I hear what you are saying

Way back when rugby props squatted and squashed. That was then, Cian Healy is now. Michael Moynihan explains.

WE DON’T make a habit of describing our interview subjects’ clothing choices and we won’t be making a habit of it, but it’s worth mentioning.

The black and white top with punk-type mottos, the combat trousers tucked into some achingly cool boots: if the wearer was going for a CBGB-frequenting, Patti Smith-befriending late-seventies Manhattan look, then he succeeded. Up to a point.

The founders of that look ran to heroin chic and spindly torsos. To use the old Douglas Adams line, Cian Healy’s shoulders and chest would daunt a fit Sherpa.

The Ireland prop is different. “I’m a big believer in doing what you want to do with our time off, the rest of time it’s pretty serious, so it’s the only time you have to let the hair down, or just to relax.

“Holidays? I went to Ibiza with a few of the lads. It wasn’t bad, they’d all be into music so al l the big DJs were there — Swedish House Mafia and so on — so we enjoyed it. I did a gig alright, the Head Candy Bar. We played that one night and they put us up for the night afterwards.”

Your correspondent is out of touch with the beat scene but even he can smell a trendy beat combo when there’s one nearby. Enough of the Swedish House Mafia, though.

“I’m lucky enough, I’ve a few things that pull me away from rugby — the way I am, if I just had one thing to think about, rugby, I’d probably end up hating the game, so I need something to distract me. Painting, that helps me to be me, I suppose. One of the lads asked me to do a picture but I can’t say much about it because it’s a birthday present, but I can give you a glimpse here ...”

A flash of Healy’s mobile — though mobile is a severe underselling of the fearsome— e device he fishes out of his pocket and there’s a terrific portrait in vivid colours of said team-mate.

“I just try to make it recognisable,” says Healy, putting the phone away again. “It’s not being perfectionist about it. Just a different approach.”

Of course, collecting art can be a lucrative pastime.

“Ah, it’s a hobby, I wouldn’t really be into collecting art or anything. I’m a fan of graffiti art, anyway, and that’s not really stuff you can collect, obviously. Banksy, all that stuff.”

You’re not Banksy, though?

“No. I’m not Banksy.”

BACK to the rugby. Healy has a level-headed approach to the long preparation for the World Cup — it was well advised, as an eye injury in the final warm-up game against England delayed his departure to New Zealand by the guts of a week.

“I took it day by day. If you didn’t, if you looked at the whole stretch of time it’d get you down. At the same time, though, you’re in camp with the national team. There are worse things you could be at.

“Is it a nervous time? That’s the head you have to have on you, isn’t it? You’re not there just to hang around until you’re told you’re not going. You’re training at your best, operating at your best to make sure you’ll get picked.

“At the same time you couldn’t approach training in the frame of mind, ‘I have to beat xx’ — you have to think about the training, what you need to do to improve things for the team as a whole as well.”

The Leinster man is optimistic ahead of the tournament kick-off.

“We’re confident that everyone in the squad feels that we’re in a position that if all our cogs turn right and we play the right rugby that we can win it, that it’s not an unrealistic goal. We’re not going out there to compete, we’re going out there as a valid team which can win it. That’s the overall goal.

“I don’t know what the atmosphere was like in 2007 — there’s been no mention of it, certainly. That’s all in the past and it isn’t something we’ll be looking back on. It’s certainly not in our mindset, looking forward.”

Can he remember where he watched the games four years ago?

“In the pub, I’d say. Ah, I was nineteen. It was all legal.”

He’s conscious that travelling support is likely to be minimal, given the recession.

“Support is an unbelievable thing, you can be taken aback by the number of Irish that get to games, but it’s understandable, on everyone’s terms, that a lot of people won’t be in New Zealand. It’s a trip that a lot of people would never make in their lifetime anyway. But I’ve been meeting people I know and they’ve been saying, ‘the day you guys are playing I’m having a load of people over to the house to watch the game on telly’.”

A casual question about putting one over on former Irish coach Eddie O’Sullinow with the US Eagles, gets a sharp response.

“You want to put one over on every team, don’t you? You don’t go out to beat a team just to annoy their coach. We’ll take it game by game, it’s not a question of who we can piss off by beating them.”

Mention coaches in any context and Healy brings the conversation around to Gert Smal, the burly Springbok forwards coach.

“He works a lot on line-outs and the tight area generally — the maul, contact, all of that. He’s tidied that up for us. We don’t overdo that in training. Maybe once a week in training we’ll hit a few rucks, but that’d be it. There’s a lot of focus on ball placement, and how you turn your body when you hit the ground — ” (here Healy gives the old dears sipping tea in the hotel a bit of a fright with a quick show of hands to illustrate the correct form) — ” and those are small things, but you do it so much in training — we do a lot of it in pre-season that over time you get used to it.

“Now, it’s nightmare stuff because you’re rolling around on the ground, but you notice how you pick it up.

“In training drills you go to ground and place the ball back, the body’s in a good position and someone’s come in over it. You can see how it’s getting into our play.”

Smal doesn’t strike you as a man likely to humour chat about graffiti or Spanish dance music in training. Or excuses of an kind, come to that. “He’s reasonable if there’s something wrong, but he’s from the school of hard knocks. If you’ve got a broken arm you’d almost have to say, ‘I’ll give it a go anyway, Gert’.”

Give it a go anyway. It could do as a motto.

Rugby star Cian Healy lines out for Berocca Performance.