Carefree winger now straining at the leash

RUGBY INTERVIEW ANDREW TRIMBLE: Johnny Wattersontalks to the talented Ulster and Irish back who, following a year in the rugby wilderness, has returned with a renewed focus and appetite for the game

ANDREW TRIMBLE’S Ulster team-mate, Stephen Ferris, has been drawing unwanted attention. Stade Francais players Julien Dupuy and David Attoub recently targeted Ferris and last December in Ravenhill indefensibly gouged him twice in one game.

A week ago Danny Grewcock was red-carded – and on Thursday was suspended for seven weeks – when he stamped on Ferris’s arm during Ulster’s Heineken Cup meeting with Bath. And that’s just the illegal attacks on the 17-stone flanker. He must be doing something right.

Ferris, says Trimble, is a one-off, a specimen. His eyes light up when he talks of the physicality of the backrow, of his appetite for confrontation and the sort of aggressive attack and counter- insurgency that goes on in the pack.

“He loves it, absolutely loves the contact. He’s a bit of a freak to be honest,” says Trimble in admiration. “Genetically, he’s just unbelievably powerful. He’s nasty and he’s a horrible person to play against.”

After a year in the wilderness, Trimble has had time to watch. In his own mind it has been too much time, enough at least to put him on the outside looking in. He watched Ulster slip and slide throughout last season and, most hurtful of all, watched the Ireland team that he had once been part of charge to a Grand Slam without him.

Declan Kidney had little choice but to leave him out of contention and Trimble didn’t quibble. After a series of injuries, he had lost the power in his legs. His starting place with the province was in doubt.

The confidence evaporated and his game spiralled downwards. He ended up watching Ireland’s final championship match against Wales at home with his brother-in-law. By then the lack of confidence was hurtling towards full-blown doubt.

“It was frustrating but, at the same time, I never really thought or expected to be selected. I never felt that because I just wasn’t playing well enough. At the same time I was doubting whether I was good enough even if I was playing well,” he says. “I didn’t know if I would ever put on a green jersey again. I remember sitting watching the Wales game and watching Tommy (Bowe) running in the try and being really, really delighted for him, really pleased; and a small bit jealous.”

A try last week against Bath in the Rec’ was reward for another eye-catching performance and another sequence in this season’s reawakening.

But away from the touchdown and the glamour part of the game it was the winger’s physical involvement in the match, his wrestling tackles in defence and the all-round pace and aggression that has perceptibly changed his influence on the team. There is, if you like, a touch of the Ferris ferocity in Trimble’s renaissance and a wilful determination to leave his mark. His game has developed teeth.

“It’s like being back in school whenever you feel you are strong and big and just love to get to training, you love contact sessions,” he says.

“That’s the way I’m feeling at the minute, just really loving the rough and tumble. I’m like a child, really loving it. I’m going after guys, choking guys and choking the ball. Maybe for the year or two when I didn’t have the leg-drive that I used to have, I had to develop other aspects of my game and that’s maybe one of the good things I can take out of what happened.”

Saddled early in his career with the image of being the humble, caring winger, who held and holds no fear of publicly declaring his love of God and his celebration of the Christian faith, the words “choking” and “nasty” don’t fit that seamlessly into the Trimble back catalogue.

"God hasn't given me this talent for people to think: 'Wow, he's a great player', but he's given me this gift of rugby so that I can share Jesus with these people," he told Evangelical Nowback in 2006.

In that light, you feel he may have struck an outrageous bet with Ferris that he could, for the first time, have the word “nasty” printed beside his name, not unlike Brian O’Driscoll’s “knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. . .” line prior to the game against England last season, which sounded decidedly wager material.

But here, today, Trimble is carefree, off the leash and letting people know that part of the winger’s armoury is to develop a little niggle, put himself around the place. He is bearing witness to the modern game.

“I think in previous years when I was selected more often than not for Ireland . . . to go from that to a barren period, not really being anywhere near selection . . . To be honest, if I had been selected, I would have been very surprised.

“To go from that to a nothing season was really disappointing. Whenever you do get selected, you maybe take it for granted and that’s maybe what I did. Last year, I got the hunger back and wanted to get myself sorted,” he says.

“I just realised how much it meant to me. I just wanted to put that hard work in and I was delighted that it is starting to pay off. Declan (Kidney) is very fair, he tells you exactly how it is. If you’re playing well, he picks you, if you’re not playing well, he doesn’t. I’ve been on one end of that outcome and I’d love to get to the other end. I think I’ve become a bit more nasty than I would have been in the past. It’s something I’d like to develop.”

He had surgery on his knee during the summer down-time. Initially the doctors didn’t know what was causing his leg to lack oomph but then found a piece of bone kicking around in the right side of his kneecap. They took out the bone, “shockwaved” the tendon and Trimble was able to go back to work.

Today his body fat looks as close to a healthy zero as you can get. A tighter haircut shows the cheekbones more prominently and the jawline seems more defined than before. He is lean and hungry and was hot enough early in the season for Kidney to wade in with encouragement with a bit-part against Fiji in the November international series.

It wasn’t much but it was more than he had been getting and the run in the RDS at least gave him the sense that his path was the right one.

“I got the monkey off my back against Fiji for 10 minutes, which I was just unbelievably excited about. It just means so much to me and I want to get back in there. I was just buzzing running around the pitch, like a child on Christmas Day,” he says.

Trimble is not in tomorrow’s Ireland A squad; nor is Shane Horgan or Keith Earls or Tommy Bowe. All four can play on the wing or in the centre when needs be. Earls is indisputably the future while Horgan with Leinster and Bowe with Ospreys have done plenty enough to command attention from the Irish coach.

All 25-year-old Trimble hopes for is to knock on the door, see if Kidney is watching. In that light, the try last week against Bath was good timing. Generated as much from self-belief as pace and power, Trimble stepped inside and accelerated, initially looked for the pass, saw prop Tom Court as an available off-load, said to himself “no thanks” and backed his own ability for the score.

“Yeah, yeah. I made the initial break and then I looked to my left to Tom, who, I’m embarrassed to say, was keeping up with me. He was screaming for the ball. I think maybe this time last year I would have given it to him but . . . the confidence in my own ability, I just wanted to take (Joe) Maddock on and then it sort of opened up.”

The Coleraine winger is now drawing attention, attention he has wanted for two years. You suspect Ferris would fully approve.