HEINEKEN CUP MONTPELLIER v LEINSTER:SEÁN O'BRIEN has always been proud of his roots. So it was that he appeared on the first episode of RTÉ's new series of Ear to the Ground last Tuesday night, to focus on his role as a farmer and underage coach in Tullow. This, as much as his European player of the year starring role for Leinster and for Ireland, is the real Tullow Tank.

“I wanted to give an insight now into what I do when I’m at home and maybe what my family is like and stuff like that, you know, but I did it more so for the farming aspect of it. I enjoy farming and that’s what the programme is about,” he said.

Also, he adds competitively with a smile, “(John) Hayes was on it years ago so I had to . . . match him up!” That’s the spirit. Can’t be giving those Munster boys anything.

He wore his thick skin the next day at training when, as usual, Cian Healy and Jamie Heaslip led the slagging. O’Brien readily admits he bought a tractor with his first professional Leinster contract money and, on foot of hearing this, Healy intimated that O’Brien took his tractor to training.

“Sure Healy wouldn’t know what a tractor is,” retorts O’Brien dismissively.

All that said and done, O’Brien quite likes the life of a professional rugby player. Thus, on Tuesday, when Leinster announced a three-year partnership deal which will see audit, tax and business advisory firm BDO – which boasts Ireland’s only dedicated sports advisory unit – become their official business adviser, O’Brien was none too sure whether he would return to farming full-time.

“It’s a hard life but I wouldn’t mind the hard work part of it. But land is a big thing at home and I wouldn’t have enough land, or enough of our own land, to get an income out of it. It’s something I always enjoy so maybe I’ll have some little farm at some stage or keep what I have and that will be that.”

It also pleased him that the programme served to highlight how kids can break through the system from areas such as his, as opposed to the more established schools system, and live the dream. O’Brien has been living the dream for the last few years especially, although the dream came to a shuddering halt with Ireland’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to Wales.

A badly needed post-tournament detour to Dubai helped him park the World Cup experience. “It was just what we needed. I just wanted to get to the sun. I didn’t want to come home straight away. I wanted to just relax and have my own thoughts and think about what had happened, I suppose.

“A couple of us went, and a friend of mine owns a place out there so he came out with us. It was nice just to get away from everything for a while and get rugby out of the head and just sit in the sun. I was delighted to get back home then and it was nice to see the family again.

“There’s no point in keeping on thinking about it. I thought about it all that night, after that game. I thought about it in the dressingroom afterwards. I thought about it the next day but we’re old enough now and mature enough and experienced enough to move on and know what’s ahead of you and know what’s to come and . . . there’s no point in whingeing about something for months after it’s happened. Get on with it, really.”

Nevertheless, what really disappointed O’Brien as much as anything in that post-match dressingroom was the realisation that Brian O’Driscoll and others will never get that opportunity again.

“Great players that have played for the last 10 years at the top of their game and knowing that they might never have another chance of getting there, that hurt us. That hurt the younger lads, I know that for a fact. It’s up to us, I suppose, to kick on and try and get it to a different place.”

O’Brien is young enough and talented enough to play in at least two more World Cups, though he doesn’t allow himself to think like that. “I think it’s all about the here and rugby is so unpredictable as well. You could be an injury away from finishing.”

Looking back now O’Brien admits it was “a class tournament”. Ireland, he maintained, “played some lovely rugby” and, echoing the views of Paul O’Connell, he thinks that can be a positive reference point for future World Cups.

Wales, he admitted, had done their homework, and though he didn’t go so far as to say it, particularly on himself and Stephen Ferris by chopping them low.

“I don’t think we were really bad. I wouldn’t say really bad. I just think we could have done things a little differently, by getting an extra pass in, maybe. Small little things like we could have probably changed at half -time. We just probably needed to be a bit smarter.”

You suggest the Welsh approach might prove a template for trying to stop O’Brien, and, unusually, he almost bridles a little, as if suggesting he’s a one-trick pony or he’s suddenly going to be that easy to stop.

“I’m not worried about teams coming at my ankles. If they come at my ankles too early, I know what will happen,” he says, with an almost menacing, unexplained smile.

“They can try what they like, obviously, try different things in games so it’s a matter of me knowing what to do at the right time and not being predictable as a ball-carrier. That’s the thing I’ll be working on always.”

New tasks, such as the looming defence of the Heineken Cup, helps to regenerate mind and soul and body. O’Brien is more ready to assume more of a leadership role, something he has always enjoyed in his career, in the absence of O’Driscoll.

He describes the latter as a serious player and “an unbelievable man to have around your squad. He chirps everyone up as well and he’ll give you a bollicking if you need it, you know. He’s that type of player.

“He’s just so honest, but look, we’ll have to move on without him for the next couple of months and Brian will be back. There’s no doubt about that.”

Their motivation, he says, is about backing up last year’s triumph and emulating Leicester.

“That’s what you’ve to strive for, to be the best around, and that’s the good thing about last year. We know how hard it was last year. We know what work we had to put in last year to get to where we got and it’s the same thing this year.”

“It’s a hard competition to win in the first place. I think you need a bit of luck as well, in this competition and you know we probably got it last year. There could have been different instances in games where things could have gone against us. But we played some great rugby as well and we did put in the hard yards as well.”

And they’re prepared to do so again.