Peter Jackson: Cian Healy has hustled for every last drop of glory
IN A LEAUGE OF HIS OWN: Cian Healy of Leinster runs on to become the most capped player of the Investec Champions Cup with 111 appearances. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
Just in case Leinster finish up adding another gold star to their galaxy, some bright spark could do worse than prepare a montage in honour of Ireland’s longest-lasting player.
It would show Cian Healy at the top of two mountainous piles, each reflecting his status as a serial European Cup winner on a scale grand enough to justify passing comparison with the gilded greats from a parallel footballing universe. Those dismissive of how one of rugby’s most humble breeds, the loosehead prop, could possibly be included in such company need to be reminded of a few facts.
Should Leinster find a cure to their chronic habit of losing finals, Healy will be out on his own as the first to win five European Cups, one more than a trio of retired team-mates (Isa Nacewa, Johnny Sexton, Devin Toner) and a pair of French wizards (Cedric Heymans, Frederic Michalak).
In that event no rugby player will ever have wrung every as many last drops of blood and sweat out of the philosophy which drove Thomas Edison to become one of America’s great inventors, if not the greatest.
‘’Everything,’’ he said. ‘’Comes to him who hustles while he waits.’’ Healy has been hustling and waiting for so long that he alone has played in all seven previous Leinster finals, from Leicester Tigers at Murrayfield in 2009 to La Rochelle last year when he sneaked on two minutes from time during the emergency over Alan Alaalatoa’s red card.
Despite his dethroning by Andrew Porter as Ireland’s supreme loosehead, Healy is still there, still an integral part of the 23, an evergreen in blue when not in green. Toulouse on May 25 will be his eighth final, one that catapults him into a stratosphere hitherto reserved for some of the greatest footballers who ever walked God’s earth.
An eighth European final will put Healy one ahead of Alfredo Di Stefano, the prototype Real Madrid superstar, two clear of Ronaldo, five ahead of Lionel Messi. A fifth victorious Leinster final in the Champions’ Cup will match the most in the Champions’ League as achieved by Karim Benzema, Dani Carvajal, Luka Modric and Ronaldo.
Healy, of course, hasn’t got where he is by day-dreaming about his place in history. And yet, as a painter of portraits, he will be faintly amused at the notion of muscling his way into an artistic quartet revered as having done for Real Madrid what Michelangelo did for the Sistine Chapel.
How fitting that his shot at such a glittering gallery should take place not at Twickenham’s rugby temple but some 20 miles away along the North Circular at Tottenham Hotspur’s state-of-the-art Premier League stadium.
Healy, as driven as ever, has never lost sight of the collective goal. ‘’You have a dream and the plan is to put a lot of stars on the shirt. Not four, not five. I want to see Leinster grow and be dominant in Europe for years. The crop that are coming through will hopefully be doing that, long after I’m gone.’’ At 36, he plans to be sticking around for a while yet. Now, after all the hustling and all the waiting, mostly over body blows which would have finished lesser men, Healy is one match away from becoming European rugby’s first five-star general.
As Taoiseach and Leinster supporter, Simon Harris, at 37 almost exactly one year older than the man himself, will hope to have cause to make a few more presentations…
Toulouse have averaged almost seven tries and 45 points over the seven matches leading to their first London final in the 20 years since a Welsh Wasp, Rob Howley, picked their pockets at Twickenham.
How strange, then, that during a wonderful first-half when they had Harlequins bewitched and bothered the French emperors felt the need to waste time. They did so quite deliberately and, it has to be said, legally – another example of a team making an ass of the law.
In this case it was the one that allows 90 seconds to be taken over a conversion. Instead of taking as little time as possible to get back into the business of running Quins off their feet, Blair Kinghorn had clearly been instructed to take as long as he was allowed.
The Scot appeared to be more concerned about running the clock down towards zero than concentrating on landing the goal, missing two of his first three shots. In doing so Toulouse exposed the law to such public ridicule that it will surely be rewritten to ensure the fans a fairer run for their money.
Leinster at least know what’s coming their way, a tidal wave of tries which has swept away every opponent: nine against Exeter, seven against each of Cardiff, Ulster and Harlequins; six against Quins yesterday, five against Bath, five more against Racing.
The final, the first between the two most successful contenders, will be the seventh Franco-Irish affair. Irish teams won the first four (Ulster against Colomiers in 1999, Munster against Biarritz in 2006, Toulouse in 2008, Leinster against Racing in 2018). Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle, as Leinster are painfully aware, saw to it that France won the last two.
Before the weekend, Irish players had long accounted for half the places in the European Cup’s top ten try-scorers: Simon Zebo (35), Brian O’Driscoll (33), Tommy Bowe (29), Shane Horgan and Andrew Trimble (27 each).
James Lowe has joined the elite on the strength of the first hat-trick in a Champions’ Cup semi-final one which, by his own estimation, required his travelling an aggregate distance of ten metres.
Whilst Leinster’s pony-tailed finisher has little reasonable hope at 31 of breaking the all-time record held by Chris Ashton, he is now out on his own with the highest strike ratio for the competition.
Ashton accumulated his 41 European tries over 70 matches, Vincent Clerc’s 36 came in 83, Zebo’s 35 in 68, O’Driscoll’s 33 in 87, Bowe’s 29 in 66. Lowe’s 27 in 34 matches for Leinster adds up to a scoring consistency without equal.
Gloucester will have a renowned Gaelic footballer in their corner when they take on the Sharks of Natal in the final of Europe’s secondary tournament, the Challenge Cup, at Spurs FC on May 24.
Jonny Cooper, whose seven all-Ireland medals with Dublin says everything about his winning mentality, has been responsible for improving leadership skills at Kingsholm where the famous West Country club beat the Italians of Benetton in Saturday’s semi-final.
Joe Marler has been called many things in his time, including ‘the funniest man in rugby’ which only goes to show there’s no allowing for taste.
Nobody was laughing during an England-Wales match eight years ago when he called the opposing tighthead, Samson Lee, ‘a gypsy,’ least of all the then Scarlets’ prop who is a member of the Traveller community. The RFU fined Marler £20,000.
They then banned him for ten matches over another unsavoury incident at a subsequent England-Wales match when he grabbed Alun-Wyn Jones’ genitals. A further six-week ban followed over an insulting remark aimed at Bristol’s former Connacht back row forward Jake Heenan.
Down in Toulouse yesterday with Quins needing two converted tries in the last three minutes, the Londoners won a desperately needed penalty whereupon Marler cuffed an opponent, Thomas Ramos, on the back of the head, in front of Andrew Brace leaving the Irish referee no option but to reverse the penalty.
Quins last forlorn hope had gone, sabotaged by one of their own. Funnily enough, they didn’t think it one bit funny.
15 Tyrone Green (Harlequins)
14 Louis Lynagh (Harlequins)
13 Paul Costes (Toulouse)
12 Jamie Osborne (Leinster)
11 James Lowe (Leinster)
10 Marcus Smith (Harlequins)
9 Jamison Gibson-Park (Leinster)
1 Andrew Porter (Leinster)
2 Peato Mauvaka (Toulouse)
3 Tadhg Furlong (Leinster)
4 Emanuel Meafou (Toulouse)
5 Joe McCarthy (Leinster)
6 Ryan Baird (Leinster)
7 Jack Willis (Toulouse)
8 Juarno Augustus (Northampton) .
