'You can't sleepwalk into these weeks' says Hugo Keenan as Leinster prepare for Edinburgh

HUGO BOSS: Hugo Keenan believes Leinster will get caught out if they're not full prepared. Pic: ©INPHO/Gavin Cullen.

Here they go again.

No-one expects Edinburgh to provide anything beyond a speed bump as Leinster get another Investec Champions Cup knockout journey started at the Aviva Stadium on Easter Sunday, but the road beyond won’t be smooth.

The province’s up and down form has leaked five losses in just 14 URC games and the ghosts of campaigns past continue to haunt the team as they look to end a European drought that is now in to an eighth season.

Last year’s semi-final home loss to Northampton Saints still cuts deep.

Hugo Keenan looked back at that game earlier this week and could still envisage Fin Smith and Henry Pollick making crucial line breaks, and the moment when Juarno Augustus flew through after he himself had failed to collect one high ball.

The full-back shared how the team still has “reminders” of that game in their UCD training base. It’s not unusual for print-outs to be taped to the walls of meeting rooms, but reminders of that Saints suffering are catching the eye especially right now.

“So, yeah, you can't just sort of sleepwalk into these weeks and presume that it's going to happen, because that's how you'll get caught out,” said Keenan.

“I don't think we slept-walked into the Northampton game, but we were definitely a few per cent off.

“We were a bit sluggish at times, but we also played some good rugby and scored some good tries. But that's the nature of knockout rugby. If you're not on it in every department, in every aspect, it can come back to bite you.”

Keenan is hardly of a mood to take anything for granted.

For so long he was a dead cert to appear on Leinster and Ireland team sheets. Not the biggest of men, he seemed to be indestructible, but the last year has given the lie to that notion as he has battled through injury and illness.

He lost up to six kilos due to a virus when on Lions duty in Australia last summer, hip surgery left him sidelined for the first half of this season, and then a freak thumb injury in training with Ireland cost him any involvement in the Six Nations.

“It's sort of heartbreak. When you've done the work, you're starting to feel good, you're back in training, getting sharp and named in the squad. And then it's that first session over in Portugal, a backs unit session.

“And yeah, a pretty innocuous event, and you do a good job on your thumb. It's just frustrating. So, I found it tougher to miss the Six Nations than, say, November. But look, I'm over that now, I'm looking at the positives.”

If there is one ‘good’ thing about a thumb injury, then it is the fact that he could still perform most physical movements. He could catch balls in the crook of his arms, do tackle drills by leading with a shoulder and work on movement in to contact.

The recovery was helped by the use of a hyperbaric chamber that spent seven weeks in his house. Keenan spent up to three hours a day in that, and it helped in more ways than one as he looked for something to fill the holes left in his diary.

“Getting in there, I read a book, Born A Crime, about a guy born during apartheid in South Africa. Very interesting. I wrote a best man speech, which I had to deliver a few weeks ago. So small things like that. I was watching a bit of Ozark.

“You're supposed to try switch off and be in a, I think it's called a parasympathetic state, and so you do a lot of napping in there. So I did that in around training sessions to try and promote recovery.”

He has been back in UCD with Leinster since the middle of last month now and made a season’s debut in the defeat away to Glasgow Warriors two weeks ago. He is not alone in finding his feet this deep into the campaign.

Andrew Porte, Tadhg Furlong the soon-to-return Ryan Baird and Jamie Osborne have all played minimal rugby for the province so far and Keenan sees it as his place to inject a new energy into the team for the run-in to come.

“So that'll be one of my roles and something I look to bring to the squad. And there's still plenty to play for. There's an exciting three or four months ahead of us. It's an exciting week.

“So, yeah, I'm not getting too down about [the injuries and games missed] and just glad that the first game's over and done with. Then you feel like, ‘okay, now I'm into the thick of it’. And, yeah, no better way than Champions Cup rugby to do it.”