Once more into the front line

Keith Wood interview: Gerry Thornley finds the bald wonder a little older and more reflective but still hungry for action

At the poolside of the Irish team hotel in Apia, Tonga, two months ago, as former IRFU president Don Crowley stretched out to catch a few rays, fitness director Mike McGurn was putting Keith Wood through a session of aqua running. Two hours later Crowley decided he'd had enough sun and left, but not without looking at Wood, who was still at work. "He thought we were mad," recalls McGurn.

The lengths to which Wood has gone in order to get his body in shape for his return today after an 11-month absence are typical of the man. He plays it down and maintains a heavy workload of matches is far tougher. Which is probably true to a point. But not every player would have pushed himself so hard in order to be back leading Ireland this afternoon.

Surgery, rest, more surgery, more rest, stabilising exercises, aerobic exercises, weights and then more intensive weights to regain the bodyweight he'd shed - it's been an ever-changing sequence of arduous, methodical steps.

Aside from the aqua running in Apia, Wood has done a huge amount of what McGurn calls specific rugby training and is now "lifting more weight than he's ever done before. He's up to three sets of eight 45-kilo dumb-bells. To be honest, I'm sick looking at him. I'm delighted he's back playing again".

The notion that Wood might be additionally nervous on his return is dismissed. "I've put an unbelievable amount of time and effort into getting it right and I would have said that I've done everything that I could do. And quite simply, it's right, or it ain't. And if it ain't we'll find out soon enough. I'm not trying to make myself out to be a rock, but why worry about something that may or may not happen?"

A changed man? He seems less ebullient than before, but it may have been the day that was in it. He muses on that one for a while.

"I don't know whether being out has changed me much. The last 11 months have. Having a son and having the two bereavements, that would have changed me a bit.

"I'd always be fairly reflective in myself. I spend a lot of time not playing play station," he says with a smile. "I don't know if it has changed me or not. I've had so many injuries in my time. People seem to get so downhearted. It probably happened to me when I was 20 but since then I don't think so. Injuries are part of the game."

A remodelled Wood? Hardly. He can only play one way and with maturity and captaincy he would be less headstrong about returning to action than in his younger days.

"I've been totally honest with Eddie (O'Sullivan). I'm not going to change my style or hold back. It's actually easier for me, because I can reconcile the fact that I'm injured very easily. I'm not going to try and play if I have an injury. I'll know before he (Eddie) does and if I'm not able to function I'll only let myself down, and I'll only let the team down. And I've tried to do everything I can for that not to be the case."

By contrast, he admits candidly: "I should never have gone to the World Cup in '95, in hindsight. I'd had an operation but it hurt an awful lot from then on in. Now that's too harsh on me. It's very hard to know what level of pain is acceptable, vis-à-vis recovery and what you can go through. The pain I was receiving then was bad pain and it required surgery before the World Cup. But that was never said to me. Now I can determine the pain myself."

He's a high-mileage 32-year-old, who's taken his fair share of punishment, and there'll be a payback. "I'd be a fool to think that I wouldn't suffer to some degree and I know there's a key time when you need to say you're foolish in playing beyond it. I've always accepted that time will be after this World Cup." The installation of a gym in his Killaloe home is partly with his post-career in mind. Now at his optimum playing weight of near 17 stone, he knows he'll eventually have to get down to 15 stone or under to reduce the pressure on his many wounds. But he's not remotely bitter about the injuries.

"I know there'll be some degree of repercussions further down the line but I don't think they can take away from the memories I've had. People ask whether I'll be bitter, frustrated or angry? The absolute opposite. I've been one of the lucky ones."

Having hummed and hawed aloud about making up for the lost year by possibly playing on for the season, this week he has been dropping the broadest hints yet that he'll retire immediately after the World Cup. Ask him about playing on for the season now and he says "it's not likely" before musing on a scenario in which Frankie Sheahan's two-year suspension is upheld.

"But I've known Frankie over a long period of time and I know him as being a very bad asthmatic. I can't but see that he should be let off . . . I would hope that he'll be able to start up straight away, as soon as possible."

That issue aside, he reaffirms his intention to retire after the World Cup. "That's always been my intention. But I've always had the little rider that if I feel fine then why would I. I can't answer that question now."

The relatively unhappy memories of the last two World Cups, Wood clutching his shoulder after his 1995 World Cup lasted seven minutes against Japan, were not in themselves spurs to return for this one.

Wood agrees, however, that much has changed since 1999 and that frightful and fateful night against Argentina in Lens. Ireland have a better, deeper pool of players and the management staff is much larger, something he agitated for under Warren Gatland.

He maintains Gatland "did a good job, and you can't criticise someone who did a good job", but admits that when it came to not co-opting a defensive coach onto the ticket at ther time, "that would have been one of the criticisms I had, definitely. We had a mad, scramble Irish defence. We put an Irish jersey on, put our bodies on the line, but it absolutely knackers you out. The game has gone so fast now you just can't do it."

The latest addition to the management team is a biomechanist, Emily Foster, who analyses ways of improving body movement in training and matches so as to avoid injury. There were 17 management personnel on the pitch at one point in Athlone last week. Too many chefs can spoil the broth, Wood concedes, "but Eddie runs a very tight ship".

Wood has a close working relationship with O'Sullivan, though stops short of admitting he's more influential now. Never shy about speaking up, by his own admission, Wood says: "If I think of something that I think will be of benefit to the team and I don't mention it, and we let ourselves down in that facet on Saturday, then I've let the team down. That's the view I would take on it. Maybe I'm in a stronger position by dint of experience or whatever, but I don't see anything wrong in that. For me to do my part I need to argue my part."

More Keane-Ferguson then than Keane-McCarthy. You begin to describe that other high-profile Irish captain of recent yore, also of Munster, 30-something and in the twilight of an illustrious career, a fiercely competitive leader with a bullish, independent streak who's also been known to demand higher standards from those around him and to stand up for his principles. "Keano," he interrupts.

"I suppose there are some similarities," he admits, a tad sheepishly. "In many ways I would find that very flattering because he still is, and has been for the last seven or eight or ten years, my favourite sportsman, because of the passion, the uncompromising nature, his will, his desire to win. They are all qualities that we wish for.

"He's overstepped the mark. He knows it himself, he's not a fool. He may need a little bit more of an off-on switch, but all his other attributes are everything we would wish for in a child playing sport. No ball is gone too far. There is nothing you can't achieve. There are more talented players in Manchester United than Roy Keane, but there isn't a better player."

Much the samecould be said of Wood, though he'd be the last to say it. A key difference, of course, is in the lengths to which the Irish rugby captain has gone to actually play in a final World Cup. Unusually even, his club career has ended first, in part so as he can concentrate totally on this World Cup.

For Wood, playing internationals never became like club games. He never took them for granted.

"The driving force for me was never club rugby. I hope, and I know, that I have proven a big loyalty to Quins and to Munster to a degree, for a season. I would have wanted to back myself all the time to play very well. But the driving force for me has been putting on a green jersey."

Once more with feeling then.