How Cian Healy used post-it notes to save his career

Most of us write post-it notes to make sure we put out the rubbish or buy some milk.

Cian Healy used them to save his career.

It was an operation on a troublesome disc in his neck that put his playing days in jeopardy. The Dubliner was left with nerve damage to his right hand. For months he couldn’t write his name, let alone make a fist of rugby.

Long days leaned into long nights. He found solace in the sticky notes attached to his coffee machine and the fridge. He posted them anywhere and everywhere to keep negativity at the door.

“The simplest, simplest stuff,” he explained. “Do one positive thing today.’ That’s only an example. My mates started laughing when they came into the house.

“Each to their own. Lads figure out their own positive reinforcement and ways to keep themselves motivated when you’re in a slog and that was my handy one.”

No pun intended.

Healy had other support mechanisms. His colleagues at Leinster served as pace-setters in the gym and called around to the house as well.

The most critical input, though, was probably Joe Schmidt’s.

Healy spoke again yesterday about how he had the insurance forms signed that would call time on his rugby career. This was in the run-up to the last World Cup.

Then Schmidt told him to take five and see where he stood.

“Joe gave me a few days off in the middle of the warm-up Tests. I went away to Italy and just switched off and chilled out. I got a bit of movement back in my hand and felt a bit of nerve twitching in my arm.” It was a barely perceptible tremor and a tectonic shift all in one. Healy was on the Amalfi Coast at the time but his exact whereabouts escape him now. He had eyes only for the damaged paw.

The neurologists had explained that any sensitivity was good sensitivity. That it meant the nerve wasn’t fully dead. It was still “shit scary”. Still a long way off signing cheques, let alone scrummaging or catching a ball.

“It was just a small little glimmer and you chase it.” Needless to say, those insurance forms never saw the inside of an envelope.

Rugby has been his life since his schooldays and this second act has made him more determined than ever to squeeze every last drop out of it before Father Time, or another injury, has the final say.

He’s 30 now but posted his best body fat result yesterday in nine years. There was a time around that last World Cup when that was up to 18 or 19 per cent. Now it’s just 11.8. That’s unreal for a prop.

Both Leo Cullen and Schmidt have recognised his resurrection with starting slots for club and country in the biggest of games this past few months. Jack McGrath, a 2017 Lion, has been relegated to reserve.

He’s making an impact in other ways, too.

Schmidt spoke of him adopting more of a leadership role with Ireland during the summer tour, even if he still isn’t the sort to make himself heard in a team meeting. A quiet word here or there is more his style.

“He’s back,” said Leinster forwards coach John Fogarty. “Cian is the sort of fella who is pretty relentless in his mindset about playing the game and playing at a higher and higher level. He’s always going to want more and more and more.

“The feeling with him when he was a young kid: you’re kind of going, ‘Jesus, this kid is going to blow them all out of the water’. Right now, the way he’s talking and the way he walks around the place, he’s in that frame of mind again.”

The debate around Healy is whether he can hit the same heights he managed pre-2013. The player himself doesn’t believe he was at his best even then given he was always told he wouldn’t peak until he hit 27 or 28. “I still feel there is a good bit more to come,” he said.