Fitzgerald now back on the centre stage

Leinster reaction:

Amidst all the ifs and buts after Leinster’s draw on Saturday night, one feelgood story stood undiluted by the hand-wringing over Leinster’s failure to win and permutations over whether they did enough to earn a home tie in the last eight.

For too long, Luke Fitzgerald’s career has been washed out by injury but the versatile Leinster back has found sunnier climes this last two months to reestablish himself front and, literally, centre.

Earmarked for a spot on the wing with club and country in recent years, he has been used at outside-centre with Leinster since December and he franked some spectacular form with a man-of-the-match performance in Coventry.

It was a gong earned to some extent by impressing Brian O’Driscoll, part of whose duties as co-commentator with BT Sport it was to determine such things, but Fitzgerald had benefited long before from years of watching him and Gordon D’Arcy excel in midfield.

“He’s got the shape for it, the little hobbit,” he said of D’Arcy. “But in fairness to him, honestly — and I’d say the same thing about Drico — he’s a dream to defend outside or inside, he makes really good reads and when he’s in the mood, there’s no better player to defend with, his footwork and lateral movement is just huge. So anyone who has that capacity and to read the game well, he was fantastic to watch.”

Fitzgerald was clearly a keen student as his form has been such that it has catapulted him to the forefront of the queue, in the public’s eyes at least, of those eager to claim a centre berth against Italy in the Six Nations opener in Rome on Saturday week. He hasn’t played for Ireland since banking 26 minutes at the end of that frustrating 24-22 loss to New Zealand in November, 2013 and it is four seasons since Fitzgerald managed more than three appearances in green in a single season. His cap total still only stands at 27.

“I’m happy with where I’m at,” he said on Saturday. “I’m always cautious with Joe (Schmidt) in terms of shouting too much. I’m happy to come under the radar. I’d much rather have got a man of the match last week rather than this week. I’m happy, I think I’m playing well. I don’t know where I’ll be in terms of positioning with Joe. I don’t know what he sees me as, but I’m just happy to be in the squad and to have given myself a shout.”

That’s understandable. Fitzgerald endured a catalogue of setbacks with an injury that involved his glutes, groin and hip and speculation as to whether his career was done was ongoing as recently as November when he was forced to pull out of Leinster teams on Pro12 duties. “Honestly, there was a period there when I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore’. I came back and got the surgery done. It was supposed to take three months and it was more inflamed in that period after three months of rehab than it was before I got the surgery. To be honest, I got my ass saved by a fella out in Santry (Sports Clinic), Enda King. He was just fantastic, he saved my butt on that one, he just figured it out and ever since then, it’s just been about managing (it) pretty well. I think the longer I go on, the fitter I’ll feel. Not having that base of pre-season training, it does give you a little bit of a disadvantage going into the season, but I feel I’ve caught up now and it’s a great place to be.”