Henshaw happy to play his part with Ireland's unseen work

'It’s about how the squad prepares and it’s not just the match-day 23 but the wider group as well,' said Robbie Henshaw.

KEY FIGURE: Robbie Henshaw during an Ireland rugby media conference at IRFU High-Performance Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Nature doesn’t do straight lines or scripts and rugby doesn’t care much for them either. Take away the pitch markings and posts and that oval ball is the hallmark of a game that can shoot off in all sorts of unpredictable directions.

SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP

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

SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP

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

Murrayfield last Sunday, which provided more obscure tangents than an honours maths class, is an obvious case in point but then Josh van der Flier and Cian Healy aren’t the only players in this Ireland squad who have had to grapple with an unfamiliar brief.

Go back two years and Robbie Henshaw was adding his weight to the back of the Ireland scrum in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on a day when Peter O’Mahony’s early sending-off left the visitors a man short for most of the afternoon.

Ireland enjoyed over 60% possession but a side that also lost Johnny Sexton and James Ryan to HIAs before the final whistle let a struggling Welsh team off the hook thanks to some poor defending and Billy Burns’ misjudged kick to touch late on.

It’s testament to this team and management that they tend to follow the odd step back with two forward and Edinburgh is an obvious marker in the team's evolution and growing maturity.

“We’ve been building over the last two years with a lot of challenges thrown at us,” said Henshaw on the team’s evolution in the face of adversity.

“It’s about how the squad prepares and it’s not just the match-day 23 but the wider group as well. So a lot of the work goes on behind the scenes.

“Josh van der Flier practising his throws back in the Leinster gym: things like that which you don’t see. And you’re always prepared for the what ifs? Even if nobody prepares for two hookers going down, that’s probably a one-in-a-hundred shot. So it’s those little bits and pieces that go on behind closed doors that the public don’t see.” 

England on Saturday present the last hurdle to a Triple Crown, Six Nations title and Grand Slam and the temptation after their catastrophic defeat to France is to view them almost as an extra, left unused in the background while the camera alights on the Irish stars.

Ireland can’t think like that.

Whatever about the English collective, Henshaw knows and rates their players. He clicked off the field with the likes of Owen Farrell and Jamie George on Lions duties and memories of English dominance in this particular fixture are hardly ancient history.

Ireland lost four successive games against them between February of 2019 and November of 2020 and the first of those was a devastating Dublin loss that Joe Schmidt subsequently declared had ‘broken’ a team that had until then been top of the world.

Henshaw has particular reason to remember the start of that losing streak given he had been handed the responsibility of starting the game, and that year’s Championship, as the team's full-back. He hasn’t worn the No.15 jersey since.

“That again showed the intensity they brought,” he recalled. “They came out of the blocks early and got an early score, showed their intent and their skill and we struggled that day in terms of staying with them.

“So we need to look back, reflect and see what they're capable of bringing. We've had a good look at them, we'll continue to look at them throughout the week and what they've done in this tournament.” Ever watchful, ever ready. Rugby demands it.