'I had a few very dark times' - Henderson opens up on injury-ridden season

While there are plenty of players around the country for whom 16 appearances last season would have been a satisfactory return, for Iain Henderson it was a season punctuated by frustration.

The Ulster lock had one of his best campaigns in 2020/21, one of Ireland's best performers in the Six Nations, captaining the Lions on their tour match against the Sharks, and coming close to selection for a Test place.

But after having surgery on his thumb last summer, the 30-year-old found his campaign constantly disrupted by injury issues. The hand issue saw his season delayed until late October, and just three games after returning, a pulled hamstring sidelined him for another three weeks. He managed less than an hour on his return in December when his ankle got trapped in a ruck, and those damaged ligaments saw him sent to the sidelines for another seven weeks.

Even after returning during the Six Nations, the disruption continued, Covid-19 seeing him ruled out of Ireland's Round 3 meeting with Italy, and although the remainder of the provincial season passed by unanswered, a knee injury on Ireland's tour in New Zealand saw him miss out on a first series win against the All Blacks.

As the new BTK United Rugby Championship season begins, he's back where he was a year ago, a bandage on his hand after using the off-season to get further work done on an issue that has troubled him across the last five years, with a target of returning during October.

After 10 years in the professional game, the second row is well used to the physical demands the game will bring. But he's honest in admitting that the mental aspect of dealing with injuries never seems to get any easier.

"I had a few very dark times over the last number of months," he says of