IT’S JUST A hunch, but we seriously doubt you would find Cian Healy allowing himself to get wound up enough if a press pack were ever to spend the allotted time criticising his scrum technique.
Healy’s normal default setting when the microphones are switched on is Teflon:
Concerned by a bad result? ‘Not really.’
Room for improvement? ‘A few little things.’
Under pressure, Cian? ‘Pressure makes diamonds.’
Before boarding the plane to Paris for Ireland’s season-defining Six Nations title decider against France, Healy was much more of an open book than usual.
48 hours earlier, Healy’s direct opponent for tomorrow’s game, Nicolas Mas, stormed out of a press briefing complaining ‘this is not funny’ after questions about the French set-piece turned to farce. It’s a situation which can go one of two ways. Either Mas digs deep and, driven by the stinging words, suddenly begins to dominate scrums under the new laws; or his confidence takes a knock and two or three head-to-heads with Healy will turn him to mush.
“You never know with the French lads,” says the loosehead with battered and bruised ankles.
“They can come out fairly fired up in a game and that could be fuel to the fire they need to come into the game. Anything like that wouldn’t be a case for me to let my guard down. He’s a tough opponent and I’m going to have to be well fired-up for him and work pretty well in the front row as a unit.”
Ireland have travelled across the English Channel with confidence before, but whether it’s the current stuttering nature of France’s first XV or the constant reassurance of Ireland’s attention to detail, this trip feels different. The confidence feels more assured and less of a defence mechanism.
Intensity within each player is a must, but as a genuine world class prop, Healy is emblematic of the trust this side have in their own game.
“We back ourselves completely in everything we’ve done. Emotion is natural to an Irish team and when we have that tied in with being well-drilled and being accurate in everything. That is our way of breaking them down. We don’t have to go in with mad, aggressive heads, trying to beat people up. It’s all about being accurate and being ‘on the ball’ all the time.”
He added: “This is a well-drilled, accurate team that’s focused on every aspect of the game. We have been playing well enough to be able to go over feeling good.”
Healy was cool and calm before leaving Dublin, before heavily taping up his ankles one last time in the Six Nations. While earlier encounters with the Leinster man found a closed book, this time Healy seemed fully at ease with himself.
“Early seasons I was building myself up from the Tuesday. It’s good to be relaxed now at the moment and not letting myself run away with it yet.”
Not even with a trophy on the line?
“I treat all games the same. It’s fairly chilled out up until the morning of the game and I start loading up on my coffee, listening to my music and getting in the zone. It’s the right routine to have myself in the right head space going into a game.”
And while Healy will look for the pockets of green in Stade de France that will no doubt have Brian O’Driscoll at the centre of their gaze for most of the 80 minutes, he reminds us that ‘head space’ does not include going out to ‘win it for BOD’.
“Every game he plays now is his last he plays against someone,” jokes the prop, “we’ve had that for a while but it is something you have to park.
“You can’t let emotion like that take you over. We’ve to be clinical going into this game and we rely on being well-drilled, not being fired up just to give Drico a send-off.”
France may be unwilling to shed their stereotypes, but Ireland are fast becoming a side who rely as much on clinical precision as passion, pride and Paddy’s Day.
