European Cup Toulouse v MunsterGerry Thornley finds Paul O'Connell straining at the leash to play after an injury interrupted time
What you see is what you get. When Munster team-mates, and others who know him, talk about Paul O'Connell, they talk of his dedication, his bloody single-mindedness, and, most of all, his mental strength. There are no barriers in his world, no walls he couldn't run through.
He's innately talented, as a varied sporting CV in one so young testifies. The prototype for the modern-day lock, athletic and dexterous in lineouts, where he will improve for years to come, he's also incredibly mobile. A no-holds-barred big hitter and straight runner, and abrasive with it, he makes an impact all over the park.
The pity is a succession of injuries have limited that impact; this season's back operation and a broken hand adding to the catalogue. A forlorn, frustrating cameo against England was only his fifth Test since making his debut in Eddie O'Sullivan's first game against Wales. Injury free, it would probably have been his 18th.
Even his virtuoso performance against Leicester was only his fifth full game for Munster this season. No wonder he was straining at a leash. The boy just wants to play.
"It is very frustrating when you're injured and you're young. When you're young you don't want a profile from it, you just want to play rugby, and the big games are all that matter. That was the big miss, the Celtic League final and I suppose I'd loved to have thought I might have been involved in some of the internationals. So when you come back I suppose you've a lot of that bottled up."
Returning against England compounded his frustration.
"The England game didn't go great. I think I came on at 13-6 or something and God, after that it just went to pot." He laughs. "I hardly got my hands on the ball or anything. It's just the way it goes, I suppose."
O'Connell was publicity shy in advance of the head-to-head with the legend that is Martin Johnson and his fellow Lion Ben Kay. He doesn't respect reputations. Not in a cocky or arrogant way. It's just how he is. So you ask him how that match-up had got him going in the build-up to the quarter-final at Welford Road.
"This personal stuff wouldn't have been there at all, it's just that playing against the best you're always going to raise your game."
He recalls an AIL game against Shannon three years ago.
"They were beating us well with their regular team and next minute they brought on (Anthony) Foley and Gailimh (Mick Galwey) and we all lifted our games and nearly beat 'em. That's the way it is, so playing against Kay and Johnson was a huge thing for me and Dunners (Donnacha O'Callaghan) to perform well."
Well, it was O'Connell who brought up his second-row sidekick. The two young second-row tyros are similar in age and style. Young - O'Connell is 23, O'Callaghan 24 - and big - both are 6ft 6ins and 17 stone - invariably they will often be mentioned in the same breath.
"You'd prefer to be treated more as an individual," O'Connell says on behalf of both of them. "We don't see ourselves as two great buddies coming up together as the papers are making out but it is good. I definitely enjoy playing with him, as Micko (O'Driscoll) enjoys playing with him, and last year I enjoyed playing with Gailimh."
Off the pitch, they're cut from a different cloth. O'Callaghan is the vocal, practical joker; O'Connell the quiet, single-minded, focused individual.
"He is a big joker. I'd be a small bit quieter. It seems Dunners isn't happy unless he's setting somebody up for a fall. I roomed with him the other week and you're watching your back all over the place. The papers have covered the one with a cow. Himself and John Fogarty got a cowsuit and stood in the middle of the pitch before a training session in Thomond Park."
O'Connell's determined approach to the game emanates from his upbringing. His dad Mick having played junior rugby with Sunday's Well and Young Munster, sport, and particularly rugby, was big in the O'Connell household in Drombana, just outside Limerick. All three boys, Justin, Marcus and Paul, played a host of sports.
"We lived in the country - well, just outside the city - and we had a massive back garden. Everything was sport. The funny thing is we were talking about it the other night and we never really had the Commodore 64 or Ataries or Nintendos, it was all balls, and golf clubs and hurleys."
The youngest joined a golf club at 12 at the behest of John Gleeson. "He would be a big sort of mentor for me," explains O'Connell. Gleeson allowed O'Connell, then in his mid-teens, decidedly flexible hours when employing him in his shop, so much so O'Connell would leave work on a Sunday morning to train with the Ard Scoil Rís school rugby team at 11 in the morning, return to the shop and then play golf in the evening.
"John would be a really competitive guy, always on about training. Even now I still get the odd card when I've been capped, just little anecdotes and stuff like that. He's a good guy."
O'Connell won a variety of swimming events in Irish under-13 championships while at the age of 17 he had his golf handicap down to four. But ultimately there weren't enough hours in the day or the week for O'Connell to devote his energies to all the sports he wanted to play, or at the way he wanted to play them.
"I kind of gave up all other sports for swimming when I was 10 or 11. I was probably too dedicated at the time for my age. Jeez, it was a great sport though. I consider myself a hard worker and that's where I probably got the ethos from. I was training three mornings a week before school."
Justin, captain of UL Bohemians, was another "solid" influence, so too his under-10 and under-12 coaches in Young Munster, Ollie Delaney and Ciarán Kiely, before he gave up rugby and took it up again at 16.
The turning point, the way he describes it, was a fortuitous Irish rugby schools trial.
"I was so lucky, I'll never forget it. I had two lifters, Nicky O'Connor from Clongowes from Des Dillon's era, and Rob McGrath from CBC. They were two brilliant lifters and lifting by the legs had only just come in. And I remember the guy opposite me wasn't being lifted by the legs at all, he was being lifted by the shorts."
So through no great lineout prowess of his own, he'll have you believe, O'Connell broke into the Irish schools team on the back of it.
"It kind of took off from there. I was on the weights that summer and played a small bit of AIL the following year."
To the manor born, surely - all that physical competitiveness and fiery nature? O'Connell smiles and admits Gleeson always reckoned "that my temper was my downfall in the golf". Being the youngest of three and close in age to Marcus, as well as the variety of sports he played, made him the competitive animal he is. He admits tempering his innate aggression, and curtailing a desire to look for hits by instead adhering to the defensive system is something he's had to learn.
Not only does he come from the hard school that is Young Munster, he plays in the second row. So no less than Johnson, he takes it and he gives it.
"That's the way it is. He (Johnson) doesn't talk the talk, but he walks the walk. And that is the territory. You can't complain, you just have to take it. Some days you'll be dishing it out, and there'll be nothing coming back, and there's days when you're on the bottom of it and you just have to take it."
As O'Connell's performances with Young Munster blossomed there were those around the club who reckoned they had the best lock in Ireland, never mind the province, but the province's litany of established locks meant he had to bide his time. He took a year out of college, and devoted his time to weight training.
"When I got the contract, it was fine. I'd nearly gone a few other places, but luckily I held out. There was Connacht and one or two offers from England. Academy contracts. Nothing too major."
He made the breakthrough last season, now it's a question of establishing himself. "That's the big thing for me, to be injury free and string a rake of games together and to be as match fit as I possibly can. I still don't consider myself match fit. I'd love to hit a real, real high level of match fitness and see how good I am then."
Phew, wouldn't we all.
