Bruff diamond still bulling for road

Six Nations: The Ireland front row icon talks to Gerry Thornleyabout wearing the green and facing les Bleus.

The strong, silent type, John Hayes prefers to keep a low profile. Even when he grants a rare interview it comes with the rider that the World Cup is off limits: "I'm finished with it now at this stage. You have to move on." Fair enough. Who's arguing?

Not even returning to France, where the bulk of this squad didn't exactly have the happiest time of their lives recently, will be allowed to evoke any ghosts from the World Cup or before.

"No one has a good record against them," says Hayes. "Even if you ask the mighty All Blacks about one team that's a pain in their asses, it's them. They have such quality players and so many players. Every year there's a new sensation, some new winger or some new backrow. No matter what happens, they'll have a back three with pace to burn. (Aurélien) Rougerie was scoring hat-tricks in the European Cup and he comes on last week as a sub. That's the way it is."

What marks them apart in Hayes's view, especially at home, is their desire to start the game at a high tempo. Holding on in the face of that early blitz is, he says, the key, as it was when Ireland registered their only win in 36 years in Paris on his first trek there in 2000: "They always look to explode out of the blocks. You just have to be ready for it."

And for a serious scrummaging, mauling assault up front. The French scrum - like the Argentinian and the Italian - "always focuses the mind". And it is, very much, an eight-man effort: "It's definitely down to the eight. You're obviously the foundation and you have to be in a good body position so that the force comes through you, but you can't do it on your own."

Having taken the game up at 18 with his hometown club, Bruff, the late-starting, late-developing Hayes is clearly a much better scrummager than the raw giant who broke into the team in 2000.

"I'd like to think I haven't wasted all the time and effort for nothing," he says, smiling.

"I'd always like to think I'll never stop learning. I'd never think that I know it all. Every time I look back on games I always see something I could have done better," he adds with a slight sigh, still in search of that perfect game. "Getting it all together is one thing I'd like to do."

The Italians "hang their hat" on their scrum and while he was content with that setpiece and Ireland's own lineout ball last week, conceding a mauling try to the Azzurri is his domain, and that clearly still hurts.

"They have a good maul so it shouldn't have been a surprise to us and that's why it was so disappointing. We should have stopped it early but we didn't get in amongst them. I was near enough to where it started and I didn't stop it," he says, rubbing his head and face agitatedly.

In the last 10 seasons Hayes has played in 80 of Ireland's 91 games, all but three from the start, and 130 games for Munster (only eight as a replacement). He's played in 76 of Munster's 90 Heineken Cup games, all but one in the number-three jersey.

"Lucky" with injuries and advice he's received along the way through Shannon, Marist in Invercargill, Munster and Ireland, he knows there are similarities with another massive, converted lock from the Shannon/Munster route in the late- but rapidly developing Tony Buckley, whose emergence has lightened Hayes's load.

"It's good for me personally and good for Munster and Ireland as well, because we have another Cork-born, home-grown, Munster and Irishman who's coming through."

A key difference is that Buckley took to the game earlier through Newbridge College.

"He's living across the road from me now. We travel to training together and he has a small little A3 car," Hayes reveals, smiling. "It's a kind of a cosy fit for the two of us. I suppose there are similarities, but he's bigger than me; he's a stone heavier."

About three seasons ago ongoing back problems and a loss of form meant Hayes, by his own admission, was "only getting from one game to the other. But the good year we had in winning the Heineken Cup just lit the whole thing up again. That was one of the best days ever."

He's 34 and his current contract expires at the end of this season, prompting thoughts about his future, though not from himself.

"I don't really thing about it. I'd say I'd like to go again. Like I said, if you stay injury-free that makes it a lot easier. I'd say a lot of lads who have retired over the years it's because they're just wrecked with injuries. But if I can stay injury-free and stay enjoying it, I'll stay going."

With his wife, Fiona Steed, a former Ireland rugby player now involved in coaching the Munster women, he's built a house on his father's farm in Cappamore. Any time he's home he lends a hand, though as for a career after rugby he says, "It's hard to know with farming, the way it's going. There's fellas leaving it the whole time, going part-time, so it's hard to know. It's a way of life though and some of those fellas who go part-time probably work just as hard at it."

Playing in front of 80,000 spectators could not be more different, though as Hayes notes it's hardly the glamour that attracts him to rugby. Yeah, but the atmosphere around the big games? Thomond Park at 5.30 on a European Cup Saturday night, or a Test match?

"I can't deny that. It's representing where you're from. I'm from Munster and I'm from Ireland, and when I play for Munster or Ireland, I'm representing them. I'll take that any time I can get it.

"We get paid now but fellas were doing it for years before they got paid - they were even losing money - but they did it because they wanted to play for Ireland. A lot of us would probably have done it anyway. We'd all love to have played for Ireland, and now we're getting paid to do what we love doing."