Sidestepping the stereotype

At his first Irish training session at the Aer Lingus sports complex near Dublin Airport last season Trevor Brennan, as usual, was prepared to bust a gut. Unfortunately, in the process, he started to bust a few others as well.

The yelps of pain heightened along with the quizzical "who is this guy?" looks. Finally, on the receiving end of another Brennan hit, Keith Wood picked himself up and said: "Take it easy Trevor, it's only training."

"That's all right for you to say, with all your Irish caps," he said to the Harlequins and Irish skipper, and recent Lions tourist. "I don't have any yet."

The story is all part of the folklore. Trevor Brennan: product of Barnhall and youths rugby, always out to prove himself, commitment, enthusiasm and fearlessness bursting out of every pore.

Where he starts to take exception to the popular image, and where it starts to miss the point, is when he gets pigeon-holed as a hard man from the wrong side of the tracks.

Straight as a dye, what you see with Trevor Brennan is what you get. On Thursday lunchtime, it was the father in a recently-acquired four-bedroom home in Leixlip. Playing in the corner, from his library of videos to compensate for just two channels, was, fittingly enough, The Commitments. Is he having me on here?

In the tidy, spacious, stone-floored kitchen, lunch was cooked and ready for the interviewer on arrival. Seven-month-old baby Daniel contentedly played with his mobile, his games threatening to drown out the interview, whereupon Trevor's mother Iris arrives to assume baby-sitting duties. She's greeted by her monster grandson with a monster smile. "This is the side of Trevor people don't know, changing nappies and looking after the baby," she whispers.

The life and soul of the party, immensely popular in his various squads, streetwise, joke-teller, songster, mimic and character, generous and loyal, but actually quite modest. "I'm just a grafter," he says.

But the image sticks, particularly, you sense, in Limerick. "Watch the number six referee," was the opening battle-cry from pitchside at Rosbrien last season, and that was before the kick-off. Brennan will assuredly get the Dooradoyle crowd's dander up today. Yet were he a Limerick player, he'd be a cult hero, for he's like a Limerick player in Dublin clothing.

His career is almost the stuff of legends at this stage. First, there was the unlikely starting point; Barnhall's Paul Deering spotting the eight-year-old Brennan and a few of his mates playing football in the street, and inviting them up to the club. "He brought me all the way up though the under-age teams and gave me good direction really.

"It's a family club. At Mary's after an AIL match you walk in and the place is just full of suits. You go back to Barnhall and there's probably 300 to 400 people, and 100 of them are kids from the age of three up to 15 or 16, all running around the place wild. You have that family atmosphere. "That's the sort of club it is. I find most senior clubs conservative or reserved. You can have your sing-song, but it's not the done thing every week. "It's a close-knit community-based club. You look at the likes of Old Belvedere, Bective, Wesley, Wanderers, Lansdowne, Monkstown, all within a one-mile radius of each other. It's cut throat. They're stabbing each other to get a player. Around here you've got Leixlip, Lucan, Maynooth, Celbridge. You've all the communities coming to just one club.

"They really look after their under-age set-up. They try to take them all away each season, I suppose to give them some idea of what's in the future."

Barnhall have climbed through three divisions in Leinster and now into the AIL, and Brennan played with seven of the current team at under-age level.

After Brennan won an Irish Youths' cap against the Scots in Galway in 1992 "the club wished me the best of luck and said go on, give it a go and see if you can make it in the senior ranks." Deering then utilised his contacts with Joe Nolan in Bective to move Brennan on.

After promotion to Division Two, Bective missed out on a further leap into the top flight by a point in successive seasons to Terenure and Clontarf. He wanted first division rugby, chose St Mary's and hasn't regretted it for a second.

He says he's been made feel welcome from the day he arrived there, along with all his family and friends. He doesn't mention a wedge, though contrary to the popular myth about some poormouth Leixlip milkman, Brennan has always been fairly clued in about money.

"I worked since I was about 10, first as a tea-boy and then in a chip shop when I was 12, then I got a job in a local hotel doing the bar while I was in school. At the age of about 15 I was probably earning more than my da because I was doing more hours. I made about £120 a week, gave my ma £30 and the rest for myself. "It was hard to spend it because I was working seven days a week, after school and at weekends. By the time I left school I had enough to buy a business. So I went to the bank and got a loan when I was 18 or 19, and the brother ran it for me. We had it for three years. I suppose you could say my brother Errol ran the whole show. He always says: "Milk man my arse. I was the milkman."

Just before he sold up, Brennan got a job through Bective's Ray McKenna with RJ Sales as a sales representative, where his brother Ronnie now works and, according to McKenna, is a good deal more productive.

"Money was never a problem. I always, always had money. It's actually something that I would like to point out. Everybody makes out Trevor Brennan came from the Bronx, like Mike Tyson, has no money, never had any money, do ye know what I mean?"

Laughing, he recalls a trip to Wales in his first year at Bective when a few of the alikadoos had a collection for him, raising £120.

"I offered to buy them a drink and they said: `Ah, you've no money'. I had plenty of money, but I wasn't telling ye fellas. I just took the money and ran, and bought them all a drink.

"But I do get pissed off with the poor-mouth milkman image, because never, ever did we ever want for anything. All my other brothers worked as well." If he hadn't been a rugby player? "The sort of person I am, I can't say really. Sportswise I'm not too sure. I'd say I would have given gaelic a good old go, and probably even played for Kildare."

At Bective it was Noel McQuilkin who moved Brennan from a lock cum number eight to a blind-side flanker, and also set Brennan up for a five-month stint at Tamanui in King Country, New Zealand in 1993. "It would have hardened me up a bit more," he says, smiles and adds: "Not that I would have needed any hardening up.

"It opened my eyes. It taught me how to ruck and maul and tackle. I was playing against guys who would have been All Blacks trialists. I went out a boy and came back a man kind of thing."

Almost literally. He went out to New Zealand 16 stone and came home 18 stone.

Translating the Kiwi rucking style to domestic fare with Bective brought about his first sending-off for rucking Brian Rigney against Greystones. Another followed for going chin to chin with Mike Brewer and then this season for two yellow-card offences against Shannon. And so comes the other part of the Brennan reputation, that of the hard man.

"Two were kind of when I was a bit younger," he says in self-defence. "One was a rucking incident and I had just come back from New Zealand where I had been stood all over and rucking was just part of the game over there."

He admits he got "a bit hot and heavy" with Brewer and had a tendency to be "hot-headed", though he thinks the third dismissal was harsh. There was also his unofficial one-game suspension by Leinster arising out of a free-for-all in a pre-season game, sparked by Brennan kicking an opponent. You mention this and quick-wittedly he laughs and says: "But I wasn't sent off there. The game was abandoned, everybody was sent off."

But the flak which came with his replacements' cameo against France induces a more sombre and reflective response. That hurt.

"That was the lowest point of my career." Made a scapegoat, he feels, Brennan is undoubtedly a more disciplined player these days.

Recalled when others in his position mightn't have been by Warren Gatland, who is undoubtedly a fan, by the time his first Irish start came against Italy, he felt he owed a big one to virtually everybody, listing off various coaches and people who had been loyal to him, not to mention himself and his country. "I was conscious of not giving away any penalties and I got my nose broke in the first few minutes by a few punches at the bottom of a ruck."

The man-of-the-match award now sits by the fireplace with other trophies, another MoM for Leinster against Toulouse ("to me that would be the start of the highlights"), others from Barnhall and Convey GAA Club, along with a framed photo of himself and his wife Paula, and his brother Damien who died of meningitis at 12. He recalls the date, says Damien had more potential than him, and wishes he was still around to see him play.

His performance against Italy was a new benchmark. "Every time I pull on that green jersey, that's the way I've got to perform. I've got to take it on the chin every time. I mean I've got to think of the other 14 players who are killing themselves.

"I've got to keep my fitness levels up. I've got to work more on my hands. I've got to do my own personal little bit on the sides as well."

He reveals he'd like to captain Leinster one day, win an AIL with St Mary's, play for the Lions and ultimately finish his career with Barnhall.

Yet players talking of their chances of a place in the 28-man squad to Australia make him wonder. He daren't look beyond today's game. It's a rare cliche from him, but the cap fits. One game at a time.

"I'm the sort of a player who believes you're only as good as your last game. I never take anything for granted. It wasn't like, in South Africa, `great, two caps, now I'm going to get loads more'. "Obviously I want that trip, but I still don't believe it. I still believe I've got to go out on Saturday for St Mary's in the AIL and play the game of my life."