He still has his fiery and his feisty moments, but it seems Peter Clohessy's long and winding career has seen him go from ogre to cult hero. It has been quite a story, quite a transformation. Yet now, on the verge of what could be a memorable last few chapters to a remarkable career, it's surprising to discover a vulnerability too.

"Every game you go out to play you're thinking this could be the last one," he admitted from the sanctuary of his hotel room this week. "Even on Monday, when the team was announced, you'd always have a doubt in your mind. `Am I going to be in there?' It's always a relief when you're name is there."

There is an inherent ageism in most sports and rugby is no exception. So Clohessy's vulnerability after the Italian game was heightened by the knowledge that it was a below par performance by the team, the player and the Irish scrum. Nonetheless, Clohessy seems more angry at the flak which John Hayes invariably receives than if it had been directed at himself.

"Poor John Hayes got the blame for a lot of it, which is totally unfair. He did as much, if not more work, as anyone else in the scrum. Our timing was all wrong because we just hadn't practised for that week, and we thought in our heads that because we hammered them in the scrums last year we'd do the same."

Clohessy acknowledges that - as ever against the French - the scrum is where the lines in the sand will be drawn today. "The French are going to look at a video of that match and say, `We're going to take these lot apart in the scrums', so we've done an awful lot of work this week on the scrums. That should pull us together as a unit. But no matter how many scrums you do, you're always going to have difficulties with the French."

Due to his case history, Clohessy is also judged more stringently on the matter of discipline, and another personal smudge in Rome was the concession of an off-the-ball penalty, which brought play back from the Italian 22 to the Irish 22, and a 10-minute cooling down visit to the sin bin. It's clear that Clohessy feels his reputation unfairly precedes him.

"I think the sin bin I had against Italy was a joke. I looked at the video afterwards and I was doing a bit of rucking, but I wasn't the only one. There was a few of us doing it but I was singled out for it. The Italian player was lying over the ball and didn't move, and if the referee had given a penalty we wouldn't have rucked him. "In fairness, I did get a warning earlier on over the incident with Troncon. But if you look at that as well I tackled him and I held him by the jersey, but I got the dig. You give a dog a bad name," he sighs. So, from another perspective, does Clohessy have to be seen to be purer than the driven snow? "I'd say so, yeah."

A self-acknowledged "messer" in former times, Clohessy has undergone a Damascene conversion toward modern fitness demands: he's been off the fags and the booze for six months. "Basically because I wanted to give it a go to get on the Lions tour. That was the major reason," he admits simply. "It does help you feel better. It's been six or seven months since I had a hangover, and I'm not sorry to see the back of them. I remember when I went off them first saying to our fitness guy in Munster, `I don't know if I feel any better'. And he said at the end of the day you're still going to feel knackered, but you're going to be able to do more before you're knackered."

That said, he tries not to dwell on the Lions tour. Pulling on the green still moves him to tears in the dressing-room, and a spin-off of four good games for Ireland would make his age irrelevant come Lions' time. Then he'd be hard to ignore.

Besides, these are the good times playing for Ireland (or Munster for that matter), and this for someone who's "been there in the days when we got hammered week-in and week-out". For example, beating France was the highlight of last season, he says, "because we went over there for so many years and got the shit kicked out of us."

He attributes the upturn to the advent of more talent and professionalism. Yet this does not blind him to the happy days of amateurism. "I enjoyed it when it was amateur too. I had a great time. I can appreciate both sides of it. Before it went professional, when I first played for the club most of the team would have been palling around together. Great matches and great piss-ups."

The Lions isn't his only mission this season. Clohessy confided that it would take a lifetime to get over Munster's European Cup final heartbreak at Twickenham. Now there's a shorter route to redemption.

"The only way we'll ever get over losing the final is to win it, and I think everyone is of the same frame of mind. Our ambition at the start of the year was to go and win it this year. Whether we believed it or not, that was our major goal. Early season we weren't playing that well, we just kept plugging away and plugging away. Things have come right of late."

The older you get, the harder it gets? "No, I don't think so. I thought it would but it doesn't. The amount of training we do and the fitness advice is excellent. Like, after Rome, Woody had to play in England on the Tuesday and he played half a game at the weekend. The first time I put on my boots since Rome was last Monday - we did all our work indoors - which is great."

These are the best of times, what with a resurgent Ireland, Munster's latest Euro odyssey and, out on the horizon, the possibility of a valedictory Lions tour.

"Let's not jump the gun," he says, before admitting: "but it could be a fantastic season."

The older he gets, the sweeter it gets.