With the Leinster man poised to become Ireland’s most capped player of all time by appearing against Australia on Saturday, people who have played with him or coached him describe a unique athlete and character
Cian Healy, Peter O’Mahony, Bundee Aki, Josh Van der Flier and Caelan Doris at the Aviva Stadium on Friday, before Healy becomes Ireland's most capped player of all time. Photograph: Andrew Conan/Inphowas building a reputation long before he even won a Leinster Schools Senior Cup medal with Belvedere College, never mind before he cut his teeth with
Much to the relief of O’Malley and others on the Belvo minis, they would become team-mates at school from the age of 12. O’Malley was forced to retire at the age of 25 and admits he fell out of love with the game after two years of ultimately fruitless rehabbing. But on the day Healy is set to become Ireland’s most capped player of all time, O’Malley was planning to travel from Portugal, where he lives with his wife Lara and their three kids Bobby , Odette and Lucia .
“You can talk about the rugby side of things all day and people see that, but they obviously don’t know him on that level. “He is that sort of athlete. He was lethal close to the line. The opposition couldn’t stop him, and we couldn’t get the ball off him. He would just grab it, roll his sleeves up and do the work. There are a few others but I’ll leave those. He can put them in his book.”
Healy and Heaslip are godfathers to one of the other’s children, and Heaslip saw Healy as something of a generational player, who redefined the role of a prop. Ireland’s Cian Healy runs on to the pitch against New Zealand in Dunedin in 2022. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho “He deserved all the plaudits he got, because although he’ll have hated it,” says Heaslip, laughing, “he deserved every bit of it, and if he doesn’t go back into rugby after playing, you probably won’t see a lot of him, He’ll follow his other passions and spend time with the kids and doing the family thing. Such is the guy.”
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