Henshaw injury suffered by ‘only three or four in world’

It has taken far longer than he ever expected, but Robbie Henshaw’s return to fitness has been timed well.

The Leinster midfielder will have spent almost nine weeks out of the game when he returns from his ‘dead leg’ in two weekends’ time, but doing so one week ahead of the Champions Cup semi-final against Toulouse is a silver lining.

Injured in a training collision the week after he started against England in the opening Six Nations defeat, Henshaw expected to shake off the quad injury in a week or so. Yet, the internal bleeding continued for two weeks and forced him to fly to London to seek clarity from a specialist.

He was told that the injury was so rare, only three or four other professional sportspeople had suffered the same — one an Aussie Rules player and another an Ice Hockey star.

It was a frustrating one, I’m not going to lie, it was a tough one but I am on the right side of it now thankfully,” he said, at the launch of the Bank of Ireland Leinster Rugby Summer Camps.

“One of the lads’ knees caught me straight on the sweet spot of my quad, and unfortunately it was one of those ones that was longer than your normal dead leg.

“I had to go and see a guy in London, just for him to clear up what the story was. He said ‘Yeah, it is going to be longer than you think.’

“Once I had that in my head, it was okay to deal with. Unfortunately, I was expecting to be back within weeks because I thought it was a small issue but it was different.

“This wasn’t the case after a week, after two weeks, so that was where I was like, ‘I need clarity with what’s going on. This ended up being one of the rarest dead legs in the world. Honestly.

“This was the case and there had only been three or four other ones that they’ve seen in the world. They didn’t give me names, but one was in the AFL in Australia and one in Ice Hockey....so that was three or four in professional sport, not just rugby.”

Henshaw is now back at full training with the rest of his Leinster team mates and while he could play against Benetton this weekend, he expects to sit the game out and make his comeback against Glasgow the following weekend.

“I’m available for this weekend I think, but they’re just keen to get me training and into full training this week, then back into it next week hopefully,” he said.

Glasgow visit Dublin eight days before the semi-final against Toulouse in Aviva Stadium, giving Henshaw a chance to get some crucial game time before the biggest game of the season so far.

The centre missed the home pool game against the French side, but played in the one-point defeat in Toulouse last October.

“They’re a pretty exceptional team and a young team as well. We had a good feeling they were going to win at Racing just with their backs and their quality they have when they get ball on a fast track, they’re really dangerous.

It’s going to be a massive test of our character, we’ll have to be at our best because we know they’re coming for us.

Henshaw was forced to watch anxiously from the stands as Leinster struggled to beat Ulster in last weekend’s quarter-final, and he admits it was a tough watch.

“Fair play to Ulster they really came at us hard and they played some serious stuff,” he said. “It was a great game to watch but it was nervy towards the middle part of the second half.

“For us to come back and for Ross Byrne to slot that kick, there were a few big moments in the game, Jack Conan’s break through the ruck and his offload was unbelievable individual skill. For us to come back and then to finish it out by holding the ball for what must have been 20 plus phases on their line shows that we can dig deep. Those type of games are good to have in the build-up to the bigger games down the line.”