Robbie Henshaw: Players must adapt to new high tackles reality
A number of players in various competitions fell foul of the renewed focus on tackles above the shoulder area, most notably Ulster’s Sean Reidy who coughed up a penalty try and was sinbinned for making high contact with Scarlets’ Aled Davies.
If anything, Andrew Trimble’s attempted tackle on Davies was more dangerous and, though the Ireland wing escaped unpunished, Henshaw believes that the onus is now on the players to adapt to the new reality and not force a referee’s hand.
“Looking at games over the weekend, you saw a couple of yellow cards given out quite easily for tackles that wouldn’t have even been penalties in the past. Every player will have to address himself and tackle a bit lower because you can’t risk 10 minutes in the bin.”
Henshaw was the victim of a controversial tackle from New Zealand’s Sam Cane in Dublin two months ago, a challenge that forced him out of that Test match early on and the following week’s victory over Australia as well.
World Rugby yesterday expressed their disappointment with Northampton’s decision to allow George North play on after a head blow against Leicester last month and Henshaw is all in favour of the global governing body’s decision to crack down on hits to the head and neck area even if it makes his own job all the harder. That doesn’t just include game day, but the practise paddock as well.
“Absolutely,” said the centre. “You have to practise your body height when you’re dipping late from high to low and showing a different picture.A lot of my tackles would be chest high so I’ll need to work on it a bit myself.”
It may be that this shift does result in fewer head blows but injuries will always be endemic to professional rugby and Leinster have the usual handful to deal with as they prepare Friday’s Champions Cup round five clash with Montpellier at the RDS.
Sean Cronin is a definite absentee. The Ireland hooker was withdrawn from last weekend’s 70-6 defeat of Zebre in Ballsbridge with a hamstring injury and, though Leinster were coy about any time frame, it doesn’t look good in the medium term.
Mike Ross and Fergus McFadden are approaching full fitness but not, it seems, in time for this outing.
Jonathan Sexton, however, came through his return to play four days ago without aggravating those pesky hamstrings while Rob Kearney may be good to go again, too.
It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a long casualty list this week and, with Leinster three points clear of this week’s opponents at the top of Pool 4, they are well positioned to secure a quarter-final berth and push towards a home tie with it.
For Henshaw, this is the sort of occasion for which he moved from Galway.
“Absolutely. Every player wants to be at the top end of Europe so our main goal is to get the win on Friday and secure a quarter-final, but we’ve more work to do the week after to secure a home quarter-final.”
It’s certainly no easy ask.
Almost three months have passed since Leinster scraped a losing bonus point from a miserably wet and tough day at the office in Montpellier’s Altrad Stadium when the concession of some soft penalties and tries were especially problematic.
“We can’t give them easy penalties,” said Henshaw. “We have to cut down our penalty count. We need to keep running onto the ball and keep playing at tempo and at pace because if we play like that I think they won’t live with us. We’ll be able to exploit them, but everyone needs to be on the same page and we need to be able to play with big intensity and a lot of tempo.”
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