KEVIN McLAUGHLIN INTERVIEW: Johnny Wattersontalks to the Leinster backrow who, after putting his injury problems behind him, was named in the Ireland squad during the week

TODAY, TUESDAY is media day for Kevin McLaughlin. Tomorrow is his day off. Tomorrow he will do some chores, make some calls and in the evening drive over to the RTÉ choir where he will meet up with his school friend, Eric McGrath, and the teacher who encouraged his interest in music at Gonzaga, Gerry Murphy. Then they will sing for a few hours. His current job and other passion is rugby.

McLaughlin sees music and rugby as a complementing duo, a D’Arcy and O’Driscoll as it were.

Most of the choir live outside of the oval world, which he finds immeasurably refreshing, although, in past months they have been noticing articles sneaking into the papers, his name mentioned on the radio, his scrum-capped head popping up on television.

The Leinster backrow, whose growing worth was acknowledged this week with inclusion in Declan Kidney’s Ireland squad of 44 players, has quickly grasped the importance of the place of things after a few seasons, where his perspective on rugby and career has been knotted by the callousness of the professional game.

A year ago Michael Cheika called him up for some jaw-jaw. The thrust of what the Leinster coach had to say was that McLaughlin was in grave danger of losing his contract. Still 24-years-old his input had been blighted by surgery and rehabilitation. In his first season in the Leinster Academy he tore his cruciate ligament and was out for six months. The next year shoulder reconstruction cast a shadow over progress, another half a season. Then his right shoulder began to ache; the A/C joint. More surgery. He was tumbling along, all injury rehab, little match recovery.

Cheika told McLaughlin it was imperative to be fit more often, that he could not keep limping from the doctor to the physio’s table. There was never any question over talent or ability. Cheika put it too him straight, he was drinking in the last-chance saloon. He had to show he was a reliable asset and not the ephemeral player he had been for two and a half years. Cheika also had to think of the team and was under little obligation to make life easy for anyone. So he dropped the best blindside flanker in the world into McLaughlin’s position.

“He sat me down and said maybe we do have a spot for you next year. But you need to tell me you can go most of the season without getting injured and be available for selection week in week out,” says McLaughlin.

“He asked me could I do that. I said I thought so. Yeah, it was out of my control and my body was breaking a little bit. But I made a pact I would do everything within my control not to get injured.

“It was like I’d set myself a target and almost felt good about it. I felt better going into this season than I did the season before. The fact I’d come so close to losing my contact and had got a last-minute one . . . It was tough definitely but because things were going so badly last season it made me start to realise there was more to life than rugby.

“I was doing studies outside of rugby and looking at careers outside of rugby and assessing my options. I began to think things wouldn’t be so bad for me if I wasn’t a rugby player, that I didn’t need rugby to get by, even in my head that I could do without rugby. It was quite a good year in that respect for self-confidence. But when I was offered the contract I jumped at it. I have a passion for the game.”

Rocky Elsom arrived. Within a month he became a monolith, a serial man-of-the-match winner. He won 10 of those awards last count including the Heineken Cup quarter-final and final on his way to becoming the most valued overseas player to set foot in Ireland. For McLaughlin, the Australian’s arrival was a double-edged sword. The beauty was the clarity, that the situation was unambiguous. He knew he could never shift him. The flip side was a close-up seat on the training ground and on match days of a master at work.

“I definitely found it inspirational watching Rocky play. He is the kind of guy that would do two or three things that would alter the whole pattern of the game,” he says. “But I think I would have found it just as inspirational watching him play for another team. I learned a lot from seeing him train and watching him. I was finding it very frustrating not getting any game time, although, I completely understand why.

“There just wasn’t a gap for me there last year. Plus I spent half the season injured. It was a tough few months for me. Leinster had a successful season and I felt part of that but it was hard when rugby’s your job. You don’t think you’re doing your job unless you are playing week in, week out.”

The days were always full. A commerce degree from UCD; a job with, er. . . the internal audit section of Anglo Irish Bank; one day a week with Irish Jobs on cold-calling sales. But there were down days. There was a lot of watching and waiting and working hard to feel part of the squad.

McLaughlin has earned 23 Leinster caps to date. In the 2006-07 season he played twice, the following season six times and in 2008-09 twice again.

In that light this season has been a prosperous one, a triumph after a summer of grind. “I rang people asking them if they wanted to advertise positions,” he says with a hint of self-effacement. “They’d say to me ‘do you not realise there’s a recession on? I’ve just let half my workforce go’.”

Capped at schools, under-21 and Ireland A level, he has never been to Twickenham to watch or play. But this has been a season of acceleration forward, delivering on the ample ability that illuminated his schoolboy days. The Leinster backrow still has stiff competition with Jamie Heaslip, Seán O’Brien, and Shane Jennings jostling for game time. But for the boy from the Jesuits, this has been a season of faith.

“I always would like to think I had a chance of getting into the starting 15. I feel I have progressed my game. I feel every time I play I am that bit more comfortable at the level. I am really happy with the way things are going. But I want to keep improving. I am very conscious of not sitting back and resting on my laurels, especially now that Shane is back. There is a huge amount of competition. I want to keep getting better and enjoying myself.

“I see myself as a six that can play eight, not a seven. In my own head I see myself as having a big work rate. I go into games focused on getting the little details right and when an opportunity comes along make sure to take it; an opportunity comes for a big hit, you take it; an opportunity comes for a bit of ball carrying, you take it rather than hunting for the glory carry or the glory hit.”

He says he plays the guitar “but not very well” and that he’d like to be in a band. He could call Gonzaga graduate and Thrills lead singer Conor Deasy or drummer wannabe Elsom. Either way McLaughlin is, as they say in the industry, “busting out moves” both up in the RTÉ choir and the Leinster backrow.