Dan Sheehan has dismissed his try-scoring spate with Leinster as the “flashy stats”.
In the four club games the hooker has played since January against Stormers, Harlequins, Glasgow and Ulster, he has scored seven tries, including a hat-trick against Richie Murphy’s Ulster crew. Not a bad strike rate for 186 minutes of competitive rugby.
Nor is Sheehan in the mood for flattery this week. He doesn’t want his scoring to be the narrative, although he cannot ignore his canny knack of finding the line with Northampton arriving on Saturday in the Champions Cup semi-final and the prospect of a fourth final in four years.
Leinster vs Northampton - the comeback final revisited
“It’s been good the last couple of weeks for me personally but they’re all the flashy stats and coaches look at different stats, which is the way rugby is,” he says.
“But it’s nice, that’s why I enjoy rugby, that sort of flashiness, scoring tries, playing nice rugby. It’s been very enjoyable over the last couple of weeks and hopefully Saturday will be similar.”
Sheehan has assumed a more senior role this season and was named Irish captain for the first time against Wales in this year’s Six Nations. The position doesn’t lend itself to flights of fancy, which dovetails comfortably with his self-contained, analytical approach.
While moving the scoreboard is the name of the game, especially in the knock-out phase, it’s the plays that allow that to happen that electrify the coaching staff. So, what do they look for other than flashy try stats?
“Probably contact metres, metres after contact, then obviously scrum and lineout percentages, how well we launch off our attack, tackle dominance, there’s millions that get sent out,” he says.
“But that’s a massive part of the game. I thought we defended quite well in the last two European games. So, there’s lots to look at but always lots to improve on. We’re trying to drive those numbers and set our own standards rather than play to whatever opposition is in front of us.”
Sheehan no longer does the boxing training that aided his recent return to fitness. The skipping and the fight routines have been abandoned for more traditional rugby sets and he now feels he is becoming as strong as ever after successfully coming back from an ACL injury faster than normal.
Perhaps not quite at his peak yet, his timing could yet be exquisite as Leinster approach the trophy end of the season this week and in the United Rugby Championship.
“I’m getting back there now,” he says of fitness goals.
“I was hitting all the markers through the rehab process and making sure I was getting back to where I was before. I didn’t want to rush it. Although I came back quick, we didn’t cut any corners, and we made sure that I was in the same physical state that I had left.
“I’m in a very good spot with the body and everything’s going well. I don’t feel any vulnerability. I’m still strapping it [knee] but it came off for a game, it didn’t really matter, but I’ll just finish out the season like that.”
The arrival of coach Jacques Nienaber has transformed the way Leinster address their defence, with opposition teams now feeling the full weight of closing down pressure on their own ball.
The South African has some right to feel a degree of satisfaction with Leinster not conceding to their last two opponents in the competition, beating Harlequins 62-0 at Croke Park and Glasgow 52-0 at the Aviva Stadium.
Adopting the right mindset, which deserted Leinster last weekend against Scarlets, is a large part of the bargain. In that department Nienaber is dogged and instructs his players to draw lines in the sand and defend them in hand-to-hand combat. It’s part of the aggressive Springbok attitude.
“To see how passionate he [Nienaber] is about defence and the areas of the game he looks after, it gives everyone a massive lift,” says Sheehan.
“Every meeting you walk into, it’s passionate, it gives you a bit of a drive. You’re looking forward to the weekend, you’ve seen the pictures through your prep, and you can get after them with full confidence that if you stick to the system, you’ll get it right.”
Keeping the opposition to zero is not usually spoken about in Nienaber’s occasionally impassioned meetings. But he is never disappointed when it happens.
“It’s probably talked about the odd time in Jacques’s sort of fiery meetings,” says Sheehan. “He loves nils. Of course he does; it’s his job. No, we don’t talk about keeping teams to zero, perhaps but we try to limit access to opportunities.
“It can happen a few ways. If we get a lead, teams won’t kick penalties for posts, so it becomes harder to score points, so it changes. Early in a game, we make sure our discipline is right, so they don’t take threes and start building scoreboard pressure against us.”
With 114 unanswered points in the last two matches in this competition, scoreboard pressure has been a friend to Leinster. And to Sheehan too.
