RUGBY:LEINSTER WILL be without Jamie Heaslip for Saracens' Heineken Cup visit tomorrow as his ankle continues to heal.
The Irish number eight bruised a bone in the joint playing against Ospreys in the Magners League match last weekend in the RDS (he had previously injured the same ankle in the first Clermont fixture). It is likely that he will be fit enough to return next weekend for the final pool match against Racing Metro in Paris.
“What he did was the ankle joint. He’s given that a wrench,” explained the Leinster coach Joe Schmidt. “He stretched the ligaments a little bit but there’s inflammation between the joint. When he goes to push off, move his leg forward, there is inflammation underneath there that impinges his movement and weakens his explosiveness, which is a real key to his play. It’s a totally unrelated injury so if he hadn’t got that he would have been totally fine to play.”
Heaslip, with a couple of key strokes on his phone or laptop, also raised an entirely new issue for Schmidt and all team managers in Ireland, one that they have not yet had to face. The talismanic number eight twittered that there would be “no weekend for me” against Saracens and followed that up with information on Facebook before Schmidt had made it public that his first choice in that position would be unavailable.
At yesterday’s press conference in Leinster’s training base at Riverview Schmidt hadn’t realised that Heaslip had already announced his unavailability to the world on Wednesday evening, a decision that this week was innocent enough and ultimately harmless but may not always be so if players pick up the Twitter ratings bug.
“I don’t know how he let people know. Was he tweeting or something?” said Schmidt when asked if the matter was one of annoyance for him. “That technology is beyond me. But I can ask my kids what was happening and follow it from there. No, it was of no annoyance to me because if I wanted to hide the fact we would have hidden it up until Friday when the team was announced (as opposed to yesterday).
“I guess it’s pretty hard to keep something personal now because as soon as it’s on the web, texted or whatever it can become part of the public domain and people can pick it up,” he added. “Once you guys pick it up its even more so in public domain and then it’s impossible to get back what you’ve already said. It’s not something I’ve particularly thought of but I guess it’s something we are probably a little blasé about. There is information out there . . . you can damage yourself revealing something that is inappropriate.
“For example I know (Sebastien) Chabal announced last year that he wasn’t going to be playing (for France). That came out in the media. I know Chabal was spoken to by Marc Lievremont at the time. I guess it’s a matter of time before it happens here but it hasn’t happened yet. I guess to be proactive maybe we should have a bit of a chat about it.”
Seán O’Brien may well tweet today before the team is announced that he will be taking Heaslip’s place at the back of the scrum. As yet we don’t know but the versatile 23-year-old looks eminently capable of playing anywhere as a loose forward and as the composition of the Leinster backrow has been the same for only two matches in the last six, the team has proved itself to be flexible without losing its bang.
Against Ospreys the starting Leinster backrow comprised Dominic Ryan, Shane Jennings and Heaslip at six, seven and eight. Against Connacht it was Kevin McLaughlin, Jennings and O’Brien and against Ulster it was Rhys Ruddock, Ryan and O’Brien.
In Leinster’s last Heineken Cup outing in mid-December O’Brien played at blindside, Jennings at openside and Heaslip at eight.
If O’Brien replaces Heaslip and Jennings remains at seven, Schmidt has Ryan, Ruddock or McLaughlin to slot in on the other side, although he largely ruled out McLaughlin, who has played just once against Connacht since returning from a long term injury.
“Seán’s a really different player (to Jamie). He’s a bit younger and is probably a rougher diamond to be honest,” said Schmidt.
“I really like Seán as a player. The players that have played with him really like what he brings to the table. He has a real robustness about him that allows us to get go-forward, whether that is with or without the ball, and he has a massive work ethic. He’ll scramble back and make a cover tackle as much as he’ll go forward and knock a guy back.
“Kev . . . I guess at this juncture it would be pretty tough to chuck him in at eight when he hasn’t had the game time let alone the time to be balanced at number eight.”
A number of other players that were training gingerly at the beginning of this week have been reported by Schmidt to be fit. Luke Fitzgerald, who has played three times for Leinster this season at fullback, was light on training at the beginning of the week but was back up to normal levels yesterday.
Loosehead prop Cian Healy and outhalf Jonathan Sexton also came through the week’s physical demands intact and are available for team selection today.
Meanwhile, secondrow Mike McCarthy will win his 100th cap for Connacht when the province take on Bayonne in the Challenge Cup tomorrow.
CONNACHT (squad Bayonne, Challenge Cup, tomorrow, 7.45pm): Forwards: Brett Wilkinson, Jamie Hagan, Rodney Ah You, Ronan Loughney, Dylan Rogers, Sean Cronin, Adrian Flavin, Michael Swift, Mike McCarthy, Andrew Browne, Bernie Upton, Shane Conneely, Mike McComish, Johnny O’Connor. Backs: Cillian Willis, Frank Murphy, Ian Keatley, Miah Nikora, Keith Matthews, Niva Ta’auso, Shane Monahan, Eoin Griffin, Brian Tuohy, Fionn Carr, Aidan Wynne .
