Stuart McCloskey, Tadhg Furlong and Irish captain Johnny Sexton are recovering from injuries picked up against South Africa. Conor Murray is out for the rest of the November series. It is exactly how Irish coach Andy Farrell suspected it would be.
He didn’t know the names of the players but from his first utterances over a week ago thoughts settled around inevitable damage, what affect that could have in a World Cup and how to prepare more players to give Ireland depth.
The demands made on the squad in RWC 2015 might have been on his mind. Ireland topped Pool D with France in it and were then blitzed 43-20 by Argentina in the Paris quarter-final.
By then Paul O’Connell had departed with a career-ending hamstring injury. Sexton and Peter O’Mahony were also injured and flanker Sean O’Brien was suspended for the Argentina game following a disciplinary hearing. Lessons learned.
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Finlay Bealham and Cian Healy both came off the bench against South Africa. With Andrew Porter and Tadhg Furlong healthy, it’s a role props have been adjusting to playing with rule number one ingrained – the level cannot drop.
“You have to prepare differently. You have to think about how you’re going to stay in the game, when you’re on the bench, something I’ve been working really hard on. I spent the majority of my career not being in that position,” says Healy, the most decorated active Irish player with 119 caps.
“Now that I’m in that position I want to be able to be as impactful as possible in all the right ways and add positively to the team. It’s a constant learning curve about coming on, seeing things that have gone on in the game, so you can give a message that can have a positive impact.
“It’s been an enjoyable learning curve and I’ve loved it. I’ve bounced it off a lot of the back rows, because they’re always in and out and changing, and asking them how they deal with it. It’s been a real good help having people there to guide me.”
As Healy explains it, there is a science to playing the replacement role. Less pitch time and running means compensations must be made at training to keep up the aerobic capacity and strength.
If his job is to add impact or do a holding job for 20 minutes, then nutritionally he also needs to adjust and does not need the same levels of fuel in his body. In the last three games against the Springboks and South Africa he has been a replacement 17 and on the pitch for no more than 20 minutes in each for a total of 47 minutes. At the weekend it was 12 minutes.
“Around the nutrition side of the game, I have learned a lot,” he says. “There was one game where I was on the bench and I didn’t have the same load of food [than if I was starting].
“I got caught off guard once or twice by not having enough fuel in me to finish it out. From a nutrition side of it, I make sure I have enough fuel in me as if I was starting a game and then that is where I have to do extra in the gym on a Monday, or else cycle it out or do a bit of fitness to run off what you didn’t get done [on match day].”
At 35-years-old Healy is as pragmatic as he has ever been. He has more than doubled the 51 caps he took with him to the World Cup in France seven years ago and more than most players in the Irish squad understands the dynamics of tournament rugby and team degradation over the course of more than a month of competition.
“We have a standard of what’s acceptable and what we want to achieve and go above and it’s not acceptable to let that slip,” says the Irish prop.
“What’s not respectful is to let that slip. We need to respect our opposition and what they’re going to bring and by doing that we need to bring our A game and put out our best performance.”
