A year on, same place (Kielys), same interviewer but much has changed. Mike Ruddock has swapped training gear for open neck shirt and cuts a suitably more relaxed figure.

He feels far more part of the Leinster and Irish rugby furniture after a turbulent summer off-the-pitch in which he nearly hired the removal van once more for a return to his native Welsh hotbed. To which he now wipes his brown and says: "Phew."

Though he wouldn't have minded Graham Henry's reputed £1.2 million contract, what Ruddock was offered probably wasn't worth the grief of an horrendous 96-13 defeat to South Africa, and then the trauma of a Welsh game riddled with debt and pulling acrimoniously in all directions.

Ruddock is glad he stayed put in the comparatively structured and harmonious surrounds of, yes, Irish rugby.

Tight-lipped then, he can talk about it now. "It did pull me both ways. At the end of the day I am a Welshman and I was asked to coach the national side. Obviously, at one stage there was a possibility I might go back.

"It didn't come about and I'm actually delighted that happened now, because one; it was a very weakened (Welsh) side that went out to South Africa in the first place; two, because my family have settled really well and three, personally I'm really enjoying Ireland. Looking back, if I'd left it would have been a mistake.

"I'm totally committed to the cause and, irrespective of results, I know that Leinster, with all the young players coming through, will be a force to be reckoned with. A mighty force to be reckoned with."

He has expressed similarly optimistic sentiments to Welsh contacts during the summer about the Irish international team, warning that "you watch Ireland in the next World Cup, or certainly the one after, because the structures are now in place".

"The most significant factor is that the Union actually has control of the best players. That ends the argument with the clubs. If you want to put the national coach first, that's the only way to go."

Now co-opted as Irish A coach by Warren Gatland, Ruddock says: "There's a great bond with Warren in charge and we all feel part of the plan. In Wales, Graham Henry has got to win over the coaches for the bigger picture, and I think we've already identified the bigger picture."

On the eve of his first interpro campaign a year ago, Ruddock had made much of training facilities being brought up to scratch in the professional era.

At the press conference yesterday, he spoke at length about the improvements in this area, from being "nomadic in our approach, with no real training base or equipment" and relying on the goodwill of clubs, to high-tech facilities in St Andrew's (complete with floodlights, scrum machine, medical and physio room and weights) as well as a highly qualified, layered coaching and fitness "Leinster organisational ladder" which Kurt McQuilkin, Philip Lawlor, Brent Pope, Gerry Murphy and Wanderers' former Welsh Sevens coach Glenn Davies are all now a part of.

The result, he happily revealed, was that Dr Liam Hennessy's preseason tests revealed the Leinster players to be the fittest since the good doctor began testing them in 1990, maintaining the annual 10 per cent improvement of the last two years.

Another consequence has been the steady flow of young "upward mobility" through the said Leinster ladder, as manifested by their youthful opening selections of the season.

"In some cases we had no option because of injuries and in others they got there on merit. If you look back on last year you might have said the same about Reggie Corrigan, John McWeeney and Kevin Nowlan.

"I measure their ability in training and playing. I don't care what age they are."

A lack of match fitness, due to the English RFU's refusal to sanction and provide referees for planned friendlies with Wakefield and Leeds, and a few injuries, makes him wonder aloud as to how Leinster will do this season.

With six games instead of three, more than ever it will now be "a case of the best squad will win it. We've tested 59 players, and I would say that at least a third of them are injured.

"I think the advantage will be the side that can come out of the blocks quickly, and say, notches up a bonus point early. That's a helluva start.

"So we can't be concerned too much with what happens over that longer period. We've got to be concerned with that first game."

Leinster's target? "Like the others, we want to assure ourselves of qualification by finishing in the top two. "We've got to be judged by that. If we don't, then to a point we fail. If we fail because of a last minute penalty try against us, because we weren't quite good enough or because of injuries, that's another situation.

"But, at the end of the day, if we don't hit the top two, then we've got to think we failed."