Chris Henry is rarely caught without a broad smile across his face, and as he looks back on a tumultuous 14 months it is still his trademark.
His stunning work in the loose for his club and country have made him a fixture in both squads, and the 31-year-old was always keenly aware of his good fortune to be a professional sportsman.
As a ball boy at the old Ravenhill he dreamt of wearing the white jersey, and few have worked harder to fulfil their ambitions, to seek constant improvement and to commit so selflessly to the team ethic.
And yet, on the morning of Saturday, 8 November in 2014 it all threatened to go catastrophically wrong.
On the morning of the international Test with South Africa, for which he had prepared meticulously, Chris felt very unwell, and for four terrifyingly long minutes his life, his career, was a bewildering, confusingly blurred nightmare. In fact what he was enduring was a mini-stroke, brought on by a heart defect with which he had unwittingly lived his full and active life.
“It was scary, I can’t deny that, and for some time we didn’t know what was the problem. Maybe a migraine, perhaps a virus?
“It’s strange, because through the turmoil I recognised the symptoms of a stroke, I’d lost my father far too early to the condition, but that wasn’t really helping!
“I do remember, though, that Rhys Ruddock, with whom I had roomed, saw it all happen to me, and he was clearly very distressed, really shaken up. Looking back now it’s nothing short of amazing how he was then drafted into my place in the side, while I was raced to hospital, and performed as brilliantly as he did in that game,” says Henry, again seeing a positive where others might have wallowed in despair.
“As some great doctors got to work and eventually found the root of the problem, a hole-in-the-heart which one-in-four of us in Northern Ireland have, was the cause of the mini-stroke, and I know now that it could have been much worse – and it is, sadly, for many people.
“And I wondered how this could have happened to me, a professional athlete, someone who prided themselves on being fit and who was constantly monitored by the super medical teams in the game.
“As I was having some procedures, and getting the best possible treatment, of course I wondered, especially in the days waiting for the medics to offer a prognosis, if I was facing a ‘worst case’ scenario. Was my career over, was I going to be able to live a normal existence?
“You’re left with your thoughts, and for me all sorts of things tumbled through my mind. Even when, after a long week waiting for a scan, I was told I could look towards playing again, I thought my World Cup chance was surely gone, I’d reconciled myself – almost! – to getting fit to be ready for Ulster at the start of this current season.
“People were so good to me, and for me. My Ulster teammates, the Irish lads, Joe Schmidt and his staff, and Neil Doak and everyone at Kingspan Stadium, they were brilliant.
“And the support I got from my family, from friends, from fans. It’s amazing what a small text can mean when you’re not in the best place,” he says, forever mindful of how people willed him back to what is a complete recovery.
“I think too that what was very important for me was that my mum Denise, and my girlfriend Jade, were there with me through so many of the consultations. They knew what had happened, what I could look toward doing, their parts in my life have been massive, never more so than after that episode.”
But Henry is always anxious to talk about the present and, more pertinently, the future. He’s been in fine form, played in every Ireland World Cup game and really believes the side was on the verge of great things, only to be undone by the extraordinary injury toll.
“You can imagine how great it was to be involved though. I’d been in the extended squad for years earlier, but just didn’t make the final ‘cut’, so it was fairytale stuff.
“I was seeing the specialist in Dublin one Tuesday in the spring, and he gave the news I wanted, that I could really, properly think about playing again.
“And this is where Neil Doak was so brilliant. He’d been a fantastic support and encouragement to me in rehab, along with Bryn Cunningham. I rang Doaky to say I’d got the all-clear, I was available to play again that week.
“What I really thought was that I’d need a few weeks physical work to be ready for action, and he didn’t say anything to me, or talk in the media, about an imminent return.
“Then the day before the game with Cardiff at home he took me aside and said I’d be in the squad, he kept it low-key, and I admit I didn’t sleep all that well that night with anticipation, with trepidation maybe, lots of things were swirling around my head.
“The welcome I got from the Kingspan crowd when I came off the bench was unforgettable, and then I put a tackle in, got to my feet and put another one in.
“After that I knew I was fine, nothing to worry about. It was a great feeling to of be back, playing for my club, Ulster, and we were on a good run, confidence was really high, and the PRO12 looked a real prospect for silverware, especially with a final at Kingspan Stadium!”
Henry feels that the semi-final in Glasgow was ‘the game that got away’, and that the squad felt it under-achieved.
“We’d got into a great position, we’d played well often, and even when we didn’t we were winning games, always a good sign. So the end of the season, so suddenly, in Scotland was a great frustration to us, to the supporters, and disappointing for us as a squad and coaching team.”
This season he and the others on World Cup duty made a late return to the fold, and results had been up-and-down, home form good, not good away from Belfast.
“I know the result in the Champions Cup against Saracens was poor, and we all felt we’d let people down. I have one abiding memory of that game, being replaced late I the game and as I came off I saw fans leaving the stadium. That just doesn’t happen!
“But I think that we’ve shown in recent games that the confidence is flowing, perhaps we might have scored more tries against Edinburgh in dreadful conditions but we played well, and then in the games against Toulouse we’ve shown how we want to play our rugby, and the supporters have responded.
He puts down the recent upswing in fortunes to a good mood in the camp, and ‘to coaches you want to play for’. Joe Barakat he sees as a great ‘fit’ in his role specialising in the collision, but with Les Kiss at the helm, and Doak - ‘the brains of our side’ - Allen Clarke and Niall Malone all contributing, every player is enjoying training, enjoying playing.
“I’m sure they have some arguments about our approach to certain sides, but they’re all on the same page. We play to our strengths, and we have a deep squad despite all the injuries.
“Paddy Jackson is leading the charge at 10, and I can see there, and in other positions, that Joe Schmidt has some real thinking to do,” says Henry, anxious to press his own claims for the Six Nations in the New Year.
“The way to that is to be successful with Ulster, and we’re competing and targeting success on two fronts, the Guinness PRO12 and the Champions Cup.”
And Chris Henry would also be greedy, he’d love to add a third Six Nations Championship success to his, and Ireland’s, CV.
“It’s just great to part of it all at the moment,” he says, perhaps reflecting briefly on those dark, worrying moments 14 months ago.
“Ulster can win things with this squad, and we believe we will. The supporters deserve it, we want to it for them as much as ourselves, and the whole structure is tailored for success. I love playing for this side, I really do,” he says with his usual unbounded enthusiasm and optimism.
Chris Henry has faced many difficulties in returning to rugby’s top table, but he’s done it with quiet, stoic determination, always positive about and ambitious for the squad and for himself.
“I’m a very lucky guy, I’m surrounded by good people on and off the pitch, I play the game I love for a living.
“What’s not to like?”
His stunning work in the loose for his club and country have made him a fixture in both squads, and the 31-year-old was always keenly aware of his good fortune to be a professional sportsman.
As a ball boy at the old Ravenhill he dreamt of wearing the white jersey, and few have worked harder to fulfil their ambitions, to seek constant improvement and to commit so selflessly to the team ethic.
And yet, on the morning of Saturday, 8 November in 2014 it all threatened to go catastrophically wrong.
On the morning of the international Test with South Africa, for which he had prepared meticulously, Chris felt very unwell, and for four terrifyingly long minutes his life, his career, was a bewildering, confusingly blurred nightmare. In fact what he was enduring was a mini-stroke, brought on by a heart defect with which he had unwittingly lived his full and active life.
“It was scary, I can’t deny that, and for some time we didn’t know what was the problem. Maybe a migraine, perhaps a virus?
“It’s strange, because through the turmoil I recognised the symptoms of a stroke, I’d lost my father far too early to the condition, but that wasn’t really helping!
“I do remember, though, that Rhys Ruddock, with whom I had roomed, saw it all happen to me, and he was clearly very distressed, really shaken up. Looking back now it’s nothing short of amazing how he was then drafted into my place in the side, while I was raced to hospital, and performed as brilliantly as he did in that game,” says Henry, again seeing a positive where others might have wallowed in despair.
“As some great doctors got to work and eventually found the root of the problem, a hole-in-the-heart which one-in-four of us in Northern Ireland have, was the cause of the mini-stroke, and I know now that it could have been much worse – and it is, sadly, for many people.
“And I wondered how this could have happened to me, a professional athlete, someone who prided themselves on being fit and who was constantly monitored by the super medical teams in the game.
“As I was having some procedures, and getting the best possible treatment, of course I wondered, especially in the days waiting for the medics to offer a prognosis, if I was facing a ‘worst case’ scenario. Was my career over, was I going to be able to live a normal existence?
“You’re left with your thoughts, and for me all sorts of things tumbled through my mind. Even when, after a long week waiting for a scan, I was told I could look towards playing again, I thought my World Cup chance was surely gone, I’d reconciled myself – almost! – to getting fit to be ready for Ulster at the start of this current season.
“People were so good to me, and for me. My Ulster teammates, the Irish lads, Joe Schmidt and his staff, and Neil Doak and everyone at Kingspan Stadium, they were brilliant.
“And the support I got from my family, from friends, from fans. It’s amazing what a small text can mean when you’re not in the best place,” he says, forever mindful of how people willed him back to what is a complete recovery.
“I think too that what was very important for me was that my mum Denise, and my girlfriend Jade, were there with me through so many of the consultations. They knew what had happened, what I could look toward doing, their parts in my life have been massive, never more so than after that episode.”
But Henry is always anxious to talk about the present and, more pertinently, the future. He’s been in fine form, played in every Ireland World Cup game and really believes the side was on the verge of great things, only to be undone by the extraordinary injury toll.
“You can imagine how great it was to be involved though. I’d been in the extended squad for years earlier, but just didn’t make the final ‘cut’, so it was fairytale stuff.
“I was seeing the specialist in Dublin one Tuesday in the spring, and he gave the news I wanted, that I could really, properly think about playing again.
“And this is where Neil Doak was so brilliant. He’d been a fantastic support and encouragement to me in rehab, along with Bryn Cunningham. I rang Doaky to say I’d got the all-clear, I was available to play again that week.
“What I really thought was that I’d need a few weeks physical work to be ready for action, and he didn’t say anything to me, or talk in the media, about an imminent return.
“Then the day before the game with Cardiff at home he took me aside and said I’d be in the squad, he kept it low-key, and I admit I didn’t sleep all that well that night with anticipation, with trepidation maybe, lots of things were swirling around my head.
“The welcome I got from the Kingspan crowd when I came off the bench was unforgettable, and then I put a tackle in, got to my feet and put another one in.
“After that I knew I was fine, nothing to worry about. It was a great feeling to of be back, playing for my club, Ulster, and we were on a good run, confidence was really high, and the PRO12 looked a real prospect for silverware, especially with a final at Kingspan Stadium!”
Henry feels that the semi-final in Glasgow was ‘the game that got away’, and that the squad felt it under-achieved.
“We’d got into a great position, we’d played well often, and even when we didn’t we were winning games, always a good sign. So the end of the season, so suddenly, in Scotland was a great frustration to us, to the supporters, and disappointing for us as a squad and coaching team.”
This season he and the others on World Cup duty made a late return to the fold, and results had been up-and-down, home form good, not good away from Belfast.
“I know the result in the Champions Cup against Saracens was poor, and we all felt we’d let people down. I have one abiding memory of that game, being replaced late I the game and as I came off I saw fans leaving the stadium. That just doesn’t happen!
“But I think that we’ve shown in recent games that the confidence is flowing, perhaps we might have scored more tries against Edinburgh in dreadful conditions but we played well, and then in the games against Toulouse we’ve shown how we want to play our rugby, and the supporters have responded.
He puts down the recent upswing in fortunes to a good mood in the camp, and ‘to coaches you want to play for’. Joe Barakat he sees as a great ‘fit’ in his role specialising in the collision, but with Les Kiss at the helm, and Doak - ‘the brains of our side’ - Allen Clarke and Niall Malone all contributing, every player is enjoying training, enjoying playing.
“I’m sure they have some arguments about our approach to certain sides, but they’re all on the same page. We play to our strengths, and we have a deep squad despite all the injuries.
“Paddy Jackson is leading the charge at 10, and I can see there, and in other positions, that Joe Schmidt has some real thinking to do,” says Henry, anxious to press his own claims for the Six Nations in the New Year.
“The way to that is to be successful with Ulster, and we’re competing and targeting success on two fronts, the Guinness PRO12 and the Champions Cup.”
And Chris Henry would also be greedy, he’d love to add a third Six Nations Championship success to his, and Ireland’s, CV.
“It’s just great to part of it all at the moment,” he says, perhaps reflecting briefly on those dark, worrying moments 14 months ago.
“Ulster can win things with this squad, and we believe we will. The supporters deserve it, we want to it for them as much as ourselves, and the whole structure is tailored for success. I love playing for this side, I really do,” he says with his usual unbounded enthusiasm and optimism.
Chris Henry has faced many difficulties in returning to rugby’s top table, but he’s done it with quiet, stoic determination, always positive about and ambitious for the squad and for himself.
“I’m a very lucky guy, I’m surrounded by good people on and off the pitch, I play the game I love for a living.
“What’s not to like?”