Steadfast Darcy aims to put a few more miles on the clock

Gordon D’Arcy can be an expansive talker, a man who thinks about a question and his answer before offering a considered opinion on the topic of the moment, but pre-season teaches you to treat every breath as precious.

Never has this been more apposite than right now, what with the province having introduced the particular horror that is an altitude tent into their daily grind at the state-of-the-art training complex in UCD.

So it was yesterday when, having played his part in modelling Leinster and Canterbury’s new European kit, the veteran centre dealt with queries as to how long he has left at the elite levels with the briefest of responses.