Hat-trick Henderson on high

As the Lions jetted down the Queensland coast from Townsville to Brisbane on Wednesday, the plane journey might have been an optional extra for Rob Henderson.

He's been pretty happy with his lot since that hat-trick display against the Queensland President's XV.

Tuesday's effort has lifted Henderson into the Test frame, with his performance against the Queensland Reds today offering him a big chance to nudge him even closer. Having declined, unusually for him, to play golf on a day off last Thursday, Henderson lounged in his bedroom in the Brisbane Sheraton and reflected contentedly on it all.

"You can talk about various occurrences in your career, like your first cap or your first try for your country, but your first full start for the Lions and then to score three, it surpasses everything I think. The record books will show that I actually have a Lions hat-trick and no one can ever take that away from me."

Today's game is huge for him, but he's relaxed about it and looking forward to playing outside Jonny Wilkinson for the first time, and renewing his partnership with Brian O'Driscoll. "It'll be business as usual I hope."

They have a nice balance and have developed an intuitive understanding about when to support each other's half-breaks and off-loads. "Yeah, the understanding is that I give him the ball and he scores. It's a great understanding," he says, self-deprecatingly. It's hard to credit that two seasons ago he was struggling to make the Wasps team, and he'd been left out of Ireland's World Cup squad despite getting himself into "fantastic shape". By the following January he wasn't even in the combined Test and A squad of 44 players for the start of the Six Nations, away to England.

"I think Johnny Bell hurt his hand and I was brought into the A bench," recalls Henderson. "The next day I travelled down to London. I was sitting in Molly Malone's watching the England game with a friend of mine, Simon Mitchell, and thinking that was the end of my international career.

"And then five days later what happens? Two guys in the senior squad got injured and I got brought in on the bench, and then Girvan got injured after 20-30 minutes and I got on the pitch and played well."

The ensuing turnaround he attributes to a mixture of three things: firstly, the changes in the game which has seen midfield play move on from route one; secondly, his improved fitness and professionalism; and the maturity that comes with his late 20s.

He agrees he attacks space now rather than the opponent, in part because coaches don't just employ him as a battering ram any more, and hopes that the labels will "start shifting off me".

This reputation was unflattering and unjustified. He concedes there was other jackthe-lad labelling concerning his social life, from within rugby and media circles which he finds harder to swallow. "Maybe if people had a good look at themselves and were a bit more honest they'd see that I'm not out of the norm at all."

Not that he regrets his amateur days in any way. "God no, if I was being truthful to myself I probably wasted a few years, I definitely wasted a few years just sidling along and being happy to be a club player. I think if I had pushed myself earlier things might have been slightly different but at the same time if I had to do it all again I wouldn't change a thing. I have absolutely no regrets, none whatsoever. I like my life, I like my wife," mocking himself and his rhyme with an American accent, "and I just like the way I live."

In that respect, he hasn't changed as all, and is as goodhumoured and witty as ever. You could see he looks back on his time at London Irish through misty-eyed glasses.

"It's a very sociable club and it could have been the death of many a man," he says laughing, "had they not been as strongwilled as me, and only gone out five nights a week."

Much as he loved Sunbury and still does, he needed the move to Wasps 41/2 years ago as much then as he needs the move to Munster now to continue improving. He and Angie have a house lined up in Castleconnell, and, after only two weeks off, he's earmarked the Celtic League in late August as a potential starting point.

Another seminal point in the evolution of Rob Henderson was a pre-season day after Ireland's tour of the Americas last summer.

"I had a really hard work-out, got home and thought to myself: `what the hell have I just done and why have I done it?' Couldn't answer the questions so I decided to get a fitness adviser."

He literally picked Warren Loughlin, second generation Irish like himself, out of the yellow pages. "He had the best looking advert." That was a Tuesday; he saw Loughlin the next day for tests, and began a programme of four sessions a week by the following Monday. Just under a year on, he's three-quarters of a second quicker over 100 metres, "which is quite a lot", and four kilos heavier.

After his third hat-trick of the season he reckons he's averaging about a try per game. In times past you'd have been fearful of billing this as one of the biggest games of his life, but not any more.

"I used to build myself up so much to the point that I was like a kettle that just used to sit on the hob whistling. I used to be an old kettle, I'm now a Hobbs, it builds itself up but then clicks off at the right time. Now I find I can chill out and think about the game little and often. Then run out on the pitch with a big beaming grin on your face and enjoy it. You're not going to be here for ever."