Must’ve been some hit.
As we reported earlier, Jamie Heaslip will play again for Ireland exactly four weeks after taking a knee to the back so damaging that it fractured three vertebrae in his back.
The hitherto unbreakable Leinster forward will star only his second Six Nations game, having also missed the Italian encounter. Heaslip went off, against France, five minutes after he was on the receiving end of a Pascal Papé shunt that earned the French lock a 10-week ban.
Asked if thoughts of missing the remainder of the championship entered his head, after the hit, Heaslip responded, ‘At the time, I just thought it was bloody sore, and I told myself ‘get up’.
‘Strangely, I heard Joe (Schmidt) in my head screaming at me to get up.
‘I didn’t know if it was a knee or a shoulder [in the back]. I tried to get on with it, but it stiffened up and I had to come off.’
The IRFU were quick in ruling Heaslip out of the England game but never went so far as to cross him off any lists for Wales and Scotland. That did not stop media speculation that the away trip to Scotland was the best he could hope for.
He said, ‘Personally, I don’t listen to outside sources. I listen to our trusted medical team and they gave me some very good guidance.
‘I live in a little bubble of day-to-day, week-to-week so it makes life easy for me not to look too far down the line. It was an injury where I had to go day by day and every day was getting really, really good and progressed really well.
‘We mapped out a really good, clear plan, in terms of ticking the boxes in recovery and I have ticked them along the way and now I’m good to go.’
Heaslip added, ‘It’s great to be back, it’s not the easiest of things to stand on the sidelines being held on a leash a little bit, that was probably for my own good, but it’s great to get the opportunity to wear the jersey again.’
The Leinster captain waved away a query that he had been held on a leash and was, in fact, fit to play the English.
‘I’m a stubborn git and Joe knows that better than anyone,’ he explained.
‘I want to live life at 100 miles an hour and sometimes that’s not the smartest thing to do, and all the medical staff and backroom staff were great in helping me get back on my own two feet.’
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