A late developer makes the club

Six years ago, John Hayes came to Dublin to watch Ireland play Scotland as a then dual status, 21-yearold with Bruff and Shannon. Niall O'Donovan remembers collecting Hayes near Lansdowne Road on the Sunday morning for a training session in Thomond Park later that day, the big man holding a black plastic sack with all his gear in it and nursing a badly reddened eye.

A nasty blast while welding on the Friday was the cause of Hayes' injury, but nevertheless they returned to Limerick where Hayes never batted an eyelid, so to speak, through the Shannon session. But Hayes' eye still looked bad.

Afterwards, O'Donovan called over Paddy Kenny, the team's hooker and also a doctor, to examine Hayes. He discovered a piece of steel in Hayes' eye, and the player was promptly taken to hospital to have it removed.

The story is recalled as evidence of Hayes' extraordinarily high pain threshold, which is one of the first things coaches and fellow players cite about the Bull. He never complains. That, and a work ethic, willingness to learn, phenomenal strength in his 6 ft 4 ins, 20 st frame, and sheer honesty. A quiet, essentially shy man, John Hayes is very much the strong silent type.

How he came to be playing for Ireland last Saturday is quite a story too, and an inspirational one in many ways when you consider that his first game of rugby was only eight years ago, as a raw 19-year-old in a 0-0 draw between Bruff and Newcastlewest.

"I'd only trained twice, on the Tuesday and the Thursday, and was thrown straight in. I was playing blindside (flanker) actually. I didn't know what I was doing. It was gas."

Explaining the late start, Hayes says: "There's no rugby where I'm from in Cappamore. There was one other lad from Cappamore who was playing, John O'Neill's his name, who played for Bruff. The school in Cappamore was called Doon, just up the road, there's no rugby there. It's all hurling, there isn't even Gaelic football. You wouldn't be allowed out in the field with a soccer ball, the Brothers would be out chasing you, taking the ball off you."

"I played away at the GAA then after I left school but I hadn't much interest in it ever, so I just ventured on to Bruff to try and play a bit of rugby." It was as much out of curiosity as anything else, having always watched the internationals on television, and he took readily to the training.

The then gangly 19-year-old quickly grew into a colossus. Converted into a lock, the absence of an under-20 team in Bruff compelled him to become a dual status player with Shannon on the recommendation of his coach Willie Conway, a former Shannon player.

Niall O'Donovan, the then Shannon coach who would become the biggest influence on Hayes' career, quickly spotted something more in their new under-20 lock than an unmistakable appearance.

"There was a big rawness there that you could make something of. He was gangly then but there was a toughness in him and he had the football skills, that was no worry."

Hayes admits to being "in awe" of those around him, particularly Mick Galwey. Regularly on the bench, he made his debut as a replacement in a 6-0 win over Garryowen at Thomond Park in 1994, in the first season of Shannon's four-in-a-row, "I was looking at Gailimh and half afraid to touch him when we packed down."

Hayes spent much of 1994-95 on the bench with Shannon on Saturdays, and with Bruff on Sundays, before he decided to try his luck in Invercargill in New Zealand for a couple of years, travelling there with a Kiwi teammate at Bruff, Kynan McGregor.

He liked the intensity of rugby in New Zealand and in his second year at Marist he was encouraged to convert himself into a prop by their coach `Doc' Cournane. "At first I laughed. I distinctly remember saying `are you serious, like?' The first game I played prop I was still jumping at two in the lineout."

He warmed to it and Shannon continued the gradual process of converting Hayes into a tighthead, putting him there for the last half-hour of games in the 1996-97 season.

But if New Zealand truly kickstarted his career, then another eye-opener was being a surprise pick on the South African tour two summers ago. "It was my first time involved with a professional outfit. I'd never been on a rugby tour or anything, most lads had been involved on schools' tours or whatever, and it was a big eye-opener to train with fellas I'd only ever seen on TV. It showed me the level I had to get to."

Only with the advent of a provincial contract last season did Hayes begin weight training and dieting like a professional. Now when people run into him, they run into a brick wall. His workrate for tackling and hitting rucks is huge. His acclaimed lineout lifting has probably contributed to Mick Galwey's rejuvenation and Lenihan reveals that Hayes never forgets a `call'.

Small looseheads will always be a handful for him, and he's had to work on getting lower while at the same time ridding himself of a tendency to have his feet stationed too far back, a legacy of his years as a lock.

He is disarmingly candid and self-effacing, so when you mention the scrummaging he admits: "That's the one thing I have to work on most, more so than any other prop. Gatty has worked with me a lot on that. Everyone's game has something they have to always work on and that's my one. That's the one I have to keep plugging away on."

The return on Warren Gatland and Donal Lenihan's continuous investment in Hayes - without which he wouldn't be near the Irish team yet - began in earnest last Saturday week. For Lenihan, the huge ovation accorded Hayes as he was replaced late on was one of the most moving events of an emotional day. Yet, as is so often the case, the person most immune to it all was probably Hayes himself.

"I think I noticed just when I got to the sideline, but as I was coming off I didn't. Like, everyone says it was happening as I was coming across the pitch but it was only when I got to the stand that I noticed the noise," recalls Hayes.

It has helped him to have the familiarity of the jokers in the Munster pack (Galwey, Peter Clohessy and Keith Wood) in the Irish set-up as well.

"Not just to me, but for the whole Munster squad, Woody gave everybody a lift. There's a buzz around him and being in the front row with him definitely rubbed off on me. He's talking to me all year, even in games. You couldn't ask for three better fellas than Claw, Woody and Gailimh to help you, especially the Claw because he knows tighthead as well as loosehead."

"He's always passing on tips, even when we're watching a game on video he might say: `you're a bit high there, or your feet are too far back there, or whatever. Small things like that mean an awful lot."

A low-mileage, late-developing 27-year-old, Hayes' best years should still be in front of him. He might even make the conversion, like Clohessy, to loosehead, and the 2003 World Cup in Australia would seem a natural target.

However, he won't look further than today. The welder from farming stock in Bruff has come a long way. From spectator with black sack to debutant in six years. One game at a time will do nicely.