Cronin driving on after injury woe

You would not blame James Cronin for wanting to draw a line under the last two years of his Munster career.

The succession of injuries — some minor, a couple more serious — that the prop has endured in that period was enough to make the 29-year-old question his position in the squad but since returning to first-team action this season, the answers have been entirely in the affirmative.

As is so often the case, Cronin’s resurgence this season has coincided with the absences of other looseheads, first-choice Dave Kilcoyne’s time at the World Cup and his subsequent calf injury, followed onto the casualty list by Jeremy Loughman, whose ankle injury halted his gathering momentum in the number one jersey.

Now it is Cronin’s turn to make the most of the opportunities presented to him, the Highfield man racking up as many appearances so far this season as the nine he managed in 2018-19 before a long-term knee injury intervened.

Appearance number 10 is set to come at Saracens tomorrow when Munster bid to keep their Heineken Champions Cup pool campaign on track at the home of the English and European champions, a fixture Cronin can now look forward to in a fresh light following the tough times he has been through.

“There’s a bit of perspective in that I had a shocking year last year with injury, and just when you pull the jersey on, you are that little more appreciative that you are playing for your home province and playing in front of your friends and family,” Cronin said this week, “and all those things mean a lot.

"It’s about just really enjoying each game now. Even the more unglamorous fixtures now, there’s a bit more ‘oomph’ to them. I’m really enjoying my rugby at the moment.”

That includes running out for Highfield in the AIL, for whom he grabbed a rare prop’s hat-trick against Naas during the Cork club’s lightning start to life in Division 1B.

Cronin described his injury nightmare as “really tough”, adding: “I had a knee issue and I’ve had it for maybe years, so I got a clean-up job done there and I kept tweaking my hamstring on the way back, so I was a bit overloaded.

"It was nobody’s fault. The goal was to get back for the quarter-final last year and then it was the semi-final and I suppose we weren’t collectively giving it time to heal, we were chasing it at every opportunity.

“It’s just when the body’s telling you it’s ‘no’, it’s ‘no’, and there’s no way of getting back from that and it was a really tough time. You kind of feel isolated a small bit ... it was a really tough time.

"That’s the part of rugby that people don’t see, that when you’re not in the squad or can’t be picked, they’re nearly the harder moments than actually going out there and performing at the weekend.

"So it’s good to be on the other side of it again.”

Cronin is not the first in the Munster squad to mention the good works of London-based South African sports psychologist Pieter Kruger, brought in last season on a consultancy basis, and whom the prop credits with offering continuing support.

“We have one-on-one slots with him when he’s over. So they’re beneficial, you’re nearly venting in there with him for an hour, your frustration, so that’s really positive.

It’s good, you can come in and bounce things off him, he’s not here all the time, he comes in and comes out and that’s nearly a good thing because he can see the difference in the mood in the camp, like, from last week to this week.

“We’ll say he’s with us for the Champions Cup weekend over in Ospreys to, say, next weekend over in London, he’ll be able to pick up what’s the vibe in the camp and if there’s any difference.

“It’s good for us that he may be able to tip Johann off if we’re not on point or he could go, ‘Jesus, they’re really on point this week’, so it’s positive.”

Cronin is riding that positive vibe all the way into this weekend’s Saracens trip after a less-than-certain summer as he began working his way back into the reckoning.

“In a really good place,” he said. “Even in pre-season, the lads coming through were really good athletes and you’d nearly question yourself, going, ‘Jesus, these fellas might pass me out’, but I was well able to keep up with them!

“It’s good that these young lads push you and when I was young I would have really pushed the older props ahead of me, whereas now I’m getting over that hill.

"Jeremy, Liam O’Connor, and Josh Wycherley, they’re all good athletes. I remember we were doing 150-metre runs and I was sticking with them, so I knew I wasn’t in a bad place.

"They’re all good players and it’s a really good place for Munster to be in at the minute, that we’ve got two or three players per position.

“It’s a great place for the squad to be.”