Despite the ever increasing demands, Shane Byrne tells Gerry Thornley why he wouldn't trade places with anyone

Scarcely three years ago, Shane Byrne was the most frustrated player in Irish rugby. He'd been knocking on the door since 1993, had been on two tours, taken his tracksuit off on the touchline five times, but his Magnificent Obsession of a first Irish cap had eluded him. Now he has 25 of them.

A funny old game? Byrne's career has been more curious than most. As all manner of other hookers jumped ahead of him in the pecking order, he admits he thought it'd never happen, and prior to that debut in Bucharest in 2001, he'd have settled for one.

Now, here he is playing in what he considers the best competition in the world, playing the world champions. Bring it on. So, go figure. Force of circumstances? His own maturation?

"I don't know the answer to that exactly, but you become a little wiser the more you go on. Each knock you get, if you come back from it you're a little wiser. You train harder, you're cuter, you become more of a perfectionist in just wanting to get things right, and I suppose when a challenge arises you've just got to answer it."

Luck, he admits freely, also entered the equation, i.e. in Keith Wood being injured. But if Byrne might have had regrets about his career had it not turned out this way, he has none now.

"If I had the choice to do it all over again, and become fitter, stay more focused, don't lose track; I wouldn't do it. The age I got my caps, the way I got my caps, for the first time in my career I can hold my hand on my heart and say I wouldn't change a thing."

There's a song there somewhere. Born within six months of Wood was surely the biggest misfortune to befall his career. Much of it has been spent in the Bald Wonder's shadow, so surely it must be a relief of sorts to step into the sunlight more clearly?

"No, because my ambitions stay the same. To be honest, even if I was scoring tries and drop goals, Shane Byrne couldn't compete against Keith Wood. Not just the captain and the player, but what he was."

They were, Byrne admits, "complete opposites", but "from not really getting on it became a good business relationship. Towards the end I got on well with the guy. There were no problems there at all. He's a good bloke."

When Wood recently endorsed Frankie Sheahan ahead of him, Byrne was unperturbed and unsurprised. He chuckles and pauses in finding the words he's looking for.

"You won't believe me when I tell you, but it didn't bother me at all. I expected him to endorse Frankie, and you just add that to the pile of things that spur you on. I'd be dumbfounded if he endorsed me. I'd actually be worried. 'What's he playing at?' Keith's a smart cookie."

Where once replicas of Wood's bald dome adorned Lansdowne Road, now, it's Byrne's infamous mullet which is attracting a more cultish following, right down to the patented wig. "I'd love to find out who's selling them," he laughs. "Can I get my rights off them then? Can I have my cut?"

The Byrne mop has become such an object of fun that a radio phone-in programme was devoted to it, and even Wood was compelled to don one on BBC's Rugby Special last Sunday week.

"Sometimes, when you're throwing the ball in, there's guys slagging you on the touchline. Nothing nice, I suppose, if you're sensitive, but it's all good fun. If I'm an object of laughter, what the hell? I'm still the one playing. You don't want to get too serious about it. I was like that in the mid-'90s and it got me nowhere."

Ignoring managerial advice and fashion trends hints at a stubborn or independent streak.

"On three occasions, I was told it was directly responsible," he recalls, for holding back his career, at various levels from schoolboys to the very top. "It was just me being a stupid Wicklow guy not understanding how the political scene worked."

Byrne's Test career graph is also testimony to how congested and intense international rugby has become. His first cap actually coincided with his stag weekend in Bucharest, and now, as a married thirtysomething with two young twins (Alex and Kerry were born on October 4th, 2002) his profile is not typical of the modern-day Test player.

By the time Ireland returned from the World Cup, Byrne had been home for periods of a week only three times in the first 11 months of the year; the other bouts of unpacking and packing, such as they were, amounting to no more than two or three days at a time. "It was a rough year," he admits.

Not that he concedes it's a younger man's game, arguing that his generation have been honed by eight years of professionalism.

"I'd hate to be a guy in his mid-20s coming into the scene. That would be very, very hard, because it's an unbelievable commitment. People just see the glamour side, and that's understandable, but being at the World Cup for two months and coming home and the kids not having a clue who you were. Things like that."

Not that he won't be milking every last drop out of it all.

"You have to keep telling yourself that it's not going to last for ever. There's definitely far less time ahead of me than has gone by. But it's a great lifestyle. To me, Leinster is the job, Ireland is why you play the game."

Ah, Leinster. Losing their way again this season still irks him. The losses to Sale and Biarritz were, he repeats, devastating: "It just shouldn't happen. I've often said it before, but Leinster always play badly when they lose. Munster, on the other hand, have lost but have played well.

"You could point to a lot of things, not having a set outhalf, 16 players currently injured, the Contepomi incident, but regardless of all that we still had enough to get through. We were still a bloody good team."

Ireland offered him a sanctuary of sorts, and a fresh challenge. For fear of making mistakes the French game, he concedes, "passed me by", but the Welsh game brought him two tries, be they run-ins off rolling mauls, and a second man-of-the-match award in his Irish career, the other following his pinpoint darts in the Dublin gale when beating Argentina last season.

"I wouldn't be known as a big try scorer. I'd normally be the guy with his head down at the bottom of a ruck. Did you see the unfancy way I fell over the line? You could be damn sure I wasn't going to knock it on over the line."

The ovation afforded him when coming off to be replaced by Sheahan late on embarrassed him slightly. He didn't know what to do. "But that's the reason we play. That's why we're out in the freezing cold in the muck, with guys like Trevor Brennan beating the head off you. That's why you do it, for little moments like that."

And games like today's. He couldn't bring himself to cheer for England in the World Cup final, but he was glad they won. "I think this is going to be an absolute cracker of a game. The atmosphere is going to be brilliant. Apparently you just can't get a ticket. My da doesn't even have a flippin' ticket, 'cos we only get two tickets for the away games so the wife and the mother come first.

"But it's going to be electric and wouldn't it be great to have a bit of an occasion? No matter what way the result goes, wouldn't it be great if

two teams were dinging at each

other for 80 minutes? Just an absolute great day out."