Thumbs up for Iain Henderson ahead of the Six Nations

Iain Henderson isn’t out of the woods with the thumb injury which threatened to eat into such a sizeable chunk of his season but the Ulster lock has declared himself fit for Ireland’s Six Nations defence.

The 26-year-old spent five weeks on the sidelines after surgery on the troublesome digit which has been an issue since the 2015 World Cup quarter-final game against Argentina but the initial fear was that he faced a much longer lay-off.