gert works on those with them. The detail they go into is incredible, and you can see the results for both defence and lineout during games.”

Beating England was the perfect riposte to the gloom generated by the defeat to France.

“I think people got carried away with the scoreline against France, which I don’t think reflected the game,” says Heaslip, who was speaking as part of the Guinness Area 22 Six Nations campaign.

“We gifted them a couple of tries but if Darce (Gordon D’Arcy) had scored his chance, and if we’d executed a couple of three on twos that we had... Sexto had a chance near the end, for instance, that could have put a different spin on it.”

Sexto? What’s the lad ever done to get lumbered with one of the worst nicknames of all time?

“Well, I also call him The Rat. Though only myself and Drico call him that.”

Such are the distractions on offer to the professional rugby player, cooped up for weeks on end in training camps, but Heaslip can see the positive side.

“I enjoy it, being in camp is a change from the provincial scene and it’s refreshing when you go back to Leinster as well. Obviously it’s easier for the Leinster lads to get home when the camp is in Dublin, and it’s a fair bit of time, the Six Nations is two months, after all. I only got back to my house the other day after a few weeks.

“The bills don’t stop coming because the Six Nations is on. There was a nice little pile waiting for me.”

Right next to the CDs, no doubt.

“It’s been a long time since I bought a CD. I get my music from iTunes.”

What was the most recent purchase?

“Something by Mumford and Sons.” (Again with the Mumford and Sons, is he on commission or what?)

Is that your ringtone?

“No, that’s a Jane’s Addiction song. The theme from Entourage.”

Which member of the Entourage cast do you resemble? “I’d love to be Drama, of course. He’s a legend!”

He’s not the only one.

Happy listening.