Heaslip May Require Further Back Surgery

Leinster head coach Leo Cullen has revealed that No. 8 Jamie Heaslip could require further surgery to correct an ongoing back complaint after omitting the 33-year-old in his initial Champions Cup squad yesterday.

Heaslip has been sidelined since injuring his back in March while competing in the 2017 Six Nations. He later had surgery on his back to deal with a disk issue.

Cullen confessed that he was unsure of an accurate return date for the Ireland international:

"It will depend if he has to go for another procedure or not," Cullen told the Irish Mirror.

"Okay so, he has to weight that up with the surgeon and the specialist that he's seeing.

"That will be the decision he'll have to come to himself and with the help of the medics as well."

Cullen added: "Even this morning I was reading about (Munster hooker) Mike Sherry being out for a year with his back and now he's back involved, so they can be slow.

"So apologies for vagueness, but it's very difficult for us to give definitive answers on an injury that is grey.

"And yeah it's a difficult time for Jamie because of that uncertainty, so that's the way it's going to be, unfortunately.

"We would have loved to have seen Jamie maybe back now, we thought originally the surgery would be straight-forward, that's what we would have hoped for, but it hasn't been as straight-forward as we would have liked.

"I was in this situation whereas I didn't have surgery at the time, I made my way back and still feel the effects of it now 12 years later.

"So that's just the nature of the injury and everyone just needs to be patient and understand it's a complicated injury that Jamie has."

Leinster are well equipped in the back row to deal with Heaslip's absence but in terms of overall experience, his expertise on the field will be a massive loss to the squad over the next few months.