At face value, it looks like a chance for redemption of sorts. This afternoon, Denis Hickie comes up against one of the wingers chosen ahead of him for last summer's Lions tour, Daffyd James, and also against the coach who even overlooked him as a replacement. It seems like a gilt-edged opportunity to shove somebody's nose in it, or, at any rate, to make a point.

After all, it would be a very human perspective. Yet Hickie is too much of a diplomat to publicly utter anything along those lines. So he plays it down, after a big sigh. "I don't want to disappoint you," he smiles, knowing full well I'm going to be disappointed.

"I'm obviously fully aware that he (James) was picked and I thought he did alright to be honest with you. But that doesn't have anything to do with this match.

"I want to play well no matter who we're playing against, and that's the situation. I'll be trying to out-play him regardless of whether he was picked for the Lions and I wasn't. Now, as it happens, he was and I wasn't, so I would say the pressure is more on him than on me."

Nor does the notion of making a point or two in the general direction of Graham Henry enter his head. Then again, Denis being a professional athlete and Denis being the rational fellow that he is, he probably can divorce himself emotionally from the backdrop to his personal duel with James more than most. To a degree anyhow.

As he says himself: "Even if it did (motivate) I wouldn't be telling you." Not that he wasn't crestfallen by his omission. "Of course, I was very disappointed. I was as disappointed as anyone who was left out, but no more disappointed than others who were left out.

"People thought I had more of a right to be picked and therefore more of a right to be disappointed than, say, John Hayes was. Which isn't the case. In my own way I thought I'd done enough to be a Lion, but obviously I hadn't."

He'd also be entitled to a little bitterness over the manner of his omission. Had it been after last autumn's internationals, he'd have been a shoe-in following his performances against Japan and South Africa. More than most, he seems to have been a victim of the hiatus caused by foot-and-mouth, and of a willingness to judge him on one poor day on Good Friday for a Rest of Ireland selection against Munster.

"I wouldn't say it was my best ever game, but I've played a lot worse," he says with a broad, self-deprecating grin. "Maybe I needed to play my best ever game and that was a bit of pressure in itself. But I was playing in a team that got together that week against a team that had been playing together all season. I was playing against a very good player (Anthony Horgan). Hoggy is a good player."

Hickie also refutes the notion that he was judged on that one game. "I was told why I wasn't picked and I'm confident that it didn't come down to that game.

"There's no point in going into it. I'm not going to say what I was told. There's no point in me banging my head off the wall thinking 'if I'd only played better in that game'."

The image of a near suicidal Hickie watching the test series in a darkened room with a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes doesn't tally with the reality. Instead he took immense delight in watching his friend Brian O'Driscoll perform heroically.

"I watched that first Test with the rest of the lads in Poland and at the end of that game if there was a vote for the best player he would have been it. And I was so happy to know him, and know that he is that good, that I was just chuffed for him. Just that he did himself justice, he's that good and he showed it.

"He didn't bottle it, he didn't have an off-day and he showed that he is the best centre in the world. And Woody and Hendo were fantastic, and I was genuinely happy that they won."

But remember Hickie is still only 25. "Possibly there's another Lions tour there. It's not all doom and gloom."

Yet, there haven't been too many wingers among the pantheon of Irish greats. Of those that were, Tony O'Reilly's status is more down to his achievements with the Lions, while it is still a nagging omission in Simon Geoghegan's cv.

Hickie says he'll have to wait until the end of his own career to know whether the same omission would rankle with him, "but I certainly haven't done enough to merit being called a great of Irish rugby at this stage."

Jim Staples once said that it gave him additional pride, given his non-rugby playing lineage, to represent Ireland alongside someone who was steeped in it. Hickie assuredly has a pretty proud bloodline, given his father Tony was generally regarded as one of the best full backs never to have played for Ireland, and his uncle Denis did so at number eight in the early 80s, though he points out that the family were never consumed by it.

It helped that Hickie came off the most productive conveyor belt of quality backs, namely St Mary's, for which he cites the propensity for playing rugby in the schoolyard morning, lunchtime and afternoon. It also helped that he was blessed with that all-too-rare Irish trait, namely pace.

He first noticed he might be a bit quick when he won the sprint at his junior school's sports day when seven or eight, "and I remember my mum warning me that I mightn't be the fastest in my class when I went to St Mary's, but I turned out to be one of the fastest. Then by accident one day I went to the school's athletics when I was about 15, and then to the 'West Leinsters'. Then I won the All-Ireland 100-metres at 16."

Through George Hook, Hickie was offered a scholarship in the US after school, at Providence Rhode Island, an Iveagh League college where he could have combined rugby with athletics.

He turned it down, he says, "because I wanted to play rugby for Ireland and I thought I could play for Ireland, and I would never have been happy with my yacht in the Hamptons."

Now, one achievable goal for Hickie might be to overtake Brendan Mullin's Irish record of 17 tries. From 21 tests, Hickie is currently level with O'Driscoll on nine in what looks like a race to emulate the landmark, though Keith Wood leads both on 11.

There's certainly plenty for him to achieve and aim for, and certainly there'll be plenty of opportunities. As he says himself, between Leinster and Ireland there's a big game virtually every week now.

"When I'm done and dusted, and when people talk about Irish wingers, I might be one of the names that comes up. That's probably the best way to put it." Getting there? "I'm probably nearer to it than I was three years ago."

He's mindful of the slings and arrows, recovering from an 18-month period in the wilderness before the rejuvenatory win over Scotland a year and a half ago heralded an impressive second coming. Even then, injury ruled him out of the Americas' tour in the summer of 2000, before foot-and-mouth did for last season and he missed the Lions.

"Where it goes from here depends on the games. It doesn't necessarily follow that it will keep going upwards or even at the same level," he notes sagely.

Nor does he measure his improvement or his status in terms of caps and tries, and Lions tours. "I think I realise, from watching great players, that great players play well in every game. Maybe three years ago I played well in three out of 10, and now I'd like to think I'm closer to eight. As you get older you learn more and you have more in your arsenal, and that's what I'm trying to aim for now, that every game I come off satisfied with most of the things I've done."

And maybe proving a point or two along the way.