Lions elevation has helped Jack Conan quieten the noise

He didn’t expect to be in the squad, so much so that he hardly bothered cocking an ear to the TV when it was being announced, but an impressive display in the opener against Japan in Murrayfield made him realise that a Test place was within reach

Fri, 22 Oct, 2021 - 06:00

Brendan O'Brien

It’s four years since Jack Conan scanned the horizon of another dawning campaign and declared that his time to be patient was over.

He was 25 then and three years into his senior career with Leinster, but there had been whispers of a switch to Ulster or a move abroad. If injuries had held him back then it was a career-ending problem for Jamie Heaslip that really opened the door for him at the time.

The seasons between then and now have delivered standout performance for club and country but further fitness issues and the competition for back row places with both club and country combined to ensure that Conan’s career never quite took off as it might.

And then he toured with the Lions.

By the time he returned to Ireland, the 29-year old had started in all three of the series games against the Springboks, his stock had gone through the roof, and the perception of him in the game’s pecking order had been transformed.

He knows that there will always be some who will feel others are ahead of him in that queue but the man himself admits that the experience has changed the conversation about him as a player where it matters most: in his own mind.

“Sometimes you have that little voice at the back of your head that doubts yourself a little bit and I feel a bit vindicated after playing so much and playing such a part in it all,” he said ahead of Leinster’s visit to Glasgow tonight.

“I feel it’s maybe a little bit easier to silence that kind of noise a little bit more now because I have a little bit more money in the bank in certain regards.”

That noise returned last week when he prepared to make his season debut against the Scarlets. He’d been off the park for 10 weeks by then and the nerves were fluttering, but time and experience has taught him to process this stuff with less fuss.

The routine now is to write goals for games into a journal the night before and then return to these key points the day of the game. It all helps, even if that 50m-break he made against the Boks in the first Test in Cape Town was the ultimate settler.

If there is one thing he takes out of that whole trip, aside from the memories and the friendships, then it is the utter physicality required for the game at that peak level. It’s something Leinster have noted after losses to big French and English opposition of late.

The Lions had certainly braced for that. The brand of rugby favoured by Warren Gatland for the meetings with the world champions was attritional and conservative and it made for turgid viewing and considerable criticism.

Conan paused for what felt like an eternity when asked if he felt that the tourists had ‘fired their best shot’ before pointing to the litany of individual errors that, put together, added up to the tourists falling the wrong side of too many small margins.

Finn Russell’s arrival 10 minutes into the third test finally saw the Lions play some ball but the Scottish out-half has since voiced his regret that they didn’t look to move it around more and counter the opposition’s obvious strengths.

That was put to Conan, too.

“Some of the attacking rugby probably wasn’t where it could have been considering the personnel and the squad that we had but, in saying that, we went out and won the first Test playing that style of rugby.

“And I know there were probably a lot of 50-50 aerial battles and things like that we won in the first Test and then the second it goes their way. Look, hindsight is obviously a beautiful thing and it’s easy to sit here now and say we should have done this and that.

“That’s something I don’t really want to get into, if I’m honest.”

Glasgow hold his attention tonight and, beyond that, the November series with Ireland.

The past is the past.