Iain Henderson is quite a man. Or beast, it's yet to be confirmed. The 23 year old Ulster forward is the second coming of the wrecking ball that is Stephen Ferris. But that wasn't always going to be the plan.
In fact, in an excellent feature in today's Sunday Times from Peter O'Reilly, the stories from Iain Henderson about the early years of his career are highly entertaining and informative. For example, the phone call that lead him to become a professional rugby player just four years ago.
Despite being on the same schools team as Stuart Olding and winning the Ulster schools cup - Henderson had never played any underage representative rugby. Being a rugby player wasn't even on his radar. He was all set to go to Edinburgh to study maths and deny us all the chance of bollocking runs like this one.
Ulster and Irish rugby owes a huge debt to one Johnny Bell, the former academy coach and Ulster's current defense coach who is leaving the province at the end of the year. It was his phone call to Henderson to get him to play for the Ulster Under 20's and a spot in the academy that stopped Henderson from leaving these shores. And according to O'Reilly, it's not the first time this has happened with an Ulster starlet after Tommy Bowe made a similar decision.
Ordinarily, a spot in a provincial academy allows youngsters to being to dream of a career as a professional. This wasn't true for Henderson, for whatever reason. For him, it wasn't until his Ulster debut where he started to think about it. Things started to snowball for Henderson, as Declan Kidney then brought him into the Ireland camp. He remembers thinking:
I remember after my first (Ireland) cap, against South Africa, looking back and thinking: ‘A year ago, I was living in Stranmillis Student House with three or four guys from school, still arsing about, setting things on fire, putting weird stuff in the microwave, all sorts of stupid stuff going on. Then this happens.
He describes his 18 year old self as a "scrawny, lazy, cruising along", which aside from the scrawny isn't hard to picture. But when Henderson gets the ball on the pitch, he may be cruising through the opposition defense, but he's far from scrawny or lazy.
It's probably best for both Irish rugby and for Henderson that he did take that call in the end.
For the rest of the article and other entertaining anecdotes, I fully recommend you read the entire article.
See Also: Video: It’s Time To Pay Tribute To Iain Henderson’s Try Against Leinster
See Also: Video: No Sean O’Brien? Don’t Worry, Iain Henderson Is On The Job
See Also: Powerful Run And Try From Iain Henderson Against Saracens
[Sunday Times €]
[interaction id="554395dcca16d6d87fb18970"]
