It Appears There May Have Been More To O’Mahony Replacing Heaslip Than We Thought

Was it planned all along?

When the news broke that Jamie Heaslip would be unable to take his place in the starting line-up to face England yesterday evening, the Ireland camp told us that he rolled his ankle in the warm-up.

Immediately following the win, Joe Schmidt informed RTÉ that Heaslip had suffered a hamstring injury. This got a lot of people thinking.

England boss Eddie Jones reckons Heaslip was taken out.

“Maybe a Leprechaun tackled him in the warm-up.”

Schmidt however denies that it was a ruse.

“It couldn’t be a more flawed theory,” said Schmidt when asked about the speculation.

“It’s probably a bit of a slight on us, to be honest, because it’s not something we do.

“We pick our team and we go out there, prepare them as best we can and they go out and play. It was a disruption, if anything, for us.

“Dan Leavy got a heck of a shock when I said, ‘Dan, you need to grab that jersey off Pete. Pete, you grab that off CJ. CJ, you grab that off Jamie, because Jamie has just pulled his upper hamstring and is unable to play.

“Jamie was doing the warm-up and it was very late in the warm-up when he suddenly stepped aside and the doc tested him inside probably five minutes before kick-off.”

Hmmm… We’re not convinced. To be fair, Schmidt and his team don’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to telling us the truth about injuries…