Healy: 'We strive to reach Sexton's standards, and get torn into when we don't'

Johnny Sexton may be older than him but the Cian Healy has more caps, ten to be exact

BROTHERS IN ARMS: Jonathan Sexton, right, with Cian Healy of Ireland after the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Championship match between Scotland and Ireland at BT Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, Scotland. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Cian Healy has a unique claim to fame in the current Ireland squad. 

Johnny Sexton may be older than him but the versatile Leinster prop has more caps, ten to be exact, and he made his Test debut six days before the celebrated skipper back in 2009.

SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP

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Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.

Sexton spent two years playing with Racing 92, and Healy spent considerable time out of the game for a spell with a neck problem, but these two have been walking the same path for most of the last 15 or so years with club and country.

Who better to ask, then, about a venerated out-half that, injury or a freakish day at the office aside, will break Ronan O’Gara’s record as highest scorer in the Six Nations on the very day he will grace the Championship one last time.

“He's himself. Johnny has his own standards and all of us strive to get to those standards and we get absolutely torn into when we don't. But we try. Johnny's standard is so high, and it has been for so long, that it just drives something special in him.

“He deserves all the accolades he gets because he's a fierce competitor, an unbelievable professional. His whole life revolves around rugby. His family support him incredibly well to be the player and person he is.” 

Healy made the observation that the points record could well be trumped by someone else down the line - and a 31-year old Owen Farrell is only 40 points behind – and stressed that it was the collective gains and successes that motivated Sexton.

“If he takes a victory at the weekend, no-one will ever take it off him and it's something that belongs to him and a special group. That's the sort of thing that's going to drive Johnny. He lives for that successful feeling after a game.

“The Johnny you see after a game is the most enjoyable Johnny to be around, it's a different person, it's class. If anything is going to make me play better it's to get to meet that Johnny for a while.” 

Whatever motivation Healy is channelling it seems to be working.

Now 35, he hadn’t played a minute of rugby in seven weeks before the Scotland game and that was 23 minutes at tighthead against Racing 92. His previous run with Ireland was 17 minutes at loosehead against the Aussies last November.

By his own reckoning, the last time he had hit a scrum in anger as a hooker was 2008, all of which made his 32-minute cameo in the middle of the front row even more astonishing given that it came against a side gunning for a long overdue Triple Crown.

“I went into the middle of two of the best props in the world, so I'm in a relatively good starting place,” he explained. “Just give it a lash, have a shot, nothing to lose.

“I don't mind if someone lifted me up out of the middle of a scrum, I can take that, but we ended up with 15 men on the field, when we could have been with 14, and that's the greater cause.” 

Team player. Not just on the park but away from it where he fronted up to the media and said all the right things about the gargantuan week to come and an English opponent that he claims will be chomping at the bit to atone for last week’s French lesson.

Everything you would expect them to say, basically, but that isn’t to deny or play down the fact that this Saturday could stand as a career high, even for a player who has already won a Grand Slam, Six Nations titles and European honours with Leinster.

“We accept what the end of it is and you might have a Grand Slam and a Championship, but you park that bit. It’s about performance and preparation for performance: to know that your family have seen you show what this means to you and what it means to each other as a group.”