Buccaneers fired up for another big Screene test

Conlon's pub in Athlone is sort of an unofficial clubhouse for Buccaneers. You arrange to meet their prop Jimmy Screene at Thursday lunchtime and the first person you run into is Kiwi team-mate Martyn Steffert. There's a cabal of them in the corner and the frisson of excitement over today's game with Lansdowne is palpable.

One-time team-mate Dave Egan reveals that Moate GAA club have a sign outside their ground wishing Buccaneers well. "The buzz is everywhere," he says. Pub owner Tommy Conlon confirms that the same is true of Garrycastle GAA club and, naturally enough, the club's sponsors Dubarry in Ballinasloe. Well-wishers frequently interrupt to shake Screene's hand and wish him well. "Stick it up 'em Jimmy."

The club have won successive promotions, last year via a second-leg win away to Dungannon, and have won seven games in their first campaign in the top flight (including all five home ties), so there have been a host of big days.

Screene takes responsibility for bringing the Fields of Athenry to the club. "As long as I'll live I'll never forget that day in Dungannon, and the 400 supporters singing that song outside the dressingroom before the game. It made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and the train journey home from Portadown was unforgettable. It was my parents' first time across the Border."

Today's winner-takes-all meeting with Lansdowne, Screene agrees, could be the biggest day yet. "There's huge pressure on us. Winning seven games in our first year, the expectations of people have just grown. Now they expect us to win, whereas earlier on in the season if we won, it was great, there were no expectations."

As one of the two surviving playing links with the start of the Athlone/Ballinasloe amalgamation in 1992 which created Buccaneers (winger Michael Devine is the other) Screene is something of a cult hero. On match days, the frisson is palpable, most of all when Screene gets the ball and launches a head-down charge.

"I was kind of a lone ball carrier until this year but Martin (Cahill) has taken some of the pressure off me while Brian (Rigney) has been inspirational. A lot of people reckoned Brian had his best rugby played when he came to the club. But I believe he has improved. His handling skills have definitely improved because he can pass now from a yard. Before that he could only pass the ball six inches," Screene says mischievously.

It would be simple to judge Jimmy Screene by his 181/2 stone appearance and perhaps deduce that he lacks the physical conditioning and approach that go with professionalism. But one should not judge a book by its cover.

The way Connacht's director of rugby Glenn Ross sees it, Screene is both talented and professional. "It's just that no-one took him seriously." That was until Ross saw him in training, and deduced that as a former Galway minor Gaelic footballer and a schools basketball player "he had some real ability".

Last July Screene wasn't in the best of shape. The Buccaneers' party had lasted a fortnight, so too his holidays, and he had ballooned to 22 stone. "We set him some pretty stiff goals, and he met them," says Ross. "Then we set him some more goals, and he met those too. His weight has gone down from about 137kg to under 120kg and his aerobic capacity has gone from a level of 71/2 to level 11."

Ross hails Screene's strength, co-ordination and ball skills, and says: "he's got so much scope it's not funny. He's very professional, is a very nice person and off the pitch is a very good team member. Put it this way, if I was going to the trenches tomorrow he's one guy I'd want to have with me."

Screene has come a long way and his rewards have been immediate. A full-time provincial contract in place of managing a farm and then acting as a sales rep for an agricultural company. An ever-present for Connacht and Buccaneers this season, he has won three successive Ireland A caps, thereby making him the first player from the club to wear the green of Ireland.

He admits he struggled to cope with the pace of his debut against England, but finished strongly - as he's done in all three - and had what seemed an equalising try over-ruled by an unsighted referee.

He knows he has an outside chance of making the tour party to Australia, but dares not to think too hard about it. "I would give my right hand for it, but that's a stupid thing to say because I wouldn't be much use going to Australia one-handed. It would be a dream come true.

Given that he is 27, Screene is hardly an overnight success story, so you ask him if he is sorry that all this didn't come sooner. "I suppose I am, yeah. But I still believe I've four or five good seasons left in me, if I take care of myself and stay injury-free. I would love to have been part of Connacht's run two seasons ago, but I'm glad that it has happened, for my wife and my family, and for all the great support in the local area. I'm just thankful to Glenn Ross for giving me the chance. Before (Bucaneers coach) Eddie O'Sullivan came along we were in Division Three two seasons ago and my career was going to be as a Division Three player."

He also thanks O'Sullivan for helping to put him in the spotlight, even though "we mightn't always have seen eye to eye".

This is in part a reference to his schooldays at HRC Mountbellew where, ironically, O'Sullivan taught him.

"I'm a fellow who needs encouragement and needs targets to be set. Until Glenn came along, there was no real target there for me. I'm an easy-going guy, who goes with the flow, enjoys the good time, and so I didn't go looking for it. When opportunity knocked and the goals were set I met them but I suppose it's really down to myself, not working hard enough. I enjoyed my rugby, let's put it that way."

There were also mitigating factors. From a farming, non rugby-playing family in a non rugby-playing community - he hails from Skehana 25 miles from Galway - Screene played pretty much everything bar rugby at school.

He took up rugby at 17 after three years of badgering from Monivea's Padraig McGann. He played at number eight for three years before a phone call from Tom Purcell in Ballinasloe encouraged him to join the amalgamated midlanders in the 1992/93 season. They changed their name at the behest of the union to Buccaneers, in honour of a club from Athlone called Shannon Buccaneers who lasted four years in the 1930s.

"I've been dropped for one game in six seasons, which I'm proud of, and I don't agree with that (being dropped) either," he laughs.

In his second game for the club, and first AIL game, against Clontarf, Screene played 20 minutes at number eight, 20 minutes in the second row, and then the second half at prop. After two seasons of Division Three rugby at number eight, "I could see that I was really supposed to be a prop," he explains. "After we had played Bective and Phil Lawlor had run round me about 20 times I said: `it's time to think about this'."

He's now played four full seasons at prop - he can pack down on either side - "and I don't think I've ever been screwed at that level. So I'm happy enough with the way it's gone. I pride myself on my scrummaging now, even though (Shannon's) Budda Healy said he felt very comfortable against me and he thought I was only lying in. But I don't think he was in the same game I was in. Budda gets excited very easily. That's one reason I'd like to meet Shannon again."

His burning ambition with Buccaneers would be to win an AIL medal. "I'm not saying it's going to happen this year, or even next year, but hopefully some year." A one-club man? "Unless somebody offered me a house and £100,000, then I'd have to think about it."

The one thing he doesn't want to see happen is this being a oneseason wonder. "That would be a disaster for everyone involved. We had 6,000 people at the Munsters' (Young Munster) game, and it would be a shame having 600 people at a game next year if things were going bad.

"I went to the Galwegians and Ballymena game last Sunday. I have some very good friends at 'Wegians and it was sad to see only 200 people at the game. Eric Elwood deserves better than that, they all deserve better than that.

"I would hate to see that happen here but I don't believe it will. The background people here run it like a business. The pirates' supporters club have 450 fully-paid members, which is great, and 900 including associate members."

"I'd love to win an All-Ireland and my other aim would be to play for Ireland," he adds , neatly taking the interview to a conclusion. "It would be a dream come true since day one, even when I was playing under-18 rugby. I believe I'm capable of it.

"It's up to myself, if I get the breaks."