Healy: Mas mission possible
It would be enough to bring out the cold sweats in a defender lacking the courage of his convictions yet Ireland prop Cian Healy faces the rugby equivalent this weekend and he is savouring the prospect.
A week after tangling with Italy’s tighthead Martin Castrogiovanni in Rome, the Leinster loosehead must now ready himself for the no less considerable challenges to be posed tomorrow by France’s snarling front row Rottweiler, Nicolas Mas.
Castro and co. as well as French referee Romain Poite provided Healy, Six Nations debutant Mike Ross and hooker Rory Best with a testing afternoon at Stadio Flaminio last Saturday as Ireland laboured to a 13-11 victory in their Six Nations opener.
Healy objected to some of the criticism levelled at the Irish pack after the Italy game yet is comfortable going into the French game with low expectations.
Aside from returning to hearth and home at the Aviva Stadium tomorrow, there will be little comfort from France’s Grand Slam-winning front-row of Perpignan’s Mas, Toulouse hooker William Servat and Clermont Auvergne’s Thoms Domingo in the vanguard of possibly the most powerful scrum in the championship.
“There are a lot of strong forwards out there,” Healy said. “I love the opportunity, the challenge. There were a lot of things put down this week, the Irish scrum has been put down a lot and a lot of people are saying things, so it’s good to be going in against a French scrum that has had such a dominant week.
“We’ll be big underdogs in the scrum so it will be a nice challenge for us to go out and try to put one over them.”
As for the Castro-Mas one-two, Healy accepted it would probably constitute his toughest week of the season before adding: “But there are more weeks coming after it, every week is the ... it sounds a bit of a cliche, but the next week is your toughest week because you could be coming off a huge win over someone and you can get complacent coming in against someone lower in the table.
Healy admitted to experiencing a torrid time against the Azzurri but was helped out of his malaise by Leinster and Ireland scrum guru Greg Feek.
“I was penalised a lot in the scrum, I was pushed back and it’s a real knock to your pride,” he admitted. “It’s something I didn’t get out of my head until I got home and talked to Greg and had a look at the videos. I put everything aside then and moved onto this week.”
The 23-year-old has learned to quickly put the past behind him and refocus.
“What I try to do is get it out of the head and move on. You can’t change any of it. There will be parts of it that will be pointed out by the coaches, and I’ll have parts in my head that I’ll want to look at, but that would be it.”
Healy will more than likely be looking forward to a change of referee after his scrummaging technique frequently fell foul of Monsieur Poite against Italy.
“I was trying to keep it legal, there were a few things (Castrogiovanni) was doing that I had to try to change up to deal with. But you’ve got to do that to be able to deal with the tighthead. We’ve just got to do our own thing, try to keep it legal and hopefully we’ll be all right.”
Tomorrow, the French and Irish packs will have to quickly get the measure of how English referee Dave Pearson will police scrum time, and as far as Healy is concerned there will be no opportunity to wait and see.
“With the first one we’re not going to soak it up,” he said, “we’re going to go full noise at it and try to make a statement from early on. At the same time we’ll be trying to do that within the rules.
“I watched a bit of (the French against Scotland last week). I went through a few bits with Greg on how they’re doing it and their angles, and we were then looking at it in training as to how we would deal with it.
“But a lot of the focus has been on ourselves. We know the type of scrummagers those lads are, they’re short lads and they’re able to get in there. So it’s almost on our angles and how we work together that will determine a lot.”
What is certain is that winning good ball in the set-piece is vital to the outcome of what will be a pivotal match in terms of Ireland’s Six Nations campaign.
“All the penalties and free-kicks coming off it, it’s crucial to try to get it perfect now so that you won’t get penalised. If you don’t, you could be three points down with the quality of kickers.
“We’re trying to release our quality backline but we’re also looking for a steady scrum going forward. It has a pretty big influence on the game we’re trying to play.”
Last weekend in Rome, it was the slippery-handed Irish backs whose level of performance was found most wanting and Healy acknowledges there has to be improvement throughout the team if victory is to be achieved.
“We do need a bigger performance because we weren’t happy with the level last week with the players that we have.
“There was a lot of ball put down and things like that just aren’t good enough at this level of rugby. It’s been heavily policed this week that that’s what we’re going to fix. They’re small things but we threw away a couple of opportunities that were nearly certain tries. When that’s corrected and the lads are firing, and the forwards are giving the right platform for the backs to run, it’s a pretty good team.”
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