Dan Sheehan happier making hits than taking them

MAKING HITS: Tom Stewart of Ulster is tackled by Dan Sheehan of Leinster. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile.

Dan Sheehan is thankful to be back doing what he does best.

Leinster’s world-class hooker spent six months overcoming the ACL injury suffered during Ireland’s tour of South Africa last summer. Some of that was spent in a boxing ring.

Emma Gallivan, Leinster’s senior physio, has a background working in the fight game. It was through her that Sheehan found himself in a gym in Harold’s Cross every week working with Atlanta 1996 Olympian Cathal O’Grady.

For Sheehan, the shift in focus was all upside. It paid huge dividends from a fitness point of view, it worked wonders on his footwork, and it proved to be a welcome form of distraction as he went about the long and arduous rehab.

It still informs some of what he does. Skipping was added to his daily routine even when rugby returned, but he couldn’t be happier to be back in the more familiar surrounds of Ireland and Leinster dressing-rooms.

“I don't really miss it,” he said this week. “It was tough. I was getting lashed around by 50-year-old, 60-year-old men!”

He is back now doing what he does best.

Sheehan has played 100 times between club and country and scored 58 tries in that time. His strike rate has actually accelerated since returning from that knee injury in late January with a pair of scores against the Stormers.

There have been seven tries in four Leinster games, five in five through the Six Nations with Ireland. Rugby’s evolution has given huge opportunities to hookers, mostly through attacking mauls, but these numbers are still off the charts.

“It's been good the last couple of weeks for me personally, but they're all the flashy stats and coaches look at different stats, which is the way rugby is. But it's nice, that's why I enjoy rugby, that sort of flashiness, scoring tries, playing nice rugby.” So what are the stats that really speak to him?

“Probably contact metres, metres after contact, then obviously scrum and lineout percentages. How well we launch off our attack, tackle dominance. There's millions that get sent out. But that's a massive part of the game.” It’s worth appreciating just how good he has been after such a serious injury. Sheehan actually returned to play in double-quick time but he had hit all his markers. There was no sense of running before he could crawl. No corners cut.

The body feels good now. He doesn’t feel “any vulnerability” at all with the knee and if there’s anything else valuable to be mined from the long layoff then it is the freshness that he should carry into such a loaded end to the campaign.

Leinster are again challenging on both fronts and, for any number of reasons, look better equipped to claim silverware in the coming weeks and months having come so close in three successive Champions Cup finals.

Whatever the outcomes in blue, a summer in red awaits. This Saturday’s Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton Saints will be the last game he plays before Andy Farrell names his British and Irish Lions squad five days later in London.

The great debate is how many Leinster players will make it but their starting hooker is a shoe-in, for the travelling party and, it seems safe to assume, for the Test team itself once the series peaks with those three games against the Wallabies.

But he can’t be thinking that way. Not now.

“We’re playing rugby for the week that’s in it. This competition is too special to us to look at it in any way. [It would be] an awkward conversation to even bring up [in the dressing-room]. I find it’s something I’m trying to avoid in a lot of ways.

“To come up to three finals the last three years and not winning them, there’s good motivation in the group to make sure we get our job done on Saturday. That’s all that we’ll be talking about.”

Leinster go into a repeat of last year’s semi-final on the back of two demolition jobs on Harlequins and Glasgow Warriors with 114 points scored and not a single point conceded. Saints will be stiffer opposition but that is impressive form in any language.

All the great teams, in any code, have been ruthless long after games are won and with aeons left on the clock. It’s not that the players target clean sheets but Jacques Nienaber’s blitz defence, and the culture that permeates it, has heightened the drive on that side of the ball.

“It's probably talked about the odd time in Jacques' sort of fiery meeting. He loves nils. Of course he does, it's his job. No, we don't talk about keeping teams to zero perhaps, but we definitely try to limit access to opportunities.”

Far better to be making the hits than taking them.