Henry expertly exploiting gap in market at seven

Nuisance. Pest. Pain in the arse.

To those who wear the No 7 jersey in rugby union, such labels are to be welcomed. Sought after, even. They may be called openside flankers but their job in the modern game is to close the door on an opponent’s ruck ball and throw away the key.

Steal, disrupt, annoy. The more often the better. Chris Henry has become so proficient at it that he was named Ulster’s player of the year last week. Whatever happens at Twickenham today, he will surely be packing for New Zealand next month.

Among those waiting for him and the rest of the Ireland boys on that three-Test tour will be Richie McCaw. The original of the species. The daddy of a tribe that has spawned like-minded souls such as David Pocock and Sam Warburton. Loved by their own. Reviled by everyone else.

Scribble a list of the requirements needed to pull it off and it sounds like mission impossible. Speed, agility, stamina, physicality, patience, smarts, discipline. Not to mention bare-faced cheek. It’s the most delicate of balancing acts performed amid mayhem and carnage and Henry doesn’t even look like your archetypal openside.

“I have tried to bring my own identity to the seven jersey,” he said this week. “I would probably be a couple of kilograms heavier than most other sevens but I have tried to use that to my advantage. I feel I read the game well and that maybe gives me that time to get to the breakdown and be a disruption there.”

The seven’s importance is impossible to exaggerate. Statistics have shown that there were four times more rucks at the last World Cup than the 1991 tournament and it is simply not an option for a No 7 to pick and choose his battles. Josh Kronfeld, a Kiwi legend of the same dark arts, said as much last year.

“Sixes and No 8s are far more interchangeable,” the former All Black told the London Times last year. “At seven you are making it up. At No 6 a player is used to structure and thinking, ‘I won’t get involved there. I won’t hit that ruck’. You can’t do that at No 7. You just have to get in there and be a nuisance.”

Kronfeld was just as emphatic about the difficulty facing players who switch to this most specialised of roles from other postings in the back row. That is just what Henry has done, two seasons after a personal audit of Ulster’s and Ireland’s resources in the back row persuaded him that if there was any gap in the crowded market then it was at seven.

“I feel that if my career is going to progress with Ulster and Ireland — if you look at Ulster we have Ferris and Pedrie Wannenburg or Jamie Heaslip and Sean O’Brien with Ireland — seven is a place I want to be,” he says with a clarity of purpose which has served him well amidst the maelstrom of flying boots and bodies.

So well, in fact, that he has been sinbinned for his troubles just once this season, against Munster when Romain Poite finally lost patience. By then, it was almost half-time, Ulster were over the hill and out of sight and Henry’s display was already being hailed as a masterclass.

Leinster beware.