Contract talks not disrupting Heaslip’s Ireland focus

Jamie Heaslip insists his ongoing contract negotiations with the IRFU will bring no disruption or distraction to Ireland’s RBS 6 Nations campaign over the next eight weeks.

The Ireland vice-captain and No 8 is out of contract this summer and has been heavily linked with a move from Leinster to a Top 14 club in France.

Yet while the 30-year-old has spoken of his dissatisfaction with the time taken to negotiate a new IRFU contract, in an interview conducted with the IRFU and distributed to media outlets yesterday, Heaslip said his focus was solely on Ireland’s Six Nations campaign, which starts on February 2 at home to Scotland. Asked by an IRFU.tv interviewer where his contract negotiations would affect his preparations for the Six Nations, Heaslip replied: “Unfortunately there’s a business side to this game that people sometime probably aren’t aware of and there’s been a lot of talk about different players in terms of their contracts and this, that and the other. And unfortunately it’s dragged out much longer than I wanted and it seems to be ongoing but it hasn’t been a distraction and that’s why I suppose I have an agent to deal with that and I can just play rugby and that’s what I’ve been doing. He’ll do his job and I’ll do mine.”