'I’ve learned from that and I’m better for it now': Ben Healy

Edinburgh fly-half Ben Healy admits there were times last season when his desire to play through adversity made a tough situation worse, but believes he has emerged “better for it” as he eyes a return to the form which earned him 10 Scotland caps.

The 26-year-old former Munster man made a dream start in his adopted country in the 2023-24 season, having swapped the Irish province for the Scottish capital.

Healy started 23 of Edinburgh’s 24 games in that campaign, as many as he had started in the three previous seasons combined with Munster.

Not only was he starting more games, he was also finishing them. He played the full 80 minutes in 20 of those 23 games, narrowly missing out to an old mate, Munster centre Shane Daly, for the URC’s end-of-season ‘Ironman’ award.

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“I met Shane in that off-season, afterwards,” he recalled. “I think he won Man of Steel, or whatever it is, for most minutes, and I said, ‘How the hell have you won?’ I thought I’d played every minute, but I mustn’t have. I think I came off in a home game and I think he played every minute, so he was giving me a bit of craic about that.”

If Daly’s total of 1,815 minutes from his 23 games narrowly eclipsed Healy’s 1,808, the adopted Scot could console himself with the fact his fledgling Test career was taking off nicely. Having been part of Scotland’s 2023 World Cup squad, he won three more caps in the 2024 Six Nations and another three on that summer’s tour of the Americas.

But returning to Edinburgh brought new challenges. Fresh competition at fly-half arrived in the shape of Ross Thompson from Scottish rivals Glasgow, with head coach Sean Everitt initially favouring his new signing.

Healy started a humbling 55-21 defeat by the Lions in Johannesburg in early October – when Edinburgh trailed by a record 48-0 half-time margin – and didn’t see the No.10 shirt again until a couple of European Challenge Cup pool games in January.

While Thompson started 22 of their 26 matches overall, Healy had to make do with a paltry four among his 17 outings, the last against the Scarlets in late January.

By that stage he was also managing patellar tendinopathy, a soft tissue injury which causes pain below the kneecap, and which continued to bother him until the start of this season.

“It was niggles with my knee that were keeping me in and out of training and games,” he said. “It was tricky. You get thrown different challenges at different stages of your career that you won’t necessarily be prepared for, whether it be injury or form dipping or other players playing ahead of you, these types of things.

“Last season was probably a mixed bag. Touch wood, the first few seasons in my pro career I was pretty lucky with injury. To have a few niggles last season did throw a new set of challenges at me, so I’ve learned from that and I’m better for it now.”

Healy admits there were times when the lingering knee issue affected his mindset out on the pitch.

“You’re a professional athlete, so trying to not play is the last thing you want to do,” he said. “So sometimes you end up maybe pushing through things that you shouldn’t and you end up in a worse position. I think we all have that edge and it’s part of being a professional athlete – if we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t be here.”

After such an uplifting first season in Edinburgh gave way to a rather demoralising second, Healy is keen to reassert his credentials in the early part of the new campaign.

Ironically, a toe injury suffered by Thompson in a final pre-season outing gave him an opening, and with the club’s other fly-half Cammy Scott also sidelined, Healy played the full 80 minutes in last Saturday’s opening 31-28 URC defeat by Zebre.

“I was just super-excited to get my teeth back into it and delighted to get 80 minutes under my belt,” he said. “It was unfortunate with the result, but I’m delighted to be back out there.”

If that opening setback in Parma raised further questions about whether Edinburgh’s stated ambition of a top-four finish is a realistic target – it was a third straight game they had failed to beat one of the URC’s traditional basement dwellers after a loss and a draw against the Italians last season – Healy insists it has not induced a prolonged bout of soul-searching among the squad as they prepare for the visit of Ulster on Friday.

“It’s round one of the season where we’ve had a really good pre-season,” he said. “It’s not the result we wanted, it’s not good enough but I think we are in a good place, to be honest. We’re under no illusions. Realistically we need to get a win at home here against Ulster, but at least we have two [losing bonus] points to show for it.

“There were definitely some encouraging signs. You don’t want to learn lessons by losing, but sometimes it has to go that way. There was real clarity on where we need to get better, where we need to improve. Hopefully we’ll bring that into the weekend.”

The return of Scotland wing Darcy Graham – with Lions duo Duhan van der Merwe and Pierre Schoeman also likely to be restored to the starting line-up after replacement outings in Italy – should help bring renewed focus and dynamism after a disjointed opening effort.

“It’s just delivering on what we say we’re going to do,” Healy added, when asked how Edinburgh can build on last season’s seventh-place finish, which resulted in a quarter-final play-off defeat by the Bulls.

“I think there’s a really good attitude amongst the players, coaches and staff. We all agree on that. But sometimes it’s just little bits of execution that are letting us down, whether it be something we want to do in a game and then we come back on Monday and realise we probably weren’t quite at that mark in that specific thing we wanted to get done. When that happens too many times in a season, they all add up, so I would say it’s just consistency week on week – and doing what we say we’re going to do.”